Nowhere Island has 21,000 citizens, a constitution that will requires ice cream on Fridays and about 48 hours more to exist.

The island, 396 square metres of Norwegian rock ceded to artist Alex Hartley in 2010, is bobbing off Bristol on the southwest coast of the U.K. at the end of a tour for the London 2012 Olympic and Paraolympic Games.

“A nation in search of its citizens,” Nathan Taylor, communications chief for Situations, the producers of the art project, called it Friday.

On Sunday, “the island is going to be broken down by the artist himself,” said Taylor. “A small piece will be distributed to each of the citizens.”

The citizens have until Sunday to sign up online and proposing the island’s constitution, with each idea subject to vote before its inclusion in the final document. “Every child should be read to every night and kissed goodnight,” reads one proposal. “Tall people should stand at the back,” reads another.

Equality and respect reign supreme in many of the Nowherians’ ideals. Free ice cream is popular but elevating cats over dogs gets a split vote so far.

“The idea was, ‘Where would we begin if we were starting a new nation?’” said Taylor. “It’s a lovely snapshot of what people would like.”

The Nowhere Island embassy, a wheeled shed on the rock filled with artifacts and whimsical mementoes, will likely end up in a gallery.

The island itself had been “discovered” in 2004 by Hartley on an expedition with Cape Farewell, an environmental and arts project, after a chunk of glacier melted to reveal it.

“They were seeing a piece of land that hadn’t been charted or marked on maps,” said Taylor.

Nowhere Island began as part of the Svalbard islands, population 2,900, which is 60 per cent glacier-covered. With the end of their whaling and mining histories the islands, owned by Norway, are now largely a site of research, education and tourism.

Norway gave Hartley’s art project permission to claim a piece of one island in 2010. On Sept. 20, 2011, a team towed Nowhere Island above the 80th parallel into international waters and declared it a new nation.

Since then, 52 “resident thinkers,” including Yoko Ono and stylist Vidal Sassoon (before his death) have contributed thoughts each week.

Nowhere Island was one of 12 art projects given grants as part of the Cultural Olympiad of the London Games, so Hartley and his team hauled their “new found land” to Weymouth, England on July 25, site of the Olympic sailing events. From there, it has toured the southwest British coast to great fanfare from the citizenry.

Gardeners in Cornwall celebrated its arrival with a salad from greens they’d been growing all year; elsewhere, children’s choirs sang, bands played and banners waved.

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“It’s a magnificent sculpture,” said Taylor. “One of the most ambitious pieces of land art of our time.”

Taylor intends to put his piece of Nowhere Island “somewhere safe” knowing that the rest of Svalbard is still vulnerable to the tides of the changing climate.