Canada, Denmark and Greenland sign an agreement to settle a decades-old Arctic sovereignty dispute by drawing a border across the island both sides had symbolically reclaimed.
After decades of flags, claims and bottles, the negotiators chose a ravine.
Tartupaluk is a small, barren Arctic island in the Kennedy Channel between Canada’s Ellesmere Island and Greenland.
For decades, Canada and the Kingdom of Denmark disagreed about whose side of the border it belonged on.
The dispute acquired an unusually cheerful reputation.
Officials and military visitors from the two sides periodically landed on the island, raised their national flag and asserted sovereignty. Accounts of the rivalry also describe bottles of Canadian whisky and Danish spirits being left behind for the next visitors.
The episode became popularly known as the “Whisky War.”
Nobody was actually fighting a war over the island.
But nobody had settled the border either.
That changed on Tuesday, 14 June 2022.
In Ottawa, Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod and Greenlandic Prime Minister Múte B. Egede signed a broader Arctic boundary agreement.
Its answer to the island problem was remarkably practical.
Split it.
The agreed boundary follows the natural ravine running generally north to south across Tartupaluk, placing the western part on the Canadian side and the eastern part on the Greenlandic side of the Kingdom of Denmark.
The agreement did more than address one remote island. It also modernized and extended the maritime boundary through Arctic and North Atlantic waters.
It preserved continued access and freedom of movement across the entire island for Inuit and local people in Nunavut and Kalaallit Nunaat, including for traditional activities.
Signing settled what the parties had agreed the border should be. It did not make every legal formality disappear. The treaty was signed subject to each side completing its internal procedures, and Canada later reported that implementation work remained before it could enter into force.
So after decades of flags, assertions and diplomatic symbolism, Canada and the Kingdom of Denmark agreed to acquire something they had never previously shared:
a land border with one another.
Tartupaluk had spent years being claimed.
In the end, diplomacy decided that the most workable answer was for both sides to have some of it.
Two friendly countries spent decades asserting sovereignty over a tiny uninhabited Arctic island, became famous for leaving each other drinks, and settled the dispute by agreeing to draw an international border through the middle.
The island stopped being a disagreement by becoming an agreed border—pending the treaty’s remaining legal formalities.
Evidence status
Sources
Primary / Government
Global Affairs Canada — Boundary dispute agreement and backgrounder · 14 June 2022
GEUS — Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland: historic Hans Island boundary agreement
Global Affairs Canada — Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy: boundary implementation status
Original language: English / DanishTreaty / Parliamentary record
Danish Legal Information System — Parliamentary consent record and treaty text
Original language: Danish / English / French