Hans Island
Hans Island is an island in the centre of the Kennedy Channel of the Nares Strait in the high Arctic region, split between the Canadian territory of Nunavut and the Danish rigsdel of Greenland.
The island itself is barren and uninhabited with an area of, measuring, and a maximum elevation of. Its location in the strait that separates Ellesmere Island of Canada from northern Greenland was for years a border dispute, the so-called Whisky War between the two sovereign states of Canada and the Kingdom of Denmark. Hans Island is the smallest of three islands in Kennedy Channel off the Washington Land coast; the others are Franklin Island and Crozier Island. The strait at this point is wide, placing the island within the territorial waters of both Canada and the Kingdom of Denmark. A shared border traverses the island.
The island has likely been part of Inuit hunting grounds since the 14th century. It was claimed by both Canada and Denmark until 14 June 2022, when both countries agreed to split the disputed island roughly in half. In accordance with the Greenland home rule treaty, Denmark handles certain foreign affairs, such as border disputes, on behalf of the entire Kingdom of Denmark.
Geology
As determined by field investigations and the interpretation of satellite image maps and monochrome stereoscopic air photographs, the exposed portion of Hans Island consists of of Silurian limestone. From its summit to sea level, it consists of an upper thick yellowish brown to grey megalodont bivalve and stromatoporoid limestone; a thick pale yellowish brown to pale grey marker bed; and a thick yellowish brown to brownish grey weathering, locally cliff-forming, coral, megalodont bivalve and stromatoporoid limestone. These strata are assigned to the uppermost carbonate buildup facies of the Allen Bay Formation of Canada and part of the Kap Morton Formation of Washington Land, Greenland.The limestone of Hans Island are underlain by Lower Cambrian to middle Silurian strata that are at least thick. These sedimentary strata underlying Washington Land, Hans Island and most of subsurface Kennedy Channel are undeformed with a northwesterly dip of 1 to 3 degrees. They contain source rocks that may have been heated enough to have generated significant amounts of oil and gas. However, these strata lack the geological structures and facies changes capable of trapping these hydrocarbons and forming commercial-size petroleum reservoirs.
The surface of Hans Island is covered by a veneer of unconsolidated glacial sediment. These sediments consist of a mixture of gravel, mud and boulders that form a discontinuous till veneer on its limestone surface over much of the island with the exception of its coastal cliffs and part of the intertidal zone. The gravel consists of angular to subrounded limestone clasts and large erratics of red granites and granitoid and garnet gneisses.
This surface also exhibits erosional features indicative of the streaming of an ice sheet through Kennedy Channel. These glacial features include glacial striations on bedrock; glacially-polished bedrock; linear-aligned crescentic fractures; sickle-shaped, comma-form, and longitudinal grooves and furrows. In addition, linear glacial flutes and ridges can be mapped from aerial photography and profile of the island also has a stream-lined form suggestive of glacial sculpting.
Etymology
The island is named after Hans Hendrik, whose native Greenlandic name was Suersaq. Hendrik was an Arctic traveller and translator who worked on the American and British Arctic expeditions of Elisha Kent Kane, Charles Francis Hall, Isaac Israel Hayes and George Strong Nares, from 1853 to 1876.Prior to 2005, the island was thought to have been named during Charles Francis Hall's third Arctic voyage, the Polaris expedition, between 1871 and 1873. The first written reference to the name and the island itself appears in Charles Henry Davis's book Narrative of the North Polar expedition, which is a narrative of Hall's fatal North Pole expedition. On page 407 it appears, without any previous mention. The island made its first cartographic appearance on a map accompanying the book.
Charles Henry Davis writes,
He was referring to the ship Polaris's return voyage southward down the Kennedy Channel. This does not answer when it was named. The ship's doctor and leader of the scientific part of the expedition, Emil Bessels, mentioned the island in his own book, Die amerikanische Nordpol-Expedition. He tells that on 29 August 1871, on the voyage north through Kennedy Channel, the Polaris sailed between Grinnell Land and a small island "which was named Hans Island", without further explanation of the name.
An earlier mention of a Hans Island expedition is in Elisha Kent Kane's account of the Second Grinnell expedition, Arctic Explorations: The Second Grinnell Expedition, 1853, ’54, ’55,, in pages 317–319. Thus the year 1853 is now often cited as the date of the first European discovery and naming of the island, including in a letter by the Danish Ambassador to Canada in the Ottawa Citizen on 28 July 2005.
Littleton Island is approximately from Greenland's coast, right in Smith Sound. It is about south of the island today called Hans Island. Around it and the coast of Greenland lay dozens of tiny islands, and Kane named one of them Hans Island after Hans Hendrik, the native Greenlandic helper he had with him on the trip. That this is the current Littleton Island is confirmed by Kane mentioning Edward Augustus Inglefield, who named Littleton Island.
The names of many places in this region have changed or been altered during the last 100 years. For example, the name of Nares Strait, separating Ellesmere Island and northern Greenland, was not agreed upon between the Danish and Canadian governments until 1964.
History and disputed sovereignty
The conflict over the island, known as the Whisky War, has been described as "the friendliest war" and "one of the most passive-aggressive boundary disputes in history".Early history
living in northern Greenland or Canada would have known the island for centuries. In the mid 19th century, Nares Strait was likely unknown to Europeans. It is not known whether Norsemen visited the island in the centuries when Greenland was inhabited by them.From 1850 to 1880, the area in which Hans Island is situated was explored by American and British expeditions. These expeditions were a response partly due to the popular search for the missing British explorer Sir John Franklin and his crew, and partly to search for the elusive Northwest Passage and/or reach the North Pole.
The Danish "Celebration Expedition" of 1920 to 1923 accurately mapped the whole region of the northern Greenland coast from Cape York to Danmark Fjord.
In 1933, the Permanent Court of International Justice declared the legal status of Greenland in favour of Denmark. Denmark claims geological evidence points to Hans Island being part of Greenland, and therefore it belongs to Denmark by extension of the Court's ruling.
Since the 1960s, numerous surveys have been undertaken in the Nares Strait region, including seismic, ice flow, mapping, archaeological and economic surveys. Canadian-based Dome Petroleum made surveys on and around Hans Island from 1980 to 1983, to investigate the movement of ice masses.
1972–73 border treaty
In 1972, a team consisting of personnel from the Canadian Hydrographic Service and Danish personnel working in the Nares Strait determined the geographic coordinates for Hans Island. During negotiations between Canada and the Kingdom of Denmark on their maritime boundary in 1973, both states claimed Hans Island was part of their territory. No agreement was reached between the two governments on the issue.The maritime boundary immediately north and south of Hans Island was established in the continental shelf treaty ratified by Denmark and Canada and then submitted to the United Nations on 17 December 1973, in force since 13 March 1974. At the time, it was the longest shelf boundary treaty ever negotiated and may have been the first ever continental shelf boundary developed by a computer.
The treaty lists 127 points from Davis Strait to the end of Robeson Channel, where the Nares Strait runs into the Lincoln Sea, to draw geodesic lines between, to form the border. The treaty does not, however, draw a line from point 122 to point 123, a distance of, because Hans Island is situated in between those two points.
Joint administration
In 1984, Iqaluit-based Kenn Harper, a historian and writer for Nunatsiaq News, wrote an article about Hans Island. It was printed in Hainang, a local newspaper in Qaanaaq in northwestern Greenland. This article was picked up by a Danish newspaper in Copenhagen and by CBC Radio in Canada.This article was sparked because of a chance encounter on the ice near Resolute, in the Canadian Arctic in the autumn of 1983. According to Harper, he met a man wearing a hat with bold capitals around the side of the hat saying "Hans Island, N.W.T." This man was a scientist with Dome Petroleum who had just spent the summer on the island doing ice research. Dome Petroleum did research on and around the island from 1980 to 1983.
Simultaneously, the Danish and Canadian governments were in the process of signing a cooperation agreement in relation to the marine environment in the Nares Strait. The agreement was signed and put into force on 26 August 1983. The Agreement addresses protection of the marine environment of the waters lying between Canada and Greenland, particularly with respect to preparedness measures as a contingency against pollution incidents resulting from offshore hydrocarbon exploration or exploitation and from shipping activities that may affect the marine environment.
One of the items also discussed was the possibility of establishing a reciprocal arrangement for processing applications to conduct research on and around Hans Island. This was never signed; however, Canadian John Munro, at the time Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and Dane Tom Høyem, at the time Minister for Greenland, agreed, in common interest, to avoid acts that might prejudice future negotiations.
However, unknown to the politicians, Dome Petroleum was doing research on the island.
In 1984, the Danish Minister for Greenland planted the Danish flag on the island and left a little message saying "Velkommen til den danske ø. It is also said he left a bottle of brandy; this seems to have been Schnapps, a traditional Danish spirit. It is commonly told, internally in the Royal Danish Navy, that it was specifically a bottle of Gammel Dansk, which translates literally to 'Old Danish'. The Canadians have reciprocated with their own sign, the flag of Canada and a bottle of Canadian Club.