What do you give a country for its 100th birthday?

[Arianna 746]

Norway launches campaign to give Finland a mountain

 

A group of Norwegians has launched a campaign to shift their country's border by 200 metres to bring the peak of the Halti mountain into Finnish territory as a gift to their mountain-deprived neighbour for the 100th anniversary of its independence.

 

Moving the border between Norway and Finland just 490ft (150m) to the north and 650ft (200m) to the east would bring Finland a new highest peak while losing Norway just 0.015 square kilometres. At 4,479ft (1,365m), Halti does not even make the list of Norway’s highest 200 peaks. But one of its lower spurs, Hálditšohkka, marks the highest point in Finland, at 4340ft (1,324m).

 

“My idea is that this should be a gift from the Norwegian people and I feel sure that the Finnish people would appreciate it,” said Bjørn Geirr Harsson, the retired geodesist behind the Facebook campaign. “It would not change the square kilometre size of Norway or Finland,” Mr Harsson told the Telegraph. “But it would make a big difference that the highest point in Finland would be on a mountain peak and not on a hillside.”

 

Judging by the comments on the Facebook page, the gesture would be warmly received.

 

“The Norwegians would make history and become heroes not just in Finland but in the whole world!” wrote user, Jyrki Veranen.

Mr Harsson, 75, said he first had the idea in 1972 when he was flying along the border measuring gravity, but it was only this summer, when he heard that Finland was preparing to celebrate the 100th year of its independence in 2017, that he decided to act.

 

The proposal has already won the support, if no commitment from Anne Cathrine Frøstrup, the head of the Norwegian Mapping Authority. “It is a very good idea,” she told Norway’s state broadcaster NRK after receiving an email from Mr Harsson last week. "It is a nice gift to give to a country that lacks a high mountain, where the highest point isn’t even a peak.”

 

Markku Markkula, from the Land Survey of Finland told Finland’s Hufvudstadsbladet newspaper that there would be few legal obstacles. “It would be a question of an agreement between the two countries,” he said.

 

Mr Harsson sent a letter to the Norwegian foreign ministry this summer, to which he has yet to receive a reply. He also sent a letter to the Norwegian municipality where the mountain is located. But it was only last week with the launch of the Facebook page that the campaign took off.

 

“It’s just blown up on the internet,” he said. “In general I would say that the Finnish people have a high regard in Norway and I would expect most Norwegians to support this.”

 

He suspects it was his son, who works in the technology industry in California, who set up the Facebook page.

 

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/12055542/Norway-launches-campaign-to-give-Finland-a-mountain.html

 

Awwwww, Norwegians

 

 

On a side note, "measuring gravity" sounds like the coolest job in the world

[Twist of Fate 288]

I think this is more elegant than Putin giving a world leader a gun as a gift