Bergen Greenland Company

The Bergen Greenland Company (Danish: Det Bergen Grønlandske Compagnie) or Bergen Company (Bergenkompagniet) was a Dano-Norwegian private corporation charged with founding and administering Danish colonies and trade in Greenland, as well as searching for any survivors from the former Norse settlements on the island. It operated from 1721 until its bankruptcy in 1727. Although the Bergen Company failed as a concern and both its settlements were destroyed and abandoned, it was ultimately successful in re-establishing sovereignty over Greenland.

The Norwegian Lutheran minister Hans Egede established the company with $9,000 in capital from the Bergen merchants, $200 from the Danish king Frederick IV, and a $300 annual grant from the Royal Mission College. The merchants hoped to find easily accessible mineral wealth or at least a Norwegian-like environment for agricultural production. Aid from the Mission College was aimed at spreading the Reformation among the long-lost Norsemen, who were presumed to still be Catholic or to have lapsed from Christianity altogether. The company was granted broad powers to govern the peninsula (as it was then considered to be), to raise its own army and navy, to collect taxes, and to administer justice; the king and his council, however, refused to grant it monopoly rights to whaling and trade in Greenland out of a fear of antagonizing the Dutch.

Departing Bergen on 2 May 1721, Egede led the Haabet and two other boats to Baal's River (the modern Nuup Kangerlua) and, on July 3, established Hope Colony (Haabets Colonie) on the Island of Hope (Haabet Oe, modern Kangeq) with his family and a few dozen colonists. His settlers were devastated by scurvy and most of the colonists returned home as quickly as they could; only Egede, his family, and a few others remained to welcome two supply ships in 1722.

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