Friday, August 12, 2016

Giving Finland A Mountain

So, here's a fun story, the best 'good news' item I've heard in ages:

Norway is thinking of giving Finland a mountain, to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Finland's becoming independent back during the dark days towards the end of The Great War.

There's precedent for such minor border adjustments, both within countries (for example, Tennessee and Arkansas periodically adjust their mutual border to take into account shifts in the Mississippi) and between them (e.g. between Finland, Russia, and Norway, as noted in the article itself).

The amount of territory involved is miniscule (0.015 sq km), and would have the effect of shifting Finland's tallest point from the side of a mountain to share a mountain with the Norwegians, each having one of its two peaks within their (adjusted) territory. In Finland's case, their peak wd then become the tallest peak in Finland.

There are a few Norwegian nationalist who object to the deal, and it turns out the Sami community* does too (feeling that a wide swatch of northern Scandinavia shd be stateless), but it sounds like this goodwill gesture is likely to come to pass.



Here' the link


--JDR
current viewing: HIS AND HER CIRCUMSTANCE
current reading: INTO OTHER WORLDS by Roger Lancelyn Green (disappointing) and THE WIZARD OF LEMURIA (Lin Carter's first novel; arrived yesterday)



*the people previously known in the past as the Lapps.


1 comment:

David Bratman said...

I don't believe it's true that Tennessee and Arkansas mutually adjust their boundaries. There are plenty of hunks of each state on the other side of the river. Last time I was down that way I visited some of them. I'm sure the landowners prefer it this way: they don't have to tinker with their property taxes.

However, if a boundary river shifts course without jumping its banks, the boundary shifts with it. That's established law, and requires no legal action by either entity. That may be what you're thinking of.