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Why, a mountain, of course!
Finland's highest mountain is the fjeld of Halti. There's just one problem: Halti's summit is in Norway. That means the highest point of Finland's tallest mountain doesn't even belong to it! So some nice Norwegians are trying to give Finland the gift of a mountaintop for its independence centennial.
A group of Norwegians has launched a campaign to shift their country's border by 200 metres to bring the peak of the Halti mountain into Finnish territory as a gift to their mountain-deprived neighbour for the 100th anniversary of its independence.
Moving the border between Norway and Finland just 490ft (150m) to the north and 650ft (200m) to the east would bring Finland a new highest peak while losing Norway just 0.015 square kilometres.
At 4,479ft (1,365m), Halti does not even make the list of Norway’s highest 200 peaks. But one of its lower spurs, Hálditšohkka, marks the highest point in Finland, at 4340ft (1,324m).
“My idea is that this should be a gift from the Norwegian people and I feel sure that the Finnish people would appreciate it,” said Bjørn Geirr Harsson, the retired geodesist behind the Facebook campaign.
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How thoughtful is that? You can like their Facebook page here. This Washington Post article shows you where everything's at, and what the new border would look like.
Halti is the result of some very ancient mountain building. The bedrock itself is almost 3 billion years old, and was created during some intense mountain building that went on when life was still at most a single cell. Hiking its slopes brings you straight into contact with deep time. Wouldn't it be fabulous for Finns to be able to move their boundary marker to the highest point on that eons-old land? I hope the citizens of Norway are successful in giving them the gift of a summit!
