Скачать или смотреть Märket Island, Sweden / Finland: The World's Smallest & Strangest Island Border?

🤯 More Fun on Märket (& "What The Heck is DXing?") In The Blog: https://www.amapnerd.com/p/the-smalle...

Saint-Martin in the Caribbean likes to claim that it’s the smallest island with an international border. That’s a fun stat, but it’s not.

There are smaller ones out there, including a brand new one in Hans Island which Canada and Greenland agreed to split last year. (I like to think I helped make that happen, though there’s no evidence to prove it - see the Whiskey Wars videos!).

But neither of those hold a penny to Märket Island, a tiny speck of a place between Sweden and Finland that probably has the world’s strangest border arrangement.

Market Island is an 8-acre rock in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland. The 2 countries have shared it for more than a century, with such polite civility that the border resembles an origami swan, with some stretches only lasting a couple feet.

Here’s how that happened: For most of the 19th century, Finland was controlled by the Russian Empire. Märket Island was a serious hazard for boats so the Russians built a lighthouse there in 1885. The general assumption is that the island was considered a no man’s land so no one was concerned about where the lighthouse was built, although some think the Russians were more calculating than that. Either way, the Russian lighthouse was placed in what later became pretty clear was the Swedish part.

So, in 1985, Sweden and Finland, which gained independence in 1917, decided to make that little mishap right. They wanted to share the island equally, but they also didn’t want to mess up their neat sea border, which would complicate fishing rights.

So, they very nicely mapped out an exactly equitable split around the lighthouse and back again so that both nations get half of the island and keep their fishing areas.

In a weird twist, the Swedish side is actually split between two different counties, the reason for which I do not know (email me if you do!! - [email protected]).

Today, Märket Island isn’t habited and the lighthouse is automatic. But, you CAN visit (it’s actually a hotspot for amateur radio explorers). If you do, you won’t find any border lines, just a bunch of holes drilled into the rock that outline the zig zags.

The island's shape gets beat up by the rough seas, so every 25 years Finland and Sweden return to resurvey and ensure the border is split evenly and nicely, no matter what origami animal it looks like!

MORE ON MARKET ISLAND (& "WHAT THE HECK IS DXING?") IN THE BLOG @ WWW.AMAPNERD.COM
Thanks for Exploring With Me. -Map Nerd

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