Nuuk (; ) is the capital and most populous city of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. It is the seat of the municipality and the government of Greenland and is the territory's largest cultural and economic center. In January 2025, it had a population of 20,113—more than a third of the territory's population—making it one of the smallest capital cities in the world by population.
The city was founded in 1728 by the Danish-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede when he relocated from the earlier Hope Colony (), where he had arrived in 1721; the governor Claus Paarss was part of the relocation. The new colony was placed at the Inuit settlement of Nûk and named ('good hope'). is the Greenlandic word for 'cape' and is commonly found in Greenlandic place names. It is so named because of its position at the end of the Nuup Kangerlua fjord on the Labrador Sea's eastern shore. Its latitude, at 64°11' N, makes it the world's northernmost capital, a few kilometres farther north than Reykjavík. When home rule was established in 1979, the authorization of place names was transferred to Greenlandic authorities, who preferred Greenlandic names to Danish ones. The name mostly went out of use over the next two decades.
History
Early settlement
The site has a long history of habitation. The area around Nuuk was first occupied by the ancient, pre-Inuit, Paleo-Eskimo people of the Saqqaq culture as far back as 2200 BCE, when they lived in the area around the now abandoned settlement of Qoornoq. For a long time, it was occupied by the Dorset culture around the former settlement of Kangeq, but they disappeared from the Nuuk district before 1000 AD. The Nuuk area was then inhabited by Norse settlers from around 1000 until the disappearance of the settlement for uncertain reasons during the 15th century.
thumb|left|The statue of [[Hans Egede in Nuuk]]
Founding and early colonial period
The city proper was founded as the fort of Godt-Haab in 1728 by the royal governor Claus Paarss, when he relocated the missionary and merchant Hans Egede's earlier Hope Colony () from Kangeq Island to the mainland.
At that time, Greenland was formally still a Norwegian colony under the united Danish-Norwegian Crown, but the colony had not had any contact for over three centuries. Paarss's colonists were mutinous soldiers, convicts, and prostitutes; within the first year, most died of scurvy and other ailments.
In 1733 and 1734, a smallpox epidemic killed most of the native population as well as Egede's wife. Hans Egede returned to Denmark in 1736 after 15 years in Greenland, leaving his son Poul to continue his work.
Godthaab became the seat of government for the Danish colony of South Greenland, while Godhavn (modern Qeqertarsuaq) was the capital of North Greenland until 1940, when the administration was unified in Godthaab.
Missionary settlements
In 1733, Moravian missionaries received permission to begin a mission on the island; in 1747, there were enough converts to prompt the construction of the Moravian Brethren Mission House and the formal establishment of the mission as New Herrnhut ().
This became the nucleus of present-day Nuuk as many Greenlanders from the southeastern coast left their territory to live at the mission station. From this base, further missions were established at Lichtenfels (1748), Lichtenau (1774), Friedrichsthal (1824), Umanak (1861), and Idlorpait (1864), before they were discontinued in 1900 and folded into the Lutheran Church of Denmark.
thumb|left|Nuuk (),
Cultural and political developments
In 1853, Hinrich Johannes Rink came to Greenland and was surprised at how local Greenlandic culture and identity had been suppressed under Danish influence.
In response, in 1861, he started the Atuagagdliutit, Greenland's first newspaper, with a native Greenlander as editor. This newspaper based in Nuuk later became an important token of Greenlandic identity.
World War II and postwar changes
During World War II, there was a reawakening of Greenlandic national identity. The use of written Greenlandic grew, and a council was assembled under Eske Brun's leadership in Nuuk. In 1940, an American and a Canadian Consulate were established in Nuuk.
Under new regulations in 1950, two councils amalgamated into one. This Countryside Council was abolished on 1 May 1979, when the Greenland Home Rule government renamed the city of Godthåb to Nuuk.
The city boomed during the 1950s when Denmark began to modernize Greenland. Nuuk is populated today by both Inuit and Danes, as is Greenland as a whole. Over a third of Greenland's population lives in the Nuuk Greater Metropolitan area.
According to a 2016 article in The Guardian examining indigenous influences on cities worldwide: