Qaasuitsup
former municipality of Greenland
Qaasuitsup (Greenlandic pronunciation: [qaːsuitt͡sup̚], Place of Polar Darkness) was a municipality in Greenland, operational from 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2017. As of January 2015, its population was 17,168. The administrative centre of the municipality was in Ilulissat (Jacobshavn).
Creation
The municipality consisted of the former municipalities of western and northern Greenland, each named after the biggest settlement:
Aasiaat Municipality (currently in Qeqertalik)
Kangaatsiaq Municipality (currently in Qeqertalik)
Ilulissat Municipality (currently in Avannaata)
Qaanaaq Municipality (currently in Avannaata)
Qasigiannguit Municipality (currently in Qeqertalik)
Qeqertarsuaq Municipality (currently in Qeqertalik)
Uummannaq Municipality (currently in Avannaata)
Upernavik Municipality (currently in Avannaata)
Dissolution
Effective 1 January 2018, Qaasuitsup Kommunia was partitioned into two new municipalities:
Avannaata Kommunia: comprising Ilulissat, Uummannaq, Upernavik, Qaanaaq and surrounding settlements; and
Kommune Qeqertalik: comprising Aasiaat, Qasigiannguit, Qeqertarsuaq, Kangaatsiaq and surrounding settlements.
Geography
The municipality was located in northwestern Greenland. With an area of 660,000 km2 (254,827.4 mi2), it was the largest municipality in the world by area, larger than France at 643,427 km2 (248,428.6 mi2).
In the south, it was flanked by the Qeqqata municipality. In the southeast, it was bordered by the Sermersooq municipality, however this border ran north–south (45° West meridian) through the center of the Greenland ice sheet (Greenlandic: Sermersuaq), and as such was free of traffic. In the east and northeast it was bordered by the Northeast Greenland National Park.
At the southern end of the municipal coastline were the waters of Disko Bay, an inlet of the larger Baffin Bay, which to the north edges into the island of Greenland in the form of Melville Bay.
“Qaasuitsup” enters the record as former municipality of Greenland. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Qaasuitsup, former and municipality can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q641460. VIAF identifies the subject as 5652152080602207230005. Authority coordinates are 76.000, -57.000. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009, 2017, 2015 and 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “Qaasuitsup” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.