Most of the mountain is on the Finnish side of their northern border but the peak of 4,367 feet is in Norway.
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Norway’s government has said it is considering changing its border in order to give Finland full control of a mountain – called Halti, among other names – which is now shared by both countries.
Late past year, an idea that originally came from a Norwegian named Bjørn Geirr Harsson began to circulate: Norway should give the peak of Halti to Finland.
Moving the border means Norway would only lose around a 0.01 square kilometre area of land, while Finland would gain a new highest peak.
“We want to reach out a hand to our neighbour that we will be able to shake across the summit”, Leiros was quoted as saying by the Guardian. Nor would mountainous Norway actually be losing much, Leiros said: its highest peak is the mighty Galdhøpiggen, at 2,469 metres. He recalled being left puzzled by the border’s location while flying over Halti in the 1970s.
The originator of the idea is a retired geophysicist and government surveyor, Bjørn Geirr Harsson, 76, who learned past year that Finland would celebrate the 100th anniversary of its independence from Russian Federation on 6 December 2017 and recalled being puzzled by the location of the border when he flew over Halti in the 1970s.
A 2008 photo of Halti mountain, on the Finnish and Norwegian borders, in Enontekio, Finland.
The retired geophysicist and government surveyor, Bjørn Geirr Harsson, 76-years-old, was the one who floated the proposal.
“It would barely be noticeable (for Norway)”. It’s in Norway. And in Norway, that peak is pretty puny, not even scratching the top 200 mountains in the country.
While other countries are suffering from mangled relationships with their neighbors over overlapping boundaries and territorial disputes, one European country is giving a slice of its territory as a gift to its neighbor, which will mark its centenary as an independent country next year.
Mr Harsson, 75, said he first had the idea in 1972 when he was flying along the border measuring gravity, but it was only this summer, when he heard that Finland was preparing to celebrate the centenary of its independence, that he made a decision to act. The page has garnered 14,800 likes as of Friday.
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“Who knows?” Harsson told NRK. “It may really happen”.
