In the summer of 2018 we were several friends vacationing on the remote island of Nain, northeastern Canada. One evening, in a shabby cantina, while we were passionately discussing the Sumerian influence on the Egyptian art of the New Empire, we were approached at our table by a man with a strange appearance: as if taken from a bygone time. After introducing himself as Christian Halvorsen and without waiting to be invited, he took a seat and began to narrate a story that, although at first seemed to us to be the product of a madman's head, eventually caught our attention and overrode all disbelief.

According to this person, who today lives from the sale of sealskins and is also a great enthusiast and philatelic collector, an island, always hidden by thick fogs, floats adrift in the North Atlantic. Its name is Havoneea or, as I would prefer to call it: the Principality of Havoneea. Thus exposed, it could perfectly well be a sovereign micro-state, a principality that does not respond today to any contemporary metropolis. It cannot even be located in any continent. Unique in its kind, it floats and moves with the ocean currents. Its origins and detailed history remain to be clarified.

A few days later, in a suitable boat, we decided to make a short exploratory trip in his company and verify what we had been told. We were able to see the island as described by Mr. Halvorsen: a huge rock of pumice (pumice stone) of more than ten square kilometers, with a coastline extending over 14.3 kilometers; the length of the island is just over three kilometers by two and a half kilometers wide. In its southern portion the crater of a small meteorite is perfectly visible. So it is very likely that its impact has ended up detaching the tiny peninsula from the mainland, leaving it at the mercy of the waves.

According to our curious interlocutor -who claims to be directly descended from the Minimilians (we will come back to them later)-, one of the reasons why much of this history remains unknown is that, sometime in the 18th century, the island was covered by snow during a terrible storm. His family managed to flee in time and settled in northern Canada, intending to return to the rock as soon as possible. But the currents then swept him to the Arctic Circle, where he was stuck and buried until just about five years ago when, due to climate change, the ice began to thaw and the walls of his two castles began to show.

Throughout his life, Christian Halvorsen has been obsessed with making known the history of his ancestors and his original homeland. He was always thought to be crazy and never paid attention to it until today because following absurd ideas has always been part of our prognosis. With the collaboration of our team his tormented purpose begins to materialize.

For the moment a small group of amateur archaeologists have moved to the islet, settled under the fog and started excavations. Further progress is expected as the rock moves south into the North Atlantic, carried by the currents, and as the heat melts the dense layer of ice that still covers most of the surface.

It is believed that, at some point in the early Middle Ages, the island may have been located south of Kristiansand in the Skagerrak Strait. It is also suspected that it was possibly occupied, for short periods of time, by some Norwegian families. It was a site ignored by history throughout the ancient ages due to its small size and the fact that it has no arable land. Its first inhabitants, it is assumed, lived by fishing and trade for hundreds of years. With trade and possibly for some other as yet unknown reason it was suddenly populated by several hundred inhabitants who soon became organized and assumed their own ways and customs until they developed customary forms of government.  

Inserted in the dichotomous tradition of histories based on two antagonistic groups (families, usually), the principality has two royal houses: House Halvorsen and House Horgensen. From the first comes a long line of the Minimilians, who occupied the throne for the last ten centuries until they were buried by the snow. The members of the second we will find that they are considered "the opposition".

Our team, at this moment, is working at the request of their descendants in the conceptualization of a modern government structure. We are talking about a dynamic country that wants to reconstitute itself, to insert itself in the contemporary world. Funds are scarce, almost nil, and those that are available are used in the creation of a Ministry of Communications and all its information networks. As part of the ministry, a traditional Postal Service will be created, in charge of the issuance and official sale of stamps, an activity that is intended to be the main pillar of the Rock's economy. With this 'philatelic' commercialization (stamps in NFT version), it is intended to finance all the multidisciplinary research relevant to the structuring of the history of the principality, such as, among other things, the archaeological survey and the study and writing of the history of Havoneea.