TouchéGet the appCanada and Denmark fought over a rock with flags and liquor
Hans Island is half a square mile of bare rock between Canada and Greenland.
In 1973 Canada and Denmark signed a treaty that drew the sea border between Canada's Arctic islands and Greenland. The line ran through 127 points. Between two of them it stopped for about 4,500 feet, because Hans Island was in the way.
The island is a barren knoll of about half a square mile in the middle of the Kennedy Channel. The channel there is 22 miles wide, so the island sits inside the waters of both countries. Both claimed it. The treaty left the question for later.
In 1984 Tom Høyem, Denmark's minister for Greenland, flew to the island by helicopter. He raised a Danish flag, left a bottle of schnapps, and left a note that read "Welcome to the Danish island." Canadians left a Canadian flag of their own and a bottle of Canadian Club whisky.
Over the next twenty years the visits continued. When a Danish navy ship arrived in 2002, the crew found the Danish flag from 1988 gone and the one from 1995 in pieces, and put up a new one. A Danish official, Peter Taksøe-Jensen, described the routine: Danish military visitors left schnapps, and Canadians left Canadian Club and a sign welcoming people to Canada.
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In July 2005 Canada's defense minister, Bill Graham, stepped onto the island, and Denmark sent a letter of protest. The quarrel moved online too. A Canadian author saw a Google ad saying the island was Danish and paid for one saying it was Canadian. Canada's foreign ministry said that, as a goodwill gesture, its cafeteria would keep selling Danish pastries.
That August a Danish patrol ship was on its way to the island. Denmark's foreign minister, Per Stig Møller, said the crew would not go ashore and swap the flags, because that would be "somewhat childish" between two NATO allies. The two governments agreed to negotiate.
It took 17 more years. On June 14, 2022, the foreign ministers of Canada and Denmark and Greenland's prime minister signed an agreement dividing the island roughly in half, along a natural rift in the rock. The border is about 4,200 feet long. It gave Canada its second land neighbor after the United States, and Denmark its second after Germany.
Danish law on the new border says anyone on the island on official business or as a tourist may walk all of it, and no border control will be set up.