The World's Northernmost Capital — icebergs in the harbor, musk ox and reindeer on the menu, Greenlandic Inuit culture, and the Northern Lights above the fjords
Nuuk is the capital and only true city of Greenland, a small urban settlement of roughly 18,000 people set where the Nuup Kangerlua fjord meets the Labrador Sea. It is simultaneously the northernmost capital city in the world and one of the most isolated. The colonial old town (Kolonihavn) preserves 18th-century Danish and Greenlandic wooden buildings; the National Museum of Greenland houses a collection of ancient Inuit artifacts including the perfectly preserved Qilakitsoq mummies. Greenlandic cuisine is genuinely distinctive and increasingly celebrated: musk ox, reindeer, Arctic char, and…
Greenland was first settled by Paleo-Eskimo peoples around 2500 BCE, followed by successive waves of Arctic cultures including the Dorset people. The Norse explorer Erik the Red established the first European settlement around 985 CE, naming the island Greenland to attract settlers. Norse settlements flourished for five centuries before mysteriously disappearing around 1400, possibly due to climate change and conflict with the Thule Inuit people who arrived from Canada. Danish colonization began in 1721 under missionary Hans Egede, and Denmark-Norway claimed Greenland as a colony. Nuuk — then…