Scottish girl’s message in a bottle discovered in Norway 25 years later

‘It’s clearly done its time in the North Sea,’ said the sender

Joanna Buchan’s note which washed up in Gåsvær, northern Norway (Joanna Buchan)

A message in a bottle released into the North Sea from Scotland’s east coast in 1996 has been discovered in Norway.

The then eight-year-old Joanna Buchan wrote the letter as part of a school project before it was pitched from a boat off Peterhead fishing port - the easternmost point in mainland Scotland.

A photograph of Joanna’s (pictured second row, four from right) class at Peterhead Central School in 1995. Her teacher, Mrs Skinner stands at the far left of the frame. Joanna’s “best, best, best friend" (Donna) is second from the left on the top row. William, her “Blu Tack collecting buddy”, sits on the front row, right of the centre. (Joanna Buchan)

Some 800 miles from the start of its quarter-century voyage, Joanna’s green bottle was found at Gåsvær in northern Norway by Elena Andreassen Haga in 2020.

After discovering the letter, Elena reached out to the sender on Facebook. However, Joanna, now 34-years-old and an anaesthetic registrar in Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia, only stumbled across Elena’s message request on Monday.

Upon opening Elena’s note, Joanna said she was met with “confusion, followed by dusty memory of the project and being part of it, but zero recollection of writing the letter itself.

“It was a surprise to me too!” she told The Independent.

A screenshot of the message exchange had between Elena and Joanna. (Joanna Buchan)

In the letter, the school-age Joanna chronicles the life and times of her pet dog, Dougal, various school projects and her affection for collecting Blu Tack with her friend William. “By the way I hate boys,” the message resolutely concludes.

“Dear Discoverer,” Joanna’s letter begins.

“My name is Joanna Buchan and I live at…Peterhead and my postcode is...I am 8. I collect pogs and I love teddy bears. I have a dog called Dougal and his birthday is on the 29th of March and will be 15, in dog years he will be one hundred and something. I have a rather big house. And I have a best, best, best friend. I love collecting Blu Tack but my mum hates it. Our school’s project is about post offices and next year’s one is Charlotte’s Web. It is a novel. But I love sweets. By the way I hate boys. Yours sincerely, Joanna Buchan.”

Joanna, now 34-years-old, went on to medical school in Aberdeen, and completed her junior doctor jobs and surgical training in Scotland before moving to Australia at the end of April 2017. (Joanna Buchan)

Elena, 37, told BBC Scotland she found the bottle in summer 2020 and immediately noticed the note furled-up inside.

“It’s not very often that you find something with this kind of significance,” she said.

“We opened it and we had to be really careful because, as you can see by the picture of the letter, it has probably been in the water for some time, but we managed to fold it out and we’re able to read that this is actually from Scotland, so that was kind of cool.

“My son, Eliah, was six when we found the bottle, he honestly didn’t quite understand the fuss at first - old-fashioned fun I guess.”

A screenshot, provided by Joanna, with a dotted line showing her guess at the route her message in a bottle took from Peterhead, Scotland, to Gåsvær, Norway. (Joanna Buchan)

After the miraculous tale of the bottle’s voyage hit the headlines this week, the fisherman who dropped the letters from the Peterhead pupils into the sea shared his own memories of the event on Facebook.

Gary Bruce, now director of Ams Global Group Ltd, was a relief skipper at the time and his wife, Jane, taught at Peterhead Central School.

He recounted Joanna’s memory of the school project on the postal service. The children wrote the messages, bundled them into the green bottles, and it was up to Gary to then release them into the sea.

“We had two bags full of bottles, there must have been about 35 in total,” he said.

“I didn’t want to put them into the water too close to Peterhead because they’d most likely be washed up ashore nearby, so we sailed close to Fair Isle, just off Shetland, the most geographically remote inhabited island in the UK and tipped them into the water there.

“A few of the bottles were found fairly soon after – but it came as a huge surprise to hear that the message from Joanna, who is now a doctor in Australia, was found 25 years later. It would be fascinating to know where the tides took it in the years since.”

Since first exchanging messages, Elena and Joanna have kept in contact.

“I think we are friends now!” said Joanna. “We have been chatting a lot about the madness that has taken off!”

Asked whether there were plans to have the letter returned to her, she added: “No! It is hers (Elena’s) to keep. Finders keepers, right??

“Would love to see it again sometime though!”

Joanna no longer collects Blu Tack, turning her strengths instead to accumulating cats. “All rescues. I’ve levelled up!” she said.