Hans Island
| Hans Island | ||
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| Waters | Kennedy Canal , Nares Street | |
| Geographical location | 80 ° 49 '35 " N , 66 ° 27' 12" W | |
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| length | 1.4 km | |
| width | 1.1 km | |
| surface | 1.25 km² | |
| Highest elevation | 169 m | |
| Residents | uninhabited | |
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The Hans Island ( Greenlandic Tartupaluk , Inuktitut : ᑕᕐᑐᐸᓗᒃ Tartupaluk , Danish Hans Ø , English Hans Island , French Île Hans ) is a small, uninhabited and vegetation-free island of about 1.25 km², to which both Canada and Denmark lay claim .
geography
The island is 377 kilometers north of Greenland's Qaanaaq (Thule) in the middle of the Kennedy Canal , part of the Nares Strait that stretches between Canada's Ellesmere Island and northern Greenland . The distance to the Greenland coast at Graptolit Næsset is around 16.7 km and to the coast of the island of Ellesmere at Cape Back around one kilometer more.
Hans Island is the smallest of three islands in the Kennedy Channel; the others are Franklin Island and Crozier Island . These are much closer to the Greenland coast and undoubtedly belong to Greenland.
history
The Inuit , who live in northern Greenland and northern Canada, have been crossing the area since around the 14th century. The island was unknown to Europeans until around 1853.
It was probably named in 1871 during the Polaris expedition of Charles Francis Hall after the Greenlandic expedition member Hans Hendrik (Greenlandic Suersaq ), who took part in five Arctic expeditions between 1853 and 1883; however, the name of the island was first mentioned in 1876 by US Rear Admiral Charles Henry Davis in his report on the Hall expedition.
Controversial sovereignty
The sovereignty over the island has long been disputed. It is claimed by both Denmark , which represents the autonomous Greenland in foreign policy, and Canada . From a Canadian point of view, it belongs to the Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin) region of the Nunavut territory , from a Danish point of view to the Qaanaaq district of the Greenlandic municipality of Avannaata . When the border between Greenland and Canada was agreed in 1973, this island was excluded and a decision was postponed to a later date. Officially, on the map for the 1973 agreement between Denmark and Canada (see map), there is no border between points 122 and 123, between which the island is located.
In 2005, both Canada and Denmark hoisted their respective flags on the island, but agreed a process to resolve the dispute. The area around Hans Island was again excluded from the agreement on the maritime border between the two states in 2012. With each new expedition of the two nations, the flag was changed and a bottle of local spirits was exchanged for the one on deposit.
See also
literature
- Dan Levin: Denmark and Canada in spirited fight for island. In: The New York Times International Edition, November 9, 2016, p. 5 (text of the article also in nytimes.com ).
Web links
- John Horvath: Defense of the Empire. ( Memento of October 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) In: Telepolis . Heise Medien GmbH & Co. KG, April 14, 2004.
- Berthold Eder: Gleanings: What is behind the conflict over the island of Hans? Interview of July 26, 2005 with Josef Motzfeldt, external representative of the Greenlandic Autonomous Government. In: derStandard.at . May 28, 2008.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Note because of the kidney shape of the island
- ↑ a b Peter R. Dawes, Tapani Tukiainen: Hans Ø, celebrated island of Nares Strait between Greenland and Canada: from dog-sledge to satellite mapping . In: Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin . tape 15 . Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), 2008, p. 77–80 (English, geus.dk [PDF; 1.5 MB ]). geus.dk ( Memento of the original from October 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Charles Henry Davis: Narrative of the North Polar Expedition. US Ship Polaris, commanding Captain Charles Francis Hall . Government Printing Office, Washington 1876, p. 407 (English).
- ^ Canada, Denmark agree to resolve dispute over Arctic Island. In: CBC News. September 19, 2005, accessed May 14, 2017 .
- ↑ Striden fortsätter om Hans Ø. In: jyllands-posten.dk . November 28, 2012, accessed May 14, 2017 (Danish).
- ↑ Niels Kruse: Dispute about the Hans Island: The most polite war in human history. In: stern.de . July 28, 2016. Retrieved October 21, 2017 .
