Alaina Beresford, who was just 12 years old at the time, had sent her note adrift in an empty bottle of Moray Cup fizzy pop.

Now, 31 years on, Alaina from Portknockie, Scotland, was left speechless when a postcard landed in her mailbox revealing that her long-forgotten message had been discovered.

The finder, Pia Brodtmann, a 27 year old German national, stumbled upon the bottle while cleaning a beach in Norway, almost 2,000 miles from where it was originally set afloat.

Alaina recounted her surprise, saying: "When I went and checked my mail and thought 'what's this, a postcard?' - not something you see a lot - and when I turned it over it had my name on it.

"The message from Pia said she'd found my message in a bottle near on a tiny island called Lisshelløya near Vega in Norway."

Pia, who is volunteering with the environmental charity In the Same Boat, sent a postcard featuring a collage of images including the bottle, the boat Nemo she's aboard, and the Norwegian region she's helping to clean.

Alaina expressed her astonishment: "I was just so shocked that somebody had found the message I sent all those years ago.

"It was amazing that my note was still perfectly legible - even the old Moray Cup bottle was in good shape!

"As far as I can remember we were doing a project on water with our P7 teacher Ann Bruce and part of that was doing a message in a bottle.

"I think her husband was a fisherman and he threw the bottle into the sea when he was out with the boat."

Alaina mentioned that she would love to reconnect with her former teacher but unfortunately, she doesn't have any contact details or an address.

She is also maintaining contact with Pia through Facebook.

For Pia, discovering the bottle on Lisshelløya felt like a prophecy.

She said: "The day I found the bottle we cleaned two small exposed islands, Lisshelløya and Storhelløya, although we didn't finish Storhelløya.

"I discovered the message nestled between some rocks on Lisshelløya.

"I had already noticed before picking it up, that the bottle wasn't broken or filled with water like so many other bottles I had found that day.

"It looked somewhat different, probably due to the paper inside.

"When I picked it up and saw the folded paper with the little text 'To the finder" inside, I knew this one would be special.

"It's rather amusing, though, because I said at the start of the clean up something along the lines of 'If we don't find a message in a bottle on this island, then I don't know where else we would'.

"I said that because in just the first few minutes we had been finding almost only bottles and some fishing gear.

"I read the message during our lunch break with my crewmembers.

"I wasn't too surprised that it had come all the way from Scotland because I have already found some stuff from Scotland before, but I felt really happy about the little message, especially because the address was still readable. I was just curious when it had been written."

Pia was determined to pen a response. "I thought Alaina would be really happy to know that her bottle had been found.

"She wrote in her note that she wanted to know who found it and where exactly it was found.

"I wanted to give her this information and make her day special, like she made my day special.

"Also I just like the idea of people randomly getting in touch this way.

"And maybe I was hoping for a pen pal across borders, because I enjoy the old ways of communicating like postcards and letters.

"Everyone is happy if there is something unexpectedly nice in the mail, while getting something digital via WhatsApp is less special and it can stress you out.

"When Alaina told me how old the message was, I almost freaked out.

"The idea that this bottle had been out there, either in the ocean or lying on the island, for over 30 years is just really crazy!".

"It looked like it had been thrown in the sea something between some months and five years ago.

"The first thing I said after reading Alaina's replay was something like 'Wow, what were the chances that she still lives in that house?!', but after she sent me some pictures from the coastline literally right in front of her home, I could totally understand why she is still living there. It's just beautiful."

Since April this year, Pia has been involved with the Norwegian In the Same Boat project, and she will remain with them until the end of July. Following the completion of her bachelor's degree, she wanted to travel throughout Europe and enhance her English language skills.

Her love of the rugged Scandinavian landscape and her drive to contribute to the protection of the environment drew her to the project, which aims to combat marine pollution - particularly plastic - along Norway's coastline.

Pia added: "The main method In the Same Boat uses to fight marine litter, besides raising awareness, is beach cleaning, but 'beach' in Norway isn't really the right word.

"Norway's coastline is mostly rocky, wild and remote, not a sandy beach.

"So we hike, climb and sometimes even crawl over and under rocks to collect the plastic before it becomes microplastic.

"Then we carry all the heavy bags of trash to the next spot, where the workboat can come and pick it up.

"The organisation is made up of employed skippers and volunteers.

"We all live together on sailboats, which allows us to move directly into the polluted areas. That saves time, emissions and costs.

"Lisshelløya, the tiny island where I found the message in a bottle - is so tiny that you can probably walk around in just five minutes. we picked and removed 1020kg of marine litter.

"Even though the island probably hadn't been cleaned before, this amount of trash is just insane."