Canada and Denmark have ended the good-natured “whisky war” over Hans Island, a tiny, barren and uninhabited island in the Nares Strait roughly equidistant between Greenland and Canada’s Ellesmere Island. The dispute originated in 1971 when Canada and Denmark discovered that both countries had laid claim to the slightly over one square kilometer island. 

Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. It leaves Copenhagen to manage certain policy areas, including foreign and security policy.

As noted by the New York Times, the dispute between Canada and Demark over the decades has been fought in often whimsical ways.

Since Canadian troops began visiting the island in 1984 to plant maple leaf flags and leave behind bottles of Canadian whisky, Danes have been regularly dropping in to replace the Canadian items with schnapps and Danish flags. And cabinet ministers from both countries have arrived by helicopter to assert their nations’ competing claims and survey the rock they claimed to govern.

Now, an end is in sight for this long-running and largely benign diplomatic impasse.

Canada and Denmark have agreed to divide Hans Island approximately in half, along a naturally occurring cleft on the rocky outcrop, according to a deal published by the Danish Foreign Ministry.

The agreement will mean the end of the whisky war. The two ministers will exchange bottles for the last time on Tuesday.