Nuuk
- Currency:Danish krone. Cards and phone payments work across the town at hotels, supermarkets, restaurants and shops, and the country's bank has a branch here, so Nuuk is the place to draw the cash a trip beyond the towns will need.
Overview
Nuuk is Greenland's capital and by far its largest town, home to roughly a third of the country's people, and it is the one place on the island where museums, restaurants, a parliament and a genuine city rhythm sit directly against Arctic wilderness.
History
The name Nuuk means the point, which is exactly what the town stands on. A settlement was established here in 1728 by the Danish-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede and long carried the Danish name Godthaab; the house Egede had built that same year still stands at the Colonial Harbour and is the oldest house in Greenland, now used for official receptions. The timber warehouses and dwellings around it are what remains visible of that period, while the town uphill, the parliament, the cultural centre and the apartment blocks above the water, is the work of the last few decades.
Culture
Nuuk has the only restaurant scene of any size in the country, and the interesting end of it cooks Greenlandic ingredients in a contemporary register: muskox, Greenland halibut, snow crab, prawns, and foraged angelica and berries. Qooqqut Nuan, out in the fjord on a former sheep station and reached by boat, is the meal people plan a day around. Supermarkets carry the imported staples the whole country lives on, at the prices that implies. Museums: Greenland National Museum and Archives, Nuuk Art Museum, Nuuk Local Museum (Nuutoqaq), Katuaq Cultural Centre.
Practical Info
Safety: Nuuk is a very safe town and petty crime is uncommon. The real cautions are environmental: weather that changes quickly on the two town mountains, so carry warm and waterproof layers even on a clear morning, and the ordinary rules of cold water if you are out on the fjord. Language: Kalaallisut is the official language and is what you will hear in the street; Danish is widely spoken, and English works throughout the tourism side of the town, in hotels, museums and on tours. Currency: Danish krone. Cards and phone payments work across the town at hotels, supermarkets, restaurants and shops, and the country's bank has a branch here, so Nuuk is the place to draw the cash a trip beyond the towns will need.
Travel
Nuuk is small enough to cross on foot and large enough to be a real capital, which is an unusual combination and most of its appeal. Roughly a third of Greenland's population lives here, the country's parliament and government sit here, and the national museum holds the collections that explain the rest of the island before you travel to it. Step out of the centre in almost any direction and the wilderness starts immediately: one of the world's largest fjord systems opens minutes from town, two mountains rise straight out of the suburbs, and a dozen humpback whales spend every summer in the water offshore. It is also the country's main air gateway now, which makes it the natural first and last stop on any itinerary planned around Greenland's flights and boats.
The National Museum and the Qilakitsoq mummies
The Greenland National Museum and Archives is the single best reason to spend a first morning in Nuuk rather than hurrying onward, because it frames everything a visitor will see afterwards. Its most remarkable holding came out of the northwest of the country: in 1972 two brothers found two graves at the abandoned settlement of Qilakitsoq containing eight people, six women and two boys spanning three generations of one family, buried around 1475 and preserved almost completely, wrapped in skins and fully dressed with extra clothing packed alongside them. Four of the mummies are displayed in a room of their own, together with the clothing, and the garments are as extraordinary as the people wearing them: cut, sewn and decorated skin work of a standard that is hard to credit until it is in front of you. The rest of the museum runs from the earliest Arctic cultures through the Thule period and into the present, and the smaller Nuuk Local Museum adds the town's own story on top.
Colonial Harbour, Katuaq and the art museums
The oldest part of town gathers around the Colonial Harbour, a cluster of timber buildings on the water that includes Hans Egede's house, the oldest house standing in Greenland, with the fjord filling the view behind it. It is a short, dense walk rather than a district, and it is where Nuuk feels most like the small settlement it once was. Uphill from there the town is emphatically modern, and its landmark building is Katuaq, the cultural centre whose curved timber facade was designed after the rippling curtains of the northern lights; it is the venue for concerts, films and festivals and doubles as the place the town gathers when there is nothing on. The Nuuk Art Museum completes the set, and between it and the two history collections the capital is the only town in Greenland where an afternoon indoors is a genuinely good use of a travel day.
The fjord and the mountains on the doorstep
Nuuk Fjord is one of the largest fjord systems in the world and it begins within minutes of the city centre, which is why boat trips out of Nuuk are a standard half-day rather than an expedition. A dozen or so humpback whales return to the fjord every summer and make it one of the more reliable places in Greenland to see them without a long journey. Out along the water, Qooqqut Nuan occupies an old sheep station and is reached by boat, which makes dinner there a trip in its own right. On land, two mountains rise directly out of the suburbs, Quassussuaq and Ukkusissaq, known locally as Lille Malene and Store Malene, and both are walkable from town for views over the whole fjord. Sermitsiaq, the sharp peak that appears in every photograph of Nuuk, is the exception: it forms its own island and is not simply hiked from the city.
Frequently asked questions
What is there actually to do in Nuuk?
How old are the Qilakitsoq mummies, and what are they?
Can I see whales from Nuuk?
Which mountains can I hike from Nuuk itself?
Is Nuuk worth more than a night on the way through?
Diplomatic missions in Nuuk
1 embassy based in this city, grouped by region.
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