Wie bezit het noorderlicht?
Eigendom claimen over een natuurverschijnsel. Het lijkt een grap, maar Finland en Noorwegen zijn elkaar in de haren gevlogen over het noorderlicht, de Aurora Borealis.
The tension was triggered by a short film that the Finnish Tourist Board posted on its channel on video-sharing platform YouTube, featuring time-lapse footage of the aurora in Finnish Lapland. The film has been viewed almost 400,000 times since September, prompting Norwegians to complain that the Finns are trying to “steal” the northern lights.
“We can not stand by and watch the Finns try to grab a bigger share” of the northern lights market, said Per-Arne Tuftin of Innovation Norway, a state-owned company that promotes tourism in Norway. “We will not give up — the northern lights will be ours,” he told the Troms&ostrok;-based newspaper Nordlys, whose name translates appropriately as Northern Lights. Back in 2009, Innovation Norway launched a campaign to brand the northern lights as a Norwegian phenomenon.