The Norwegian Lutheran minister Hans Egede established the company with $9,000 in capital from the Bergen merchants, $200 from the Danish-Norwegian king Frederick IV, and a $300 annual grant from the Royal Mission College.
Egede's (now ship-borne) explorations found no Norse survivors along the western shore and future work was hampered by the two mistaken beliefs – both prevalent at the time – that the Eastern Settlement would be located on Greenland's east coast (it was later established it had been among the fjords of the island's extreme southwest) and that a strait existed nearby communicating with the western half of the island.
[5] At the end of the year, having found no Norse survivors after months of searching, he turned north to establish a whaling station on Nipisat Island and begin a mission among the Inuit.
The whaling station was quickly burnt by the Dutch, whose better quality and lower-priced goods made the Bergen Company's trading operations impossible.
Subsequent corporate-led administrations of Greenland learned from the Bergen Company's failure and received both trading monopolies over the island and enough naval support to generally maintain them.