Norway is trying to give Finland a mountain — yes, a mountain — for its birthday
Shopping for a person or pet’s birthday gift comes with a fair amount of pressure, but what do you get an entire nation for getting through another year of this stressful thing called life? Well, since Norway is supposedly trying to give Finland a mountain — yes, a mountain — for its 100th birthday, we’re going to assume that this is typical of gift exchanges between entire countries.
We didn’t include land masses on our list of perfect birthday presents for the Sagittarius in your life, but since anyone (or any nation) born under this zodiac is known to have a serious case of wanderlust, it seems a fitting gesture for Norway to proceed with plans to move the peak of Mount Haiti to Finland, right?
Obviously they’re not going to actually move a mountain, EXCEPT WAIT — THEY TOTALLY ARE.
Well, at least they want(ed) to, but a minor issue regarding borders in Norway’s constitution brought all plans to give a mountain to its neighboring country to a halt. While Finland celebrated its 100th year of independence from Russia on December 6, 2016, this entire mountain gifting situation got started months beforehand and subsequently resulted in a lot of back of forth that pretty much went nowhere.
According to the Washington Post, the idea came from former Norweigan Mapping Authority employee Bjørn Geirr Harsson, who proposed the mountain gift back in 1975. Harrson’s son recently breathed new life into the idea by creating a Facebook page, “Halti as an anniversary gift.”
In July, various reports claimed Norway was considering the mountain peak as a gift to Finland. Then in October, the idea was squashed altogether.
At the present time, the summit of Mount Halti, which lies approximately 70 feet within Norway’s borders, still belongs to its mother country. As The Independent points out, most of the mountain is already within Finland’s border, so maybe Norway can brainstorm some other birthday ideas.
Then again, if they want to give the mountain idea another try, they still have close to a year to pull it off.
