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TORONTO – It is an arid and inhospitable rock falling into a cold channel in the Arctic. A geologist who visited her described it as “a not-so-exciting island”. A Canadian legal analyst once tried to point it out on a map in a presentation he had prepared for lawmakers, but admitted that its size made it “very difficult to see.”
“We don’t have a great image to show you,” he said.
However, for about five decades, Canada and Denmark have fought, mostly, but not always, politely over the not-so-exciting Hans Island, a 0.5-square-mile mass on the Kennedy Channel in the Nares Strait. which does not host either. vegetation or fauna. The steep outcrop — Tartupaluk in Inuit — lies between the island of Ellesmere in Canada and Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.
Now, finally, there is a rapprochement in the so-called “flag war” or “whiskey war.”
Officials from both countries, as well as from Greenland, signed an agreement on Tuesday to resolve the long-running quarrel – the last remaining disagreement over a land border in the Arctic – with the Solomonic solution of splitting the island in two. Denmark gets about 60 percent of the island; Canada takes the rest.
“I think she was the friendliest of all the wars,” Mélanie Joly, Canada’s foreign minister, told reporters in Ottawa. “I am just happy to see that we are working with friends, partners and allies. “It’s a win-win-win.”
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Both Canada and Denmark cite the “historic” agreement as an example of how border disputes can be resolved peacefully, without wars or bitter legal quarrels, at a time when the rule-based international order is under tension. reference in part to the invasion of Russia. of Ukraine.
“As we are here today, we are seeing serious violations of international standards in another part of the world,” said Jeppe Kofod, Denmark’s foreign minister. “Instead, we have shown how long-standing international disputes can be resolved peacefully and by the rules.”
The dispute dates back to 1973, when Canadian and Danish diplomats were drawing a maritime boundary in the Arctic. The line crosses Hans Island. Diplomats left unresolved the question of what to do about it.
Over the next five decades, Danish troops have visited the rock mass several times, planting their flag and leaving a note and a bottle of liquor to vindicate the country’s claim to the island. Canadians have also made appearances, replacing Danish liquor with Canadian whiskey, erecting an inukshuk – a stone marker – and lifting the maple leaf.
On at least one occasion, the Canadians took out a Danish flag and mailed it to Copenhagen.
(There has been no opinion from officials in both countries on the fate of the various bottles of alcohol).
In the early 2000s, the Danes twice sent frigates with soldiers to the island, in what Robert Huebert, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, called an example of gun diplomacy.
“In any other understanding, this has led to war,” he said.
Lawmakers in Canada have occasionally pointed to the Hans Island dispute as an example of the government’s recent move to defend its interests in the Arctic.
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“Danish soldiers land in Canadian Arctic territory, hoist their flag, claim the island as their own, and Canada does nothing,” a Conservative lawmaker accused in 2004. “How much Canadian territory must be claimed by a foreign power?” before [then-Prime Minister Paul Martin] will he speak and defend Canada? “
A new climb came in 2005, when Bill Graham, then The Minister of Defense of Canada, launched himself on Hans Island to walk himself through the cold. This prompted an official note of protest from Danish officials.
“We would like to maintain what was the modus vivendi,” Poul Erik Dam Kristensen, then the Danish ambassador to Canada, told the Globe and Mail. another “.
The Canadians firmly maintained that they should not do such a thing, because it was their island.
In 2009, Danish Rear Admiral Nils Wang told a Canadian parliamentary defense committee that the last thing he had heard about it was “we agree not to agree”.
“At least from the perspective of the navy in Denmark, our foreign ministry has told us not to go any further and put flags on the island,” said Wang, who is now retired.
Alan Kessel, legal adviser to the Canadian Foreign Ministry, assured another parliamentary committee in 2012 that the country “would not go to war with Denmark”.
“I can promise you,” he said. “She is OK. It’s a stone’s throw away, and we’ll take care of it. “
The Canadian government said the Inuit of Greenland and the Canadian territory of Nunavut were consulted during the negotiations of the agreement and that it will “ensure continued access and freedom of movement throughout the island” for fishing and other cultural activities.
Huebert said there is a “fairly remote” possibility that there are natural resources such as oil and gas on the island, but noted that there has really been no serious effort to look into it. Canada, he added, has several other unresolved Arctic disputes, including with the United States over the Northwest Passage.
After signing the agreement amid applause, Joly and Kofod exchanged alcohol and notes for the last time.
There would be no doubt about what the Canadians intended to do with their bottle.
He was going “directly” to the Canadian History Museum, Joly said.