Message in a bottle from Scottish girl found in Norway after 25 years

A message in a bottle sent by a young girl in Aberdeenshire has been found in Norway 25 years later.

Joanna Buchan was eight when the bottle was dropped from a fishing boat off Peterhead in 1996 for a school project.

It was found 800 miles (1,287km) away at Gasvaer in northern Norway by Elena Andreassen Haga, who tracked Joanna down on social media.

The schoolgirl's letter reveals a love of sweets but a dislike of the opposite sex. "By the way I hate boys," it ends.

Neatly handwritten and addressed to the "discoverer", Joanna also describes her pet dog, her school projects and her love of collecting Blu Tack.

Elena, 37, told BBC Scotland she found the green bottle in summer 2020 and could see immediately there was something inside.

"So 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," she said.

"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".

Joanna Buchan was just a young girl when she sent the letter as part of a school project

The Norwegian sent a Facebook message for Joanna, but the former Peterhead schoolgirl did not spot it until Monday.

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Elena said: "My father also found a message in a bottle when he was about five and he's 66 now so that's quite some time ago, but in the same area.

"So this is like it's normal to have things washed up on shore but it's not very often that you find something with this kind of significance."

Elena Andreassen Haga said son Eliah did not initially understand the fuss when they found it

Joanna is now 34 and a doctor in New South Wales in Australia.

She said she found the "absolute gem of a message" from Elena, dating back to 2020, while scrolling through the message requests section of Facebook Messenger.

"I vaguely remember doing a message in a bottle at Peterhead Central School that we sent off Peterhead in 1996," she added.

Joanna Buchan said her letter now made her laugh

"I was like 'that's my handwriting'."

The letter included details about her "rather big house", and her love of teddy bears.

"When I read it I just died laughing", she said.

"There's some really lovely lines in there, like what was important to me at the time. I wish I could tell my teachers of the time, whose idea it would have been.

"It's clearly done its time in the North Sea."