Denmark and Canada will share a small deserted island in the Arctic known as Hans Island, ending a long-running dispute over ownership.

This is reported by Reuters.

The two countries could not agree on the island, located at an equal distance between Greenland and the Canadian island of Ellesmere, since 1971.

Greenland is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.

According to an agreement published by the Danish Foreign Ministry on Tuesday, Canada and Denmark will divide the 1.2-square-kilometer island into two nearly equal parts along a natural gorge on a rocky ledge.

Some see the peace settlement around the island as a sign of rapprochement among NATO's Arctic states, as Russia's isolation over its invasion of Ukraine has raised security concerns after decades of quiet in the region.

The island is named after Greenlandic explorer Hans Hendrik, who participated in the first expedition to the island in 1853. In Greenlandic, it is called Tartupaluk, which translates to "kidney shape."

Neither country was aware of the other's claim to the island until a bilateral meeting in 1971 to discuss borders.

Since the 1980s, officials, scientists and soldiers from Denmark and Canada have visited the island, taking turns removing the other country's flag and raising their own.

According to media reports, visitors to the island even made it a tradition to leave a bottle of Canadian whiskey or Danish schnapps there for their rivals to discover on their next visit.

In 2018, the two countries decided to create a joint working group to settle the dispute. After parliamentary approval, the agreement will be formally signed by ministers from both countries.

Under the agreement, Canada and Denmark have established the world's longest maritime border at 3,882 kilometers from the Lincoln Sea in the north to the Labrador Sea in the south, the foreign ministry said.