
Old Nuuk may refer to several neighborhoods of
Nuuk
Nuuk (; , formerly ) is the capital and most populous city of Greenland, an autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark. Nuuk is the seat of government and the territory's largest cultural and economic center. It is also the seat of gove ...
, the capital of
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...
.
The Lutheran mission was originally based on Hope Island at the head of the fjord but was moved to the mainland and christened Godthaab by the royal governor
Claus Paarss in 1728.
Dotted with prefabricated, single-family houses, the neighborhood is also host to two of the oldest cemeteries and the
Kalaaliaraq Market.
Today, it is part of the
Nuuk Centrum
Nuuk Centrum is a district of Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. Together with the Old Nuuk neighborhood, it encompasses the southern and central part of the town. Most of the institutions and businesses are based in the district.
Transport
Nuup ...
district, located in the southwestern part of the town, facing the
Nuup Kangerlua fjord. Several historical buildings are located in Old Nuuk:
* Church of our Savior, the Lutheran
Nuuk Cathedral (''Annaassisitta Oqaluffia'')
*
Statue of Hans Egede
The
Queen Ingrid's Hospital separates Nuuk Centrum and the other old part of Nuuk, the Noorliit area.
Noorliit was formerly the site of the
Moravian mission of New Herrnhut (; ). The missionaries
Matthaeus Stach,
Christian Stach, and
Christian David
Christian David (; 17 February 1692 – 3 February 1751) was a German-Czech missionary, writer and hymnwriter. He travelled as a missionary of the Moravian Church to Greenland and to Native Americans. He is known as the author of hymn stanzas th ...
arrived in 1733 and had won enough converts to formally established the settlement in 1747. It was named for the community established by the
Count of Zinzendorf at
Berthelsdorf in
Saxony
Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and ...
which became the center of the
Moravian Church
The Moravian Church, or the Moravian Brethren ( or ), formally the (Latin: "Unity of the Brethren"), is one of the oldest Protestant denominations in Christianity, dating back to the Bohemian Reformation of the 15th century and the original ...
. The
Moravian Brethren Mission House was raised the same year and was the first church to be constructed in Greenland (at that point, the Lutheran mission at Godthaab used a chapel within the main house).
The two missions operated differently and functioned as two separate settlements until the Moravian mission left Greenland in 1900.
[Wittman, P.]
Greenland
. ''The Catholic Encyclopedia''. Robert Appleton Co. (New York), 1909. Accessed 28 Apr 2012.
References
Districts and neighborhoods of Nuuk
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