evidence: Nevertheless, for some five decades, Canada and Denmark have squabbled — mostly, but not always, politely — over the not-very-exciting Hans Island, a 0.5-square-mile mass in the Kennedy Channel of the Nares Strait that’s home to neither vegetation nor wildlife. The craggy outcropping — Tartupaluk in Inuit — lies between Canada’s Ellesmere Island and Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. [...] The dispute dates back to 1973, when Canadian and Danish diplomats were drawing up a maritime boundary in the Arctic. The line cut straight through Hans Island. The diplomats left the question of what to do about it unresolved. [...] A further escalation came in 2005, when Bill Graham, then Canada’s defense minister, choppered onto Hans Island to walk the frigid ground himself. That drew an official note of protest from Danish officials.