Norway is considering giving a mountain peak to Finland as 100th birthday present. Norway’s government has confirmed that for the centenary of Finland’s independence next year it is considering moving the border, gifting its Nordic neighbour a mountain peak that would be Finland’s highest point. “There are a few formal difficulties and I have not yet made my final decision,” the Norwegian prime minister, Erna Solberg, told NRK, the national broadcaster. “But we are looking into it.”
I wonder if the Finns will look away coyly and say, "Oh my, you shouldn't have.."
At 1,324 metres above sea level, the highest point in Finland currently lies on a bleak mountain spur known as Hálditšohkka, part of a far larger fell known as Halti, more than 200 miles inside the Arctic Circle.
Halti’s summit, at 1,365 metres high, is a kilometre away in Norway. But moving the border barely 40 metres further up the mountainside would put Hálditšohkka’s 1,331-metre summit in Finland – and make the country’s highest point seven metres higher.
The peak of Halti, just inside Norway. Looks very Nordic, I hope that's not the summertime when the picture was taken.
Public reaction has been overwhelmingly positive in both Norway and Finland, with the only objection so far coming from the indigenous Sami community, whose reindeer roam freely across the border and who argue that the land should belong to neither country.
I think that gifting the peak to Finland is a good gesture.
ReplyDeleteThose reindeer herders are just upset that Santa has gone to a jet with all sorts of digital controls and he only has Rudolph in the passenger compartment as a token reindeer. They're trying to buck progress and it won't work.
https://youtu.be/AqYwdSf2vlo
ReplyDelete"FINLANDIA"
Composed By: JEAN SEBELIUS
VERSE # 01:
On great lone hills,
Where tempests brood and gather,
Primeval earth
Against primeval sky,
We faring forth,
Possessed by fervent longing,
Have found a throne,
Eternal and high;
Have knelt at last
In silent adoration
As fire and whirlwind
Have all gone by.
VERSE # 02:
With ardent song,
We greet the golden morning,
By faith upborne,
Remember not the night.
The whole world 'round,
Triumphant,
Hails the glory.
God walks abroad
In garments of might.
The hills, behold,
Are now a path of splendor,
Transfigured all,
And all crowned with light!