Finnish finish for Lapland island

By the BBC's Tony Samstag in Oslo

A weird and wonderful bureaucratic ritual has just taken place involving an island in the middle of the Inarijoki river, which forms the boundary between Finland and Norway in Arctic Lapland.

Norway has handed the island over to Finland.

As numerous border disputes rage throughout the world, it is heartening to see one sovereign state give away some of its land to another with no fuss whatsoever.

The Island Where Mathis, the Son of Samuel, Does the Mowing

Sami name for island

The uninhabited island, one of two in this particular stretch of the river, is only a few tens of metres in size - so insignificant that it doesn't even have an official name.

However, some locals say that the indigenous Sami - the original Laplanders - knew it in one of their nine dialects as The Island Where Mathis, the Son of Samuel, Does the Mowing.

This sensationally low-key transfer of territory is the result of the latest 25-yearly joint survey of the border area - an arrangement which has come about because of the meandering nature of this particular river system.

Shifting sands

The principle is that the national frontiers are defined by the deepest part of the river and this has now shifted from one side of the island to the other.

The change is thought to be the most significant ever to have emerged from the surveys since 1847, when Sweden and Russia - which owned what are now Norway and Finland respectively - first agreed on the system.

Technically the transfer is subject to approval by both national parliaments but no-one is expecting a very heated debate.