What do you think of this fact?
Most border disputes involve angry speeches. This one involved a bottle opener.
A rock nobody could agree on
Hans Island is a bare, uninhabited rock of about 1.3 square kilometres. It sits in the middle of the Kennedy Channel of the Nares Strait, between Canada’s Ellesmere Island and northwestern Greenland, which belongs to the Kingdom of Denmark. There are no known valuable minerals on it.
In 1973, the two countries agreed on a sea border right through the strait, halfway between the coasts. Just one problem: Hans Island was in the way, and nobody could agree who owned it. So they postponed the question.
Flags, schnapps and whisky
In 1984, Denmark’s minister for Greenland affairs, Tom Høyem, visited the island, raised a Danish flag and left a bottle of schnapps with a note: “Welcome to the Danish island.” Canadians later answered with their own flag and a bottle of Canadian whisky (some reports say brandy). Over the years, both sides kept swapping flags and bottles. The media called it the “whisky war”.
It did get a bit tense. In 2005, Canada’s defence minister Bill Graham landed on the island unannounced, and Denmark lodged a formal complaint. Both countries also sent warships, but there was never a risk of an actual fight. That same year, the two sides started talking.
A border across the middle
On 14 June 2022, after 49 years without an answer, Canada and Denmark agreed to divide the island. The new line follows a natural ravine and is only about a kilometre long. According to WorldAtlas, Greenland got about 60 percent of the island and Canada about 40 percent. At the signing, the foreign ministers swapped bottles one last time. Denmark’s parliament ratified the deal in December 2023.
Bonus fact: In Greenlandic, the island is called Tartupaluk, which means “kidney-shaped”.
Greenland, the largest island on Earth, got its first ever land border out of the deal, and Canada got a land neighbour other than the United States.