e mare libertas

I have been to Sjæland, that is, Zealand, that is, the Danish island on which sits Copenhagen. I have never been to its antipode, New Zealand, but I have met New Zealanders. I have even met New Zealanders who live on the old Zealand. It is all very disorienting.

But I have never been to Sealand.

The Principality of Sealand was founded in 1967 on Roughs Tower, an abandoned WWII fortification some seven nautical miles off the eastern coast of England, and its sovereignty declared. There has been some disagreement on this point, as you might expect. The British Navy seems to have gotten involved, in a sort of inverse cod-war fashion, as well as British courts. Warning shots, summonses, that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, Sealand has issued passports and currency and carried on despite not being recognized by the United Nations. Doubters may be interested to learn that certain parties have even gone to the trouble of forging Sealand passports, something that perversely enough seems to increase the authenticity of the original Sealand passports if only by providing contrast.

More recently Sealand has been looking into internet hosting. The activities of HavenCo Ltd. have gotten some press here, here, and here. This site suggests that HavenCo has fallen on hard times, but it does provide some interesting pictures. Here are more.

I am less interested in the Sealandic presence in the realm of the internet than I am in the whole project of sovereignty and of placemaking. I have learned that a group of Dutch designers are trying to create "a national visual identity" for the Principality of Sealand here. The use of the Böcklin painting on their website is very evocative. I wish I had heard them present their work at this conference.

It seems appropriate that the Dutch would be involved, seeing as they have their own Zeeland (where I have also never been) and seeing as they have great experience claiming or reclaiming land from the sea. They have long made places where there weren't any before and then, stubbornly, named them (itself a final act of placemaking) after the no-place of the rolling sea.