Nymark, Norway
An Englishman has claimed sovereignty over a tiny Norwegian island in the Barents Sea, above the Arctic Circle. Alex Hartley said he discovered Nymark, a rock the size of a soccer field, in 2004, after the melting of a glacier uncovered it. A 1920 treaty gives Norway sovereignty over “all islands great or small and rock” in the region, but Hartley says the treaty doesn’t apply because the island wasn’t there in 1920. “I was the first person to land on the island,” he said. “I built a cairn and left a claim in a tin can.” Ostensibly, Hartley is seeking to secede from Norway, but he acknowledged his real purpose is to draw attention to global warming.
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