Norwegian Woods (OT)

The proud Swedish community of Galva, Illinois and nearby Bishop Hill and the farms thereabouts date back to the 1860's as does this community church. Wonderful separate section is entirely Swedish heirloom recipes of the local families and all are given with the names of the cook.

The peak “would be a wonderful gift to our sister nation”, said the mayor of Kåfjord in Norway, Svein Leiros, who with other local politicians has written to the government in Oslo to express enthusiastic support for the plan.

Responding, the foreign ministry said that although it appreciated the suggestion, article 1 of Norway’s constitution unfortunately stipulated that the country is a “free, independent, indivisible and inalienable realm”.

But Øyvind Ravna, a law professor at the Norwegian Arctic university, told the paper the constitution did not apply to minor border adjustments, pointing out that Norway’s borders with both Finland and Russia had moved in recent times to reflect changes in riverbeds and the shifting position of sandbanks and islets.

A Facebook page, Halti as anniversary gift, run by Harsson’s son from his home in the US and calling on supporters to allow “Finland, on its centenary, to rewrite both its history and its geography books”, has so far garnered nearly 14,000 likes.

Public reaction has been overwhelmingly positive in both Norway and Finland, with the only objection so far coming from the indigenous Sami community, whose reindeer roam freely across the border and who argue that the land should belong to neither country.

Norway’s government has confirmed that for the centenary of Finland’s independence next year it is considering moving the border, gifting its Nordic neighbour a mountain peak that would be the country’s highest point.

“There are a few formal difficulties and I have not yet made my final decision,” the Norwegian prime minister, Erna Solberg, told NRK, the national broadcaster. “But we are looking into it.”