With arbitrary borders and conflicts becoming more fashionable of late, we explore three of the world’s stranger borders: Norway-Russia, Spain-Gibraltar and the Beaufort Sea between the US and Canada. Plus: Jonn Elledge author of ‘A History of The World in 47 Borders: The Stories Behind The Lines On Our Maps’ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On most maps that we look at, the most important feature is artificial rather than natural borders, for it is they separate countries from each other and states and provinces within countries.
They're all pretty strange when afforded a moment's contemplation.
You can be standing on one particular patch of earth, subject to one set of laws, observant of one set of traditions, speaking one language and spending one currency, and you might only need to walk a few meters to find yourself somewhere completely different.
There are few more stark, surreal examples than the 196 kilometre land border between Norway and Russia, between that is a founder member of NATO and the menace that NATO was formed to defend Europe against.
All things considered, it has been a remarkably open border.
Russian tourists were not locked out until this past May.
Now, however, Norway is considering following Finland's lead and fencing the border off.
It is arguable that borders are becoming more fashionable, not less.
Most of Europe is now a signatory to the Schengen Agreement, which renders borders more or less meaningless for the purposes of travel and commerce.
However, Germany, though a Schengen country, reimposed land border controls in September in a bid to appear to be doing something about irregular migration.
In the uk, the cause of Brexit was won on a promise to control Britain's borders, illusory though that has proved.
Is our maintenance of borders merely bureaucratic or does it go deeper than that?
How difficult is it to move or maintain them?
And how do we decide whether they should be opened or closed?
This is the foreign desk.
Ten, 15 years ago, the people in the town where I grew up, they would just travel a few kilometers across the border on a Friday night for drinks and then go back.
Before the border closed, there was substantial cross border traffic.
While we are now almost back to the border that I learned now in the 1980s, almost completely sealed off culturally.
We like each other.
Many choose to live there whilst working in Gibraltar.