Woman in Norway finds message in a bottle from Scottish girl sent 25 years ago

A message in a bottle sent from Aberdeenshire, Scotland has been found on the shores of Norway 25 years later.

As part of a school project, Joanna Buchan, who was eight at the time dropped a bottle containing the letter into the North Sea from a fishing boat off Peterhead in 1996.

A quarter of a century later, that bottle was washed up almost 800 miles away in Gasvaer in northern Norway.

Elena Andreassen Haga found the bottle and the letter written by the schoolgirl inside.

She read Buchan’s letter and was able to use social media to track the now 34 year old down, despite her now living in Australia.

Speaking to the BBC, Buchan said: “She sent me the picture of the letter and I was like, ‘that’s my handwriting’ and then when I read it, I just about died laughing.”

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Haga spoke about how she came across the bottle on the small Norwegian island.

She said: “We were just having a nice trip and we found this green bottle. It didn’t look very old but you could immediately see that there was something inside.

“We were able to read that this was actually from Scotland, so that was kind of cool.”

Haga also revealed that she had found the letter in the summer of 2020, but Buchan hadn’t noticed her friend request on social media until recently.

Haga said: “This was the summer of 2020, and I sent a Facebook request for Joanna that same summer and she didn’t see it until yesterday, so that’s also a kind of fun part of the story.”

She sent pictures of the letter to Buchan in Australia, who had a vague recollection of sending it, but was in no doubt when she saw the handwriting.

Buchan added: “The bit that killed me was at the end, I was just like, ‘by the way, I hate boys’.”

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