Godthåb

Godthåb stands at Nuuk, a cape near the mouth of a great fjord on Greenland's southwestern coast. The surrounding region has a long history of settlement, from the Saqqaq and Dorset cultures to the Norse farms of the Western Settlement and Inuit communities. In 1728 the Danish-Norwegian governor Claus Paarss moved the earlier Hope Colony to the Inuit settlement of Nuuk, together with the missionary Hans Egede. The new colony was named Godthåb, "good hope." Its first years were difficult, and smallpox in 1733–1734 killed many Inuit as well as Egede's wife. Missionaries and traders nevertheless made the harbor a center of Danish activity in southwestern Greenland.