Today's summary of curious events shows another example of how to resolve border conflicts with creative rather than lethal force (as well as how to [almost] reignite a 19th century conflict with a glitch in 21st century technology).
Missing the Mark - Märket Island holds the world record as the smallest sea island shared by two countries (Finland and Sweden). This 150m x 150m rock lies within a sea passage of treacherous shallows (which in 1873 alone caused 23 ships to run aground of which eight were lost beyond recovery). Finally, fed up by the loss of life and cargo, tsar Alexander III (who was ruling what was then known as the Grand Duchy of Finland in the late 19th century) asked a Finnish architect to construct a lighthouse. Being a practical man, the architect chose the island's highest point for this. Unfortunately, this later turned out to be on the Swedish side. It took close to 100 years and a considerable amount of cartographic creativity to resolve this mishap. The border had to be redrawn to satisfy the following three conditions:
The lighthouse moves back into Finnish territory (without actually moving the lighthouse)
There should be no net transfer of land
The ownership of coastline (and thus fishing rights) needed to be left untouched
Of course, they came up with this:
Märket island border
In an sign of even more progress, the Nordic Passport Union and later the Schengen agreement now allows visitors from both countries to walk the island freely (ideally speaking Swedish, which is the combined island's official language).
Missing the Mark II - Though it normally only takes two neighboring countries to quarrel over borders, this particular dispute also involved a Californian tech giant in an (accidentally) supporting role. The 2010 iteration of this 150 year old dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua over navigation rights of the San Juan river saw troops from Nicaragua crossing into a small spec of Costa Rican territory to raise their flag. However, rather than having any aggressive motive, the commanding officer later admitted that this infraction was not in fact his intention. He claimed that he had simply relied on Google Maps which had mistakenly said the territory belonged to Nicaragua. Google later confirmed this mistake and corrected the error (link).
Comments