Tasiilaq, formerly Ammassalik and Angmagssalik, is a town in the Sermersooq municipality in southeastern Greenland. With 2,017 inhabitants as of 2013, it is the most populous community on the eastern coast, and the seventh-largest town in Greenland. The Sermilik Station, dedicated to the research of the nearby Mittivakkat Glacier, is located near the town.HistoryPrehistory to the fifteenth centuryThe people of Saqqaq culture were the first to reach eastern Greenland, arriving from the north, through what is now known as Peary Land and Independence Fjord, to be surpassed by the Dorset culture. Thule migrations passed through the area in the fifteenth century, finding the southeastern coast uninhabited.Eighteenth and nineteenth centuriesDue to back migrations to the more densely populated western coast, the southeastern coast was deserted for another two hundred years−the region wasn't settled until late eighteenth century, with the village surviving as the only permanent settlement in the nineteenth century. Population increased however from the 1880s, dispersing over several villages in the area.The permanent settlement was founded in 1894 as a Danish trading station. The town was previously known as Ammassalik (old spelling: Angmagssalik). The official name change took place in 1997.GeographyTasiilaq is located approximately 106km south of the Arctic Circle, on the southeastern coast of Ammassalik Island, on the shore of a natural harbour in Tasiilaq Fjord, named Kong Oscars Havn by Alfred Gabriel Nathorst in 1883. The fjord is an inlet of the long Ammassalik Fjord emptying into the North Atlantic to the east of the town. The large Sermilik Fjord lies further to the west.