Nuussuaq (old spelling: Nûgssuaq), formerly Kraulshavn, is a settlement in Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland. It is the only mainland settlement in the Upernavik Archipelago, located near the western tip of the Nuussuaq Peninsula, on the northern coast of Sugar Loaf Bay, an indentation of Baffin Bay. The settlement was founded in 1923 as a trading station, growing in size during the post-war consolidation phase, when hunters from several small villages in the region of neighboring Inussulik Bay, Sugar Loaf Bay, and Tasiusaq Bay moved into the larger settlements such as Nuussuaq and Kullorsuaq further north in Melville Bay. Today Nuussuaq remains one of the most traditional hunting and fishing villages in Greenland, with a stable population. The settlement had 181 inhabitants in 2020. History Prehistory The Upernavik Archipelago belongs to the earliest-settled areas of Greenland; the first migrants arriving approximately 2,000 years BCE All southbound migrations of the Inuit passed through the area, leaving behind a trail of archeological sites. The early Saqqaq culture diminished in importance around 1.000 BCE, followed by the migrants of Dorset culture, who spread alongside the coast of Baffin Bay, being in turn misplaced by the Thule people in the 13th and 14th centuries. The archipelago has been continuously inhabited since then. 20th century Nuussuaq was founded in 1923 as a trading post, during the modern northbound migration of Greenlanders from Upernavik. The settlement was initially populated by hunters from the now abandoned villages of the region: Kuuk, Itissaalik (abandoned in 1957), and Ikermiut (abandoned in 1954). Not all of the initial wave of settlers from these villages of fewer than 10 people remained in Nuussuaq, but by the end of the 1920s, other families arrived in place of the hunters who moved north to Kullorsuaq in Melville Bay, and the community began to slowly grow. Between 1930 and 1960, northwestern Greenland underwent a consolidation phase, driven by the Danish colonial authorities via Royal Greenland, then part of KNI, with a countrywide monopoly on trade. The mutual agreement between the hunting families and the trade company limited the pre-war northward expansion until the 1950s, when the populations of the smaller settlements reinforced larger communities in Nuussuaq and Kullorsuaq, where the physical limit of uninhabitable Melville Bay presented a natural barrier to expansion. Today Nuussuaq remains one of the most traditional hunting and fishing villages in Greenland. Geography Nuussuaq is located in the northern part