Nuuk mainland, and was named Godthåb ("Good Hope"). The city officially adopted its current name in 1979, although the name "Godthåb" remained in use in Danish. "Nuuk" is the Kalaallisut word for "cape" (). It is so named because of its position at the end of the Nuup Kangerlua fjord on the eastern shore of the Labrador Sea. Its latitude, at 64°10' N, makes it the world's northernmost capital, only a few kilometres farther north than the Icelandic capital Reykjavík. The campus of the University of Greenland, hosting Statistics Greenland, and the main holdings of the Public and National Library of
Nuuk Airport flying boat, with the aircraft using the waterways of the Nuuk Port as a landing site. In 1962 a PBY Catalina crashed near the port, killing 15 people on board. The tragedy was one of the factors leading to the decision to invest in a helicopter fleet. The Sikorsky S-61N machines—still in use in 2010—proved to be a more reliable mode of transport for the city, providing exclusive service for the Nuuk city for more than a decade—from the purchase date in 1965 until the late 1970s. Even in the later era of the fixed-wing, turboprop plane domination, the S-61N