Divided island Hans – The end of the “whisky war” – News

The global political atmosphere is currently not creating any impetus for peaceful conflict resolution. The great, bloody wars continue. After all, a small but decades-old border dispute between Denmark and Canada has now been settled peacefully. It’s about the island of Hans in the Arctic. After lengthy negotiations, it is now being divided – ending the so-called “whisky war”.

It’s not about an awful lot. Just around a boulder in the polar sea, 1.3 square kilometers small. 1,100 kilometers from the North Pole, between Denmark’s Greenland and the large Canadian island of Ellesmere.

Nobody lives on the island of Hans, and there is no vegetation either. On the other hand, around the islet there are oil and gas deposits. But they are still difficult to tap, at least for the time being: They lie too deep and too many icebergs make extraction difficult.

Nevertheless, the settlement of the dispute over the island of Hans is not trivial. It is symbolically significant. At a small ceremony in Ottawa, Canada’s Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly spoke of the “end of a dispute that had lasted more than fifty years and which a total of 26 foreign ministers had to deal with”. According to her Danish counterpart Jeppe Kofod, “even a bloodless territorial conflict must eventually be ended”.

This is happening now. The island is divided. Denmark and Canada suddenly have a common land border.

The conflict was also fought with alcohol, which is why it is known as the “whisky war”: Danish government officials raised their flag, the Dannebrog, on their short visits and buried a bottle of Gammel Dansk bitters. Their Canadian counterparts raised the maple flag and deposited a bottle of Crown Royal whisky.

At times, both countries even advertised worldwide with Google ads. All this to at least symbolically underpin their territorial claims. That is now over – and so the last border dispute in the northern polar region was settled, says Katarina Kertysova, Arctic expert at the European Leadership Network and the Polar Institute. At the same time, this could send out a positive signal when it comes to finding diplomatic solutions in the struggle for economic zones and spheres of influence at sea in the Arctic in the future.

Denmark’s Foreign Minister Kofod also emphasizes the importance of the current agreement. Especially now that the rules-based world order is being shaken elsewhere. “We see authoritarian leaders using military force to push borders,” said Mélanie Joly, Canada’s foreign minister. Canada and Denmark are thus providing proof that there is another way. The bloodiest war in the world is over.

And who was “Hans”?


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Legend:

Suersaq («Hans Hendrik»)

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The Greenlandic hunter and dog handler Suersaq (*1834, †1889) signed «Hans Hendrik» when he worked for foreign expeditions from 1853 to 1883. His adventures are documented in his 1878 translated from the Greenlandic «Memoirs of Hans Hendrik, The Arctic Traveler» detained. Suersaq settled in northern Greenland and found life there with walruses, seals and bears very appealing.

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