It is not uncommon for islands to be split between countries.
The Republic of Ireland shares a border with the UK, Haiti and the Dominican Republic split the island of Hispanola and the island of Borneo is split between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.
However what these islands have in common is that those countries border each other quite closely.
Meanwhile, locked in the frozen Arctic, two countries that you might not expect share a land border.
Hans Island sits in the Kennedy Straight in the high north and is split between the Canadian province of Nunuvat and Greenland, a sprawling autonomous part of Denmark’s realm.
The barren and uninhabited island is shared between the two countries – with their respective capitals of Ottawa and Copenhagen sitting around 3,600 miles apart.
Remote from the capital cities of the countries that claim it, Hans Island is even remote from the nearest human beings. The nearest population is the 60 or so people at Canada’s Alert Station, which sits 123 miles away and is closer to Moscow than Ottawa, and the 68 people in the Greenlandic settlement of Siorapaluk.
The tiny island covers only around half a mile and has no trees or other geographic features of note or any mineral resources worth mining for.
Despite its remoteness, it caused a long-running border dispute between Canada and Denmark (via Greenland’s home government) when both sides claimed control of the entire island.
Over the past few decades, both countries engaged in a fairly good-natured row over the island, with both sides sending teams to plant their flags on the island along with a bottle of their country’s native spirit, leading to the ‘conflict’ being given the nickname of the Whisky War.
The dispute was finally ended in 2022 when the countries agreed to divide the tiny island between them.
