Whisky War

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In the far north, in the Kennedy Channel, which is the border between Greenland and Canada,

lies tiny little Hans Island.

The island was claimed by the two neighbors, but it was so inconsequential, no one is

really bothered with specifics of who owned what.

That was until 1984 when Canadian soldiers landed on the island, raised their flag, and

to cement their claim, left a bottle of whiskey.

This is the story of the Whiskey War.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome to History Dispatches.

I am McKinley, join my illustrious father, Matthew.

Here on History Dispatches, we like to talk about the brutal, the bloody, the nasty, but

also the absolutely hilarious, spits of history that makes it fun to be alive.

So Dad, I have never heard of this one, so this is your tale.

When I saw this pop-up, I thought you were going to talk about the Whiskey Rebellion, which

occurred in the early United States, which we should cover someday, but no, this is completely

different.

I'm very excited, like I said, no nothing about it, so take it away.

Yeah, actually if you type in Whiskey War, the Whiskey Rebellion comes up really high

because people think that's what you're looking for.

But yeah, this is about the Whiskey War, and I'm going to say right up front, it's not

a bad war.

It's actually kind of a good, natured, fun story, but it is called the Whiskey War, and

it involves a place called Hans Eiland, and that is way, way up north.

Now the Arctic Circle, which if you say something's in the Arctic Circle, it's cold, right?

Well the Arctic Circle lies roughly in a latitude of 66 degrees and five minutes north.

Hans Eiland is at 80 degrees north.

By the way, if you go to 90 degrees, you reach the north pole.

Huh, so way up there.

Yeah, we're more than halfway between the Arctic Circle's edge to the north pole.

The north pole, by the way, is 680 miles to the north of Hans Eiland, or 1100 kilometers.

As a note, the furthest northern permanent settlement in the world is not as far as Hans

Eiland.

So there's no one that lives up here.

Hans Eiland is a big rock, and when I say big, it's not even that big.

It is basically a half square mile.

So we have this rock sitting in this channel between Greenland and Canada.

By the way, its name in Greenlandic is Tartu Palouc.

I think I said that right.

The native Greenlanders will call it something different, but most of the world knows it

as Hans Eiland.

Hans Eiland, as I noted, is uninhabited, though it has been used as a hunting ground by

the Inuit for maybe even half a millennia.

So uninhabited but not unexplored, correct.

Historically, no one is really cared about the place.

It's way, way up north in an area that no one lives are the anyone travels to.

And so it was kind of like, you know, whatever.

But Canada says, you know, that's our island.

And Greenland said, no, that's ours.

And the Greenland kind of has a little bit of a claim because the Inuit people from

Greenland have used it, like I said, as a hunting ground.

So the definition of the border between Canada and Greenland is essentially if you take

the channel there, the Kennedy channel and you go right down the middle, that's kind

of the border.

So who gets the island?

Well, it literally runs right in the middle.

It goes down the middle of the border.

If you measure from the Canadian coast or measure from Greenland coast, it's pretty much

the same thing.

So who's is it?

But again, no one really cared.

They just kind of went, whatever.

There are no minerals there.

There's no port.

There's no people.

It's a big rock.

If you were an Inuit fishing over there and you go across the side, there's not border

control to stop.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So no one really cared.

In time, there has been some interest in this little rock and the area around there

for its strategic importance because of this Canada and Denmark signed an agreement in

December of 1973, dealing with some of these issues of geography and so forth between

the two entities.

You know what?

Because Hans Island went right down the middle, they just kind of said, no, we'll deal

with that later.

So they have this agreement, but then they avoided who controls Hans Island.

But then things over the years popped up.

One was who manages the marine environment around there?

Who deals with environmental issues or incidents?

What if someone finds petroleum up there?

Who has control of that?

So there's a warming environment and so Hans Island is a little bit more accessible

than it ever was because there's less ice around it.

It does end up having a bit of a strategic military importance to the various countries.

Even if it wasn't right now, it could in a decade or two.

Yeah.

And so while nothing would happen in the decade after that treaty in 1984, there was something

that would trigger an international incident.

And that is when Canadian soldiers landed on Hans Island and they raised the Canadian

flag and took possession of it.

And that is the start of the whiskey war.

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So in 1984, Canadian soldiers came to Hans Island and let's just say right now, they weren't

like, we're taking this island.

They were just, hey, we're here.

Let's put our flag up here and let's say it's ours.

And to cement possession of the island, they put a bottle of Canadian whiskey there.

They took pictures and so forth and people found out that all the Canadians are on disputed

Hans Island.

The press loved it.

They thought it was a fun story because later that year, the Danish reciprocated, they

showed up and the Danish minister of Greenland affairs actually himself went there.

Oh, the long track left a bottle of schnapps and a letter saying welcome to the Danish island.

Well, that's fantastic.

And so the whiskey war is basically on again, it was fun.

No one was thinking, oh, you're taking my rock, you know, no, that's my rock.

It was all just, yeah, this is cool.

This is fun.

I read instead of a tit for tat, it was a taught for taught dispute.

So over the years and even decades now, the two countries Denmark and Canada have taken

turns planning their flag on this big rock and exchanging beverages.

So they'll just go there.

They'll plan a flag, leave a bottle and then take off.

There have been a few odd things over the years.

Sometimes those flags have mysteriously disappeared, could be natural things, wind and the weather

or something.

But I think the other side probably went, let's take down that Danish flag or that other

flag a couple times they found the flags missing or ripped up that sort of thing.

One of the weirder things was in 2005, a Canadian man, as well as someone in Denmark,

posted ads in Google to promote their claims to the island.

Out of the blue weird people are like, we have nothing to do with this, you know, governments.

And so this minor border dispute went on.

The press would pick it up every now and then and just have fun with it.

The whiskey war still on.

Yeah, it's just considered a humorous little thing going on between two nations, good

naturedly and everyone kind of smiles because no one is taking it too serious.

Now we will have a settlement to the whiskey war and that is that in June of 2002, the Canadian

and Danish governments put a border down the middle of the island.

Each side gets half.

The resolution was kind of spurred in a lot of ways because of the Russian invasion

of Ukraine.

And this was kind of meant to be a symbol that people can settle their disputes.

The two foreign ministers of the two countries would exchange bottles of whiskey.

So you know, again, that's awesome.

A lot better to just have a drink than get into a fight.

By the way, the settlement did give the indigenous peoples access and rights to hunt and

fish and so forth off of Hans Island.

There is one really fun fact that I loved about this settlement though.

The resolution has the side effect of giving Canada in Denmark a land border with each

other, meaning that both countries no longer border just one country.

Because Canada borders only the United States until this and Denmark only bordered Germany.

So now they have two countries that they border.

No, we were border buddies with Canada.

Someone said, does that mean Canada can be a Eurovision or join the EU?

Yeah, there we go.

So you never know what will happen because of it.

But anyways, it's a silly story, a fun story, but that's the story of the whiskey war.

That is fantastic.

One, that's always nice when no one gets hurt.

And it's always fun when you see good nature, nests over what could be something serious.

Mm-hmm.

Just brings a smile to your face.

Like I said, Dad, I had never heard of this one and even in 2022, I didn't hear about

it.

I don't think a lot of people did hear about it because the place is so inconsequential.

What are you talking about?

Canada and Denmark not share a border.

It's hugely consequential.

The alpha set up military force to prevent attacks.

Well, Dad, thank you very much for telling us this amazing story.

You're welcome.

I'll leave you all with our tidbit of the day.

And the northernmost functional civilian settlement in the world, not counting military or scientific

stations because those get really weird in their places, is Neal Lussand.

I think I said that right.

On the island of Spitzberg in Svalbard, way north of Norway.

It has a population of 180 in the summer and just 30 in the winter.

So a cultural hub, no doubt.

And not even as far north as Hans Island.

Crazy.

All right.

Well, Dad, thanks very much.

You're welcome.

Everyone, thank you so much for listening.

We super appreciate it.

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Thank you so much and have a wonderful day.

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