Watching Martin Clunes' Islands of Britain, I came across this nutter, a Stewart Hill, who declared the 1-hectare wind-swept Forvik Island off the coast of Shetland, which had been gifted to him under dubious circumstances, a Crown Dependency.
His declaration of dependence stands on the wobbly legal leg of an arrangement struck in 1469 between King Christian I of Denmark/Norway and Scotland's King James III, whereby Christian effectively pawned the Shetland Islands to James in order to raise money for his daughter's dowry. Hill contends that as the loan was never repaid, and no other legal agreement ever put in place, Shetland remains in a constitutional limbo, and should properly enjoy the status of Crown Dependencies such as the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands.
"Captain Calamity", as he became known after he failed to circumnavigate the British Isles in his converted rowing boat, the "Maximum Exposure", and capsized off the coast of his new micro-nation, created his own website, on which he offers for sale Forvikean (?) citizenship complete with (yet-to-be-printed) passport, t-shirts of various colours and sizes, and even a car registration. He also sells one-square-metre "blocks" of land on his tiny rock and plans to issue his own currency. Why not? Every other nutter prints money in mad abundance these days!
Read all about Stuart Hill, warts and all, [here]. Since this is a self-confessed list of his "achievements", it must be assumed that the reality is far worse. As he writes, "Failure is not a word that usually enters my vocabulary".
David Glasheen, eat your heart out!
