I was certain that this was a joke, a fight between Denmark and Canada over a rock in the Arctic Ocean. It’s not and Denmark has a warship on the way.

It turns out that Hans Island has been in dispute for many years between the two countries. Then recently, someone in Denmark bought Google Adwords for “Hans Island” so anyone Googling the term would be told it was Danish. First “war” fought on Google. Now it’s spilled to blogs.

Complete coverage here: Independent Sources with lots of Danes, Canadians, and others weighing in on the “crisis”.

Wait! Hey! That’s *MY* island. Has been since ‘42 when I bought it from that lumberjack….!

Are you SURE it’s not a hoax?  I just don’t understand why anyone would care.

Well us Brits have had many similar little wars over silly lumps of rock, can’t remember the name of any of them. Few with Iceland, some with Argentina (NOT Falklands before some smart-arse comments about that). Most seem to be about fishing rights etc. Fishermen are limited to certain areas in International waters, but within Inshore limits of colonial territory they are unlimited.

Yes, it’s not really the island itself that matters, but rather the water around it.  If a country can legally claim the island, then all the ocean for within a certain distance of it (200 miles?  Something like that) is also governed by that country.  So if Canada can claim the island, and there are some major fishing areas within that boundry, then the Canadians can exclude foreign fishermen while letting their own fishing fleet do whatever they want it to do.  Many countries take this sort of thing very seriously.

so, ignore my ignorance as usual, what happens if to different countries own islands that are, say, 50 miles apart? who owns the water and stuff then?

Then they usually only have claim over the water out to a certain point in between the islands, with an area of international water in between.  Or else the one country bombs the other country into oblivion and takes both islands, thus ending the problem.

ah i see… why i didnt think of that before… :p