Norway wants to give Finland a mountain for its birthday

Finland will celebrate its 100th birthday in 2017 and Norway has come up with an unbeatable gift idea: a mountain.

The two countries share a border and to gift Finland with a new peak Norway would give up around 30 metres of land.

The idea came about after a Norwegian geophysicist, Bjørn Geirr Harsson, noticed that Finland’s highest point was a measly hill while Norway had a surplus of mountains.

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“I got the idea back in 1972 when I did a gravity survey in the border area,” he explains in Battle for Birthday Mountain, a film about the geographical gift idea.

“I saw that the highest point in Finland was on a hillside and for Norway on a mountain, so I wrote a letter to the foreign ministry and proposed that a gift from the Norwegian people to Finland should be a mountaintop.”

Geirr Harsson added, “It is a gift from the heart of the Norwegians to Finland so we don’t expect anything back; we just want to give them something really nice when they celebrate 100 years as a free nation.”

Although most residents seem up for the idea, there is still some governmental finagling to do before the mountain can officially be given to Finland – if it ever actually happens.

After all, the Norwegian prime minister has pointed out that giving away the mountain would contravene Article 1 of Norway’s constitution.

It states that the Kingdom of Norway is “indivisible and inalienable”, but Geirr Harsson plans to continue the fight.

He’s pinning his hopes on a swell of support garnered by the new mini documentary – although constitutional amendment seems like a pretty big legal mountain to climb.