> Norway was considering an unlikely birthday present for neighboring Finland: an Arctic mountain peak on Mount Halti, the highest mountain in Finland, whose 4,478-foot summit is in Norway.
> To mark the 100th anniversary of Finland’s declaration of independence from Russia, a group of Norwegians was urging the government to move a point on its border with Finland about 490 feet to the north and 650 feet to the east.
> But that ran afoul of an article of the Norwegian Constitution that states unequivocally that the Kingdom of Norway is “indivisible and inalienable,” and the friendly gesture was called off, at least for now.
The repealed Article 10 simply says that "The King is of age, when he turns 20 years. As soon as he enters the 21st year, he declares himself publicly to be an adult."
I don't quite see why that was repealed, though. Some Norwegian might tell.
As a Finn I sort of appreciate the gesture of proposing moving border to bring the hilltop of Halti to Finland, but I don't really think it is that significant.
The main issue I know about is an old confusion in schoolbooks. The highest point in Finland is 1324 meters above sea level, on the Norwegian border, on the slope of Halti near the top. The top is on Norwegian side and its height is 1328 meters. Someone writing a schoolbook long ago found out that Halti is 1328 meters high and put that as the elevation of highest hill in Finland, without considering that this highest point is actually in Norway.
> The highest point in Finland is 1324 meters above sea level, on the Norwegian border, on the slope of Halti near the top. The top is on Norwegian side and its height is 1328 meters.
I wonder if the Norwegians could make the same gesture by dynamiting their four meters of peak off of their side, thereby moving the peak without moving the territory.
(There's probably something symbolic in using explosives to get around the Constitution.)
I'm not Norwegian, but I think the confusion is because the numbering of the Articles has changed. Your "Article 10" is now Article 8. [1] The repealed Article (originally Article 12, now listed as Article 10) concerned coronations. [2]
> If experience shows that any part of this Constitution of the
Kingdom of Norway ought to be amended, the proposal to this effect
shall be submitted to the first, second or third Storting after a new
parliamentary election and be publicly announced in print. But it shall
be left to the first, second or third Storting after the following
parliamentary election to decide whether or not the proposed
amendment shall be adopted. Such an amendment must never,
however, contradict the principles embodied in this Constitution, but
solely relate to modifications of particular provisions which do not
alter the spirit of the Constitution, and two thirds of the Storting must
agree with such an amendment.
It's not really clear whether making an amendment saying that as an exception it is allowed to give Mount Halti away to Finland would violate the spirit of that article. I'm thinking that it probably wasn't clear to stortinget either and they didn't want to waste the time of the supreme court for something that was essentially a symbolic gesture.
Also I'm actually a bit surprised that there is no way of making essential changes to articles in the constitution, even if a large majority of the population would vote for it.
> The King shall at all times profess the Evangelical-Lutheran religion.
The same in Sweden.
Additionally, the heir apparent must not travel abroad without the monarch's consent.
Maybe because kings feared their sons might return with a foreign army?
But I cannot help but imagine crown princess Victoria going shopping in New York and -- having forgotten to ask father -- being ineligible all of a sudden. :-)
I expect Princess Victoria gets written permission to leave, since otherwise she risks someone else trying to disrupt the succession by accusing her of not getting permission.
As an example, plenty of people in the UK don't much like Prince Charles, but there's nothing we can do other than campaign for the end of the monarchy.
The comment at the bottom of the article reminds me why secession is virtually impossible in most places in the world. Any such attempts falter because they're instantly declared unconstitutional by the parent country.
The global community encourages this kind of status quo because many countries worry their ethnic minority will be next.
The only way sadly still seems to be decades of bloodshed before the host population gets fed up enough to let them go.
I don't only mean developing countries like Sudan either. It took until 1998 for the Belfast agreement to be signed over Northern Ireland for example.
I don't think this is always true. Scotland was given its referendum. Britain voted on secession from the EU. Northern Ireland is talking about unification.
There are certainly places like Spain which have been beating the drum of 'No Catalan Independence', but there are modern states that do recognize some uncodified right to self determination.
Some resistance is natural though, and in some cases good -- tribal divisions can happen on any line. If California seceded, the Jefferson region would want to secede from that, and no doubt there would be even smaller fractures.
In the end, I think every state has its own gravity and own structural strength. Grow too big, and you suffer from your own weight, risk fractures.
But Northern Ireland _is_ an example of freedom through bloodshed. There was decades of violence before the UK conceded to give them genuine choice. Arguably Scotland benefited from this change in the UK's public opinion as a result of Ireland, without having to go through the same process.
> Northern Ireland _is_ an
> example of freedom through
> bloodshed
...
> the UK conceded to give them
> genuine choice
This is non-historic. Northern Ireland resisted unification with Ireland, opting out of home rule, given the choice. 35% of the population were Catholic only, and its not unreasonable to simplify to say that the rest wanted to remain part of the UK. Were one to hold a refendum today about joining Ireland, you might expect a near-enough split vote.
The idea that Great Britain were somehow wedded to the idea of keeping Northern Ireland welded to the rest of it against the will of the people is simply factually incorrect. Until recently there were a lot of armed people on both sides of that question with the majority in NI wanting to stay part of the UK.
Britain's treatment of Ireland was a car crash over the previous few centuries, but the narrative that it was resisting the popular will of the people by keeping it in the UK is simply wrong.
> But Northern Ireland _is_ an example of freedom through bloodshed. There was decades of violence before the UK conceded to give them genuine choice.
I think that's an oversimplification; the intent was there to give Ireland self-governance from the 1880s (initially as a single, unified area). Notably, the Government of Ireland Act 1914, better known as the Third Home Rule Bill (the prior two had failed to pass through Parliament) would've led to a unitary Ireland, though this led to the Home Rule Crisis (though there had been some rioting going back to the 1880s) and was ultimately never implemented due to the outbreak of war.
The real fatal errors in the case of Ireland were the handling of the Easter Rising of 1916 and the coupling of implementation of Home Rule with conscription in Ireland, along with many more errors during the guerrilla war that followed.
Had WW1 not happened when it did, who knows what would have happened in Ireland.
Oh, the UK completely fucked over Ireland, there's little doubt about that, despite legally being in a far better place than the colonies (they actually had representation, most obviously) they practically weren't.
The question is whether bloodshed was inevitable in the path to independence, and I don't think it's reasonable to call the actions of the state bloodshed on that path except when it was in direct suppression of it (and I don't think there was any of that prior to the Easter Rising, unless one considers the rebellion of 1798 when Ireland was still legally a separate country, though had had the same ruler as England since the 12th century, albeit with a separate political structure).
Certainly the blood on the UK's hands led to many of the calls for independence, but if independence had been granted in, e.g., 1886 (i.e., the First Home Rule Bill) would it be freedom through bloodshed, or would it be freedom through wanting to do better yourselves? I'd definitely say the latter.
As an Irish person I couldn't help but burst out laughing at this interpretation of history. There was certainly a desire for self-government in Ireland expressed in the English parliament back then, but it was very much a political football between the Tories (who were dead against it) and the Liberals (who didn't care for the Irish particularly but liked the underlying principle) which enabled Parnell to act as a power-broker for a few years.
I really don't think it's reasonable to say that the 1998 plebiscite was the culmination of a century long effort by the UK to grant Ireland her independence; the late 19th Century just marks the period where it began to be considered a fit subject for parliamentary debate.
Oh, I certainly didn't mean to imply there was a century long effort!
Essentially what I'm contending is whether they ever had a genuine choice prior to 1998, and I'd strongly suggest that the Third Home Rule Bill was that—though, had WW1 not happened, whether it would've avoided most of the bloodshed is inherently unclear, especially given the 1886 Belfast riots and the unwillingness to compromise on what was really all three sides.
As for the political football, there's no denying it was—but that's true of many things in Westminster, both around the turn of the 19th/20th century and today.
To clarify what I meant a bit - Ireland was already part of Europe, and there were Irish scholars, Catholicism was there, they traded with Europe and were familiar with European norms and traditions. The culture that England forced on Ireland was not all that much different to what was already in place.
I imagine, though, that opinion on the two terms depends on what you think of 'colonisation' as.
The positive examples you cite are very recent though, and historically unusual. As another poster commented, Northern Ire;and's status is the culmination of a long and bloody insurgency or fight for freedom, depending on which side you support. You could argue that it took 25 years of guerrilla war there before the idea of holding a plebiscite on the province's future was taken seriously.
The referendum in 1979 was over devolution, not independence. There was a narrow majority in favour, but an additional condition was attached that more than 40% of the electorate must have voted "yes", so the result was discarded.
A subsequent referendum on devolution in 1997 yielded a "yes" majority, hence Scotland now having its own parliament.
Its not just ethnic minorities, either. I've been thinking that a possible solution to the rural/urban cultural divide in the US would be to allow the secession of some metro areas from their parent states, forming new city-states in the process.
Washington DC has such an arrangement, and it's such a headache that part of it was given back to Virginia a century ago, and there's talk of giving much of the rest of it back to Maryland.
Not exactly. The British Empire coerced China into leasing them Hong Kong for 100 years. After the 100 year lease was up China agreed to keep Hong Kong as a semi-independent "special administrative region".
The other special administrative region is Macau, and China has proposed that Taiwan become a special administrative region too.
This is no laughing matter. There are few areas of potential conflict where both sides populations believe their side is 100% right. We are one stupid politician away from a world war fought over the issue of Taiwan.
Like everything in history it is a bit more complex than this. Parts of of Hong Kong were on perpetual leases while the New Territories were on 99 year lease [1]. In the end it all came down to pure politics and China was adimant that Hong Kong was to be returned in full. The UK was in no position to disagree.
Well, it's un-inhabited, so it's a lot easier to swap, as opposed to exclaves who usually have inhabitants who would not be too happy to switch nationality.
Dahala Khagrabari is a piece of India, surrounded by Bangladesh, surreounded by India, surrounded by Bangladesh.
And things stay this way because it is quite awkward to change places where people live to belong to another nation - however impractical these exclaves may be.
Dahala Khagrabari is no longer an exclave. India and Bangaldesh executed a wide-ranging land swap in 2015 to resolve a large number of these tiny exclaves.
Scroll a bit further north, and you will find a single, small German farm just inside the Belgian border. Apparently it's abandoned because the occupant got sick of trying to convince the German authorities that his land actually was in Germany when he needed this or that.
The thorniest question seems, to me, to be how to integrate local government on the city or county scale. Citizenship is fairly straightforward - make the inhabitants citizens of both countries, and let them renounce one and live in the other if they wish. How to ensure that a village has the zoning regulations they want when it was handled by a county in another country seems trickier.
The Netherlands do not allow dual citizenship, so simply allowing all the Belgians/Dutch to chose during an Enclave/Exclave swap wouldn't be possible.
It wouldn't be necessary really, as citizenship is more dependent on your parents. Both of them being EU member states also makes residence somewhat irrelevant too, except maybe with taxes.
Yes, parent should have written "country they live in" rather than nationality. But the basic point holds of course.
Lots of people would be unhappy to suddenly live in a country where they're not a citizen and subject different laws, taxes, and health care. In fact, it's not hard to see why it would be pretty much a non-starter politically.
pretty sure that the residents of baarle hertog quite like the status quo. If one country does something they don't like (e.g. tax policy), they can redesignate their "front door" as being in the other state, and thus be under the other state's jurisdiction.
It's interesting that so close to the heart of European Union, the police and judicial authorities needs special permits to enter through the area of neighbouring country, even if they won't do any official business there, they just pass through. Anybody else can move about freely, no questions asked.
Between Finland and Sweden, the police forces on both sides of the border have an agreement so that they can move about, even in official business. A pursuit of a criminal can be extended across border, and e.g. ambulances are shared. The crew is bilingual or works in Finnish (the population in the border area is traditionally mostly Finnish-speaking even in the Swedish side).
The countries each have a nation-wide public safety digital radio network (TETRA) and while the networks are strictly distinct, the police cars or ambulances in each country may have a radio unit from the neighbour so that they can connect to the neighbour network when they need to, or their radios can be roamed to the neighbour network through ISI interface.
"A pursuit of a criminal can be extended across border, and e.g. ambulances are shared"
The examples you mention all involve cases where one cannot reasonably wait for permission to pass. Those are handled similar between Belgium and the Netherlands and, I guess/think (there may be exceptions for cases like Switzerland and Norway, who are in the Schengen area but not in the EU), everywhere in the Schengen area.
This case was different, though; the victim was clearly dead, so there wasn't much of an urgency. If there is no urgent need, would Sweden allow armed Finnish police officers to enter the country or vice versa? What if it were a few heavily armed SWAT teams in armed personnel carriers?
The police in the border region in both countries is currently being trained for patrolling in the other country (there are some differences in legislation and operational procedures). So not just pass-through but actual law enforcement work.
After WW II, when Finnish Lapland's roads were largely destroyed by retreating Germans, Finns used the roads on the Swedish side of the river to get up north. Today it is perhaps the other way round; the Finnish side has more population and the roads up river are bigger so it might be feasible for the Swedish to use Finnish roads even if the destination is again across river on Swedish side.
SWAT teams no, not without urgent need and/or official request, and people would rise eyebrows also for SWAT teams driving around in their own country for no reason.
I got an apartment a few kilometers away. It's on the outskirts of Maastricht and to properly enter Belgium, you need to cross the Maas first (or Meuse I think the article called it?). Everyone there speaks Dutch, works in Maastricht, shops in Maastricht... It's the same city but officially you're in a different country. And so I'll be missing out on 291 euros a month in rent subsidies... But it was the only thing available and reasonably priced so better than nothing. I just wish they'd swap more land where it makes sense :/
If the area you're talking about were to be Dutch, most likely it wouldn't be (rental) apartments in the first place; and if it were, rents would be much higher (probably even more than the e291). Which is why there are so many Dutch people living there at all. Also still, many people there would be quite offended if you told them they're more Dutch than Belgian. And a bit further up north there are whole villages on the east side of the river; Smeermaas for example.
As to why that part is Belgian: at the end of the "Belgian Revolution" (or "Belgian Uprising", depending on who you ask) the border was drawn at the location that each party occupied at the time. Since there was an Orange-minded general stationed in Maastricht during that period, he had kept the Belgian 'army' at bay quite easily with the cannons on the walls. So the border is at the distance that a cannon could shoot at the time. If you go up the ruins of the city walls in Maastricht (next to the statue of d'Artagnan, the fourth musketeer, who died there during another siege of Maastricht), there is still a cannon like that standing there.
Also, 'Meuse' is the name of the river in English; which of course is like that because the French name is 'la Meuse'.
How do countries usually handle rivers moving around? It looks like in the US for state borders they go with where the rivers used to be. Makes for some messy borders
At least between Finland and Sweden, in the Tornio/Torneå river, there are small adjustments to the border done on a regular basis, every 25 years. The previous border adjustment was in 2006 and the one before that in 1981.
The river changes a little bit as it erodes its banks, and the border is officially moved accordingly. This naturally results in minuscule changes in the land area of both countries, though in this case the changes cancel each other out in the long run. It's a friendly border.
not exactly river moving around, just a border demarcation style change after several decades, small island, 2 big states possessing thermonuclear weapons :
in the US whether the state border changes depends on the specific agreement between the states, which may in some cases go back to the colonial era (for virginia vs. maryland, along the potomac, it's the low tide mark on the virgina side except for tributaries - so if VA builds out into the river it doesn't become part of maryland). It gets quite difficult to amend these because both states have to agree, plus congress, for any revision of borders. It's usually just not worth it.
One well known dispute was between new jersey and new york, over ellis and liberty islands; the supreme court had to intevene on that one and I think currently both states have jurisdiction.
In the 19th century, New York was given jurisdiction over the original land and New Jersey had jurisdiction over the surrounding waters. As the island was expanded through land fill, the newly created land was treated as part of New York until the Supreme Court ruled that the original agreement between the states gave the filled in land to New Jersey which is most of the island today.
I don't understand. Given Schengen and free movement, why couldn't the legal team from Belgium just 'freely move' through the Netherlands to get to their area of jurisdiction?
> Given Schengen and free movement, why couldn't the legal team from Belgium just 'freely move' through the Netherlands to get to their area of jurisdiction?
I suspect this is because it involved official government business and police activity. For example, I don't know if Belgian police carry weapons. But if they do, I assume they don't have jurisdiction to carry in the Netherlands (and vice versa).
Folks downvoting @vacri's question: why? It's a legitimate question.
There are exceptions for emergencies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area#Police_and_judic...: "The Schengen Agreement also permits police officers from one participating state to follow suspects across borders both in hot pursuit and to continue observation operations"), but that's correct.
(And aside: for the Belgian-Dutch border, that has been the case for decades; border controls in the Benelux (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benelux) were abolished in 1970)
Illinois and Missouri need to do this after years of floods and the New Madrid earthquake have left enclaves on the wrong side of the river in several places.
Reminds me of this interesting case of a piece of land between Egypt and Sudan that neither side wants, because having ownership would mean conceding ownership of a second larger piece of land to the other country:
> because having ownership would mean conceding ownership of a second larger piece of land to the other country
I don't think claiming Bir Tawil would inherently concede anything, it's just that both sides prefer to base their claims on historical boundaries to make them seem more justified.
In case some folks here on HN don't already know it, I like to tell the story of this "country".
Basically, it starts in the Middle Ages when there are 2 small states under Ottoman (Turkish) influence: Wallachia and Moldavia. As it happens for all small states, they get bullied around by their bigger neighbors, primarily the Ottomans, Russia and Austria. For our story only the Ottomans and Russia are important.
So the Ottomans and Russia keep fighting over the region and they keep trading territories here, completely disregarding the history of the region or the ethnic groups present there. Imperialism at its finest.
Wallachia is left more or less unscathed, but around 1812 Moldova is basically split in two, Russia taking the less developed Eastern part, called Bessarabia.
After all this abuse, Wallachia and Moldova decide to unite and form modern Romania, around 1860. So Moldova basically disappears as a state.
Fast forward to the end of WW1, Romania is getting bigger by incorporating all the lands around it that are majority Romanian, so Bessarabia becomes a part of Romania.
Meanwhile, Russia becomes the USSR. It's not hard to guess that Romania and the USSR are not the best of friends. The Soviets never recognize the Romanian takeover/reclaiming of Bessarabia, but can't really attack Romania (yet). So they form a sort of "Moldovan Soviet Republic" outside of the historical territory of Moldova. Basically "Moldova in exile". I like to compare it to Mexico creating a "New Texas" state after being kicked out of Texas.
Then, before WW2, as part of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Nazi-Soviet pact, the Soviets are allowed to attack Romania. They don't attack, instead they send an ultimatum and Romania is forced to give up Bessarabia, which is incorporated into the Moldovan Soviet Republic.
So now the new Moldova has both Bessarabia and that extra part that was never Moldovan. That part is across the river Dniester, ergo "Trans" (across) "nistr" (Dniester is "Nistru" in Romanian) "-ia" (particle for "land of" in Romania).
The USSR falls, Moldova becomes independent. Transnistria has Russia armies on its territory, so it declares its independence. Russia signs an agreement to pull back its army. 20 years after the agreement, the army is still there...
India and Pakistan should have done the same over the sloppy border line in the north done by the british, crossing natural rivers. A constant source for terrorism.
Does anybody live on that land? I mean, this would be like a country kicking its own citizens out. Suddenly your government your house is not in their country anymore.
> Norway was considering an unlikely birthday present for neighboring Finland: an Arctic mountain peak on Mount Halti, the highest mountain in Finland, whose 4,478-foot summit is in Norway.
> To mark the 100th anniversary of Finland’s declaration of independence from Russia, a group of Norwegians was urging the government to move a point on its border with Finland about 490 feet to the north and 650 feet to the east.
> But that ran afoul of an article of the Norwegian Constitution that states unequivocally that the Kingdom of Norway is “indivisible and inalienable,” and the friendly gesture was called off, at least for now.
The constitution is available online, and has other interesting bits in it, especially as a contrast to the US Constitution: https://www.stortinget.no/globalassets/pdf/english/constitut...
> The King shall at all times profess the Evangelical-Lutheran religion.
There's also a repealed Article 10, but the English-language Wikipedia article doesn't say anything about it.