Kangilinnguit
For the former U.S. Naval Operating Facility there, see Bluie West Seven.
History
Kangilinnguit was founded as "Green Valley" by the United States Navy during the Second World War to protect the highly strategic cryolite quarry in the former settlement of Ivittuut. The U.S. Navy turned the base over to the Danish Navy in August 1951. During the early years of the Cold War, the base was used by anti-submarine warfare ships of NATO, which tracked Soviet Navy submarines in the North Atlantic.
Since at least the mid-1990s, the Danish Navy has proposed saving money on the headquarters staff of Island Command Greenland out of isolated Grønnedal by relocating most of the 65 members either to the Greenlandic capital at Nuuk or bringing them back to Aarhus in Jutland. However, the Greenlandic government has successfully lobbied to keep the command intact in order to boost the local economy.
Under the terms of the "2010-2014 Danish Defence Agreement" approved by the Danish parliament on 24 June 2009, the Greenland Command absorbed the (nearly defunct) Faroe Island Command. The combined command was placed in Nuuk under the name of "Arctic Command". As a result, in 2012, Kangilinnguit was closed and residual military functions moved to Nuuk (Godthåb), the capital of Greenland.
Population
References
- ^ "Greenland and the Arctic". By Etain O'Carroll and Mark Elliott. Lonely Planet 2005. ISBN 1-74059-095-3.
- ^ Statistics Greenland Archived 2011-08-12 at the Wayback Machine (in Danish)
- ^ Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation Archived 2007-06-06 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Statistics Greenland Archived 2011-08-12 at the Wayback Machine
External links
- Website of the Greenland Command at Kangilinnguit (in Danish)
- arsukfjorden.gl Archived 2016-04-30 at the Wayback Machine − local web site with maps (in Danish)