Denmark is a European country located north of Germany, while Canada occupies the northern portion of North America, bordering the United States to the south and the U.S. state of Alaska to the west. However, this two countries, that are seemigly so far from each other, share a short land border in the Arctic region, on the small, uninhabited, and remote Hans Island (called Hans Ø in Danish, and Tartupaluk in Inuktitut and Greenlandic). The story of why this border exists is a peculiar tale of an almost 50-year-long border dispute that was prosecuted with alcoholic beverages and was finally resolved peacefully in 2022: the Whisky War.
Hans Island
The Danish Realm includes the main European part of Denmark, as well as the Faroe Islands, an archipelago located north of Great Britain, and the huge landmass of Greenland, which lies to the east of Canada, and is considered part of the North American continent. Hans Island is located in the middle of the Kennedy Channel, which is part of the Nares Strait, a waterway that separates Greenland from the Canadian island of Ellesmere.
This small and barren rocky island only has an area of 1.3 km2 and is uninhabited. Hans Island is named after Hans Hendrik, an Inuk traveler and explorer whose native Greenlandic name was Suersaq, and who worked on British and American expeditions in the Arctic during the second half of the 19th century. The island was discovered by Western explorers around that time, but it was already known by the local Inuit population, although it was likely never permanently inhabited.
View of Hans Island, the landmass in the background is the Canadian island of Ellesmere (Toubletap, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0).
Meanwhile, Greenland was for centuries a domain of Denmark-Norway, but when the union of the two countries was dissolved in 1814, the island came under Danish rule. During the 1930s, Norway disputed the status of Greenland and occupied an area along the eastern coast of the island, calling it Erik the Red’s Land, a reference to the Norse explorer that founded the first European settlements in Greenland in the 10th century. The matter was solved in 1933 by the Permanent Court of International Justice, which ruled that Greenland was a part of Denmark.
Based on geological evidence, Denmark claimed Hans Island to be part of Greenland, and thus the Danish Realm. However, when Denmark and Canada decided to settle their maritime border, both countries claimed the small island. In 1973, the two countries signed a border treaty that divided the Kennedy Channel in half, but as Hans Island is located exactly in the middle of the strait, they intentionally left out a tiny section around the islet, leaving the issue unresolved.
The maritime border established after the 1973 treaty between Canada and Denmark in the Kennedy Channel. The area between point 122 and point 123, which includes Hans Island, was intentionally left without a defined border (Twthmoses, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5).
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The Whisky War
Despite the issue, Canada and Denmark remained in friendly relations, and kept discussing the status of the island, although the dispute was deemed to be of low-priority, due to the relative low importance of the tiny islet. The dispute took an unexpected turn in 1984, when a group of Canadian soldiers planted a Canadian flag on the island, also leaving a bottle of whisky. To answer this provocation, the Danish Minister of Greenland Affairs came to the island to put a Danish flag and a bottle of schnapps here, along with a letter saying “Welcome to the Danish Island” (Velkommen til den danske ø). Over the following decades, Canadian and Danish expeditions took turns to visit the island, plant their national flags, and leave some alcoholic beverage. This peaceful exchange came to be known as the “Whisky War” or the “Liquor Wars”, and was sometimes brought to the attention of the media thanks to its humorous nature, being described as the “most passive-aggressive” and “friendliest” conflict in history.
The dispute remained mostly light-hearted, but there were some moments of tension in 2005, when the Canadian Defence Minister set foot on Hans Island and the Danish government officially protested, calling this visit an illegal occupation of their territory. The two countries ultimately agreed to solve the issue peacefully, and to submit the matter to the International Court of Justice if negotiations failed. The dispute once again became harmless, and Danes and Canadians “fought” using Google ads promoting their respective claims on the island.
A new border between Denmark and Canada
Negotiations went on for many years, and the issue was finally solved in June 2022, when Denmark and Canada unveiled a plan to split Hans Island almost in half. The agreement was signed after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as the two goverments decided to show an example of how territorial disputes could be settled peacefully.
With this agreement, the new border has been set to run across Hans Island roughly north to south following a rift, giving around 60% of the island to Denmark and 40% to Canada. With a length of just 1.28 km, this became the third shortest land border between two countries in the world, only longer than the borders between Botswana and Zambia (155 m, this border is actually on a river, but since it is not open sea, it is considered to be a land border), and the United Kingdom (through Gibraltar) and Spain (1.22 km). Also, both Denmark and Canada previously only bordered one country, Germany and the United States respectively, so they gained a second neighbor. The border on Hans Island is also the northernmost land border in the world, being located at a latitude of about 80°49′ N.
Location of Hans Island between Greenland and Ellesmere Island (left) (Redgeographics, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0), and the new border that divides the island in two, as it appears on OpenStreetMap (right) (OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL).
