Nuuk Airport An expansion of the runway in that direction would require relocation of the connecting road, which climbs under the runway scarp. An often-discussed extension of the runway in the other direction would have brought the endpoint close to Qinngorput, the newest district of Nuuk, rapidly expanding in the late 2000s. There are plans of extending the runway to . There are also suggestions to extend it to or (the longest possible) which would allow direct flights to Denmark, but only with small jet planes, needing several daily flights. The extension issue is a long-standing topic of ongoing controversy in Greenland.
Nuuk occupied by the Dorset culture around the former settlement of Kangeq but they disappeared from the Nuuk district before AD 1000. The Nuuk area was later inhabited by Viking explorers in the 10th century (Western Settlement), and shortly thereafter by Inuit peoples. Inuit and Norsemen both lived with little interaction in this area from about 1000 until the disappearance of the Norse settlement for uncertain reasons during the 15th century. The city proper was founded as the fort of Godt-Haab in 1728 by the royal governor Claus Paarss, when he relocated the missionary and merchant Hans Egede's earlier Hope Colony