Hans Island
— — the rock the two countries finally agreed to share.
Not only on a wall.
“A bare knuckle of rock in the icy strait between Greenland and Ellesmere, 1.3 square kilometres of nothing in particular and a great deal of meaning. For fifty years Canada and Denmark took turns planting flags and leaving bottles for each other. In June 2022 they drew a line across the middle and shook hands, giving Canada its first land border with a country other than the United States. From the studio.
Hans Island, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Hans Island is a 1.3-square-kilometre uninhabited rock in the centre of the Kennedy Channel of the Nares Strait, the narrow ice-choked waterway separating Greenland from Canada's Ellesmere Island at roughly 80°49′ north. It is one of the northernmost pieces of land on the planet, lying about 1,100 kilometres from the geographic North Pole. The island is barren, treeless, and ice-bound for most of the year. In Greenlandic it is called Tartupaluk, meaning kidney-shaped, for its outline as seen from above.
Nothing lives on the rock that does not pass through. No vegetation of consequence, no permanent fauna. The Kennedy Channel itself freezes for much of the year and supports polar bears, ringed seals, and narwhal moving between summer feeding grounds. The Inughuit of northwestern Greenland have hunted these waters for centuries; Tartupaluk is part of their traditional range. The nearest permanent settlements are Qaanaaq, Greenland, roughly 350 kilometres south, and Grise Fiord, Nunavut, the northernmost civilian community in Canada, about 350 kilometres southwest.
From 1984 onward, Canadian and Danish patrols took turns landing on the rock, planting their flag, and leaving a bottle of liquor for the next visitors — Canadian Club for the Danes, schnapps for the Canadians. The dispute, known as the Whisky War, was the world's most polite border quarrel. On 14 June 2022, Canada and the Kingdom of Denmark signed an agreement dividing the island roughly in half along a natural cleft, creating Canada's only land border with a country other than the United States and Denmark's only land border in North America.