Geology and Ore 11, 2008

’Nalunaq’ the Greenlandic name of Greenland’s first gold mine means the place that is hard to find. It is located in Kirkespirdalen (Church steeple valley) near the town of Nanortalik. Since the 1970s a number of significant gold occurrences in several places in Greenland have been found and described. The Nalunaq deposit is the result of thorough geological work that included ten years of exploration prior to commercial mining. In 2004 the mining company Crew Gold Corporation was granted the final licence to exploit the gold deposit at Nalunaq, of which the operations are carried out by the Nalunaq Gold Mine A/S. The Nalunaq mine was inaugurated on 26 August 2004 as the first gold mine in Greenland.