Arctic livelihoods endangered by approaching war in the distance

IN a corner of Norway’s far north, just 8km from the border with Russia, road signs give directions in Norwegian and Russian. Locals are used to crossing from one country to the other visa-free: Norwegians to fill up on cheap Russian fuel; Russians to hit the Norwegian malls.

A few years ago, those cross-border ties inspired Terje Jorgensen, the director of the Norwegian port of Kirkenes, to propose closer ties with the Russian port of Murmansk to build on the surging interest in cross-Arctic shipping routes, which connect Asia to Western Europe. He wanted to develop joint standards for sustainability and easier transport between the two ports.

But then Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his troops marching into Ukraine, bringing the whole project to a halt.

“It could have been developed into something,” Jorgensen said of his preliminary discussions with the Russians. “But then came the war, and we deleted the entire thing.”

The war may be more than 1,600km south, but it has created a chasm in this part of the world, which had prided itself as a place where Westerners and Russians could get along. Over the past year, business, cultural and environmental ties have been frozen as borders have stiffened, part of efforts to punish Moscow for its brutal war in Ukraine.

A fjord near the port of Kirkenes.

In Kirkenes, a town of 3,500 built around the small port, security fears have upended a business model focused on cross-border ties.

On a recent weekday, no shoppers braved the chilly June wind in the tiny downtown. At the nearby mall, older Norwegians shopped in the pharmacy as a lone tourist from Germany looked for rain gear.

Some chain stores, drawn here in part to sell their wares to Russians eager for Western brands and appliances, have warned they might pull out of Kirkenes, said Niels Roine, the head of the regional commerce chamber. That would further weaken a retail sector that has seen a 30% drop in revenue since the war began.

An economic strategy

The widening separation between the two countries is a rebuke to Norway’s policy, instilled after the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, to encourage business leaders to look east. Two shopping centres promptly sprang up to serve Russians looking for Western clothing, gifts, disposable diapers and alcohol.

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A souvenir shop on the Norwegian-Russian border, about five miles from the port of Kirkenes.

More than 266,000 people from Russia crossed the nearby border station into Norway in 2019; last year, that number fell by more than 75%. Cross-border hockey games and wrestling matches between students have ground to a halt, and the Arctic Council, a multinational forum that promotes cooperative ventures in the region, has been disrupted.

At the same time, Russian can still be heard in the streets, and Russian fishermen, drawn to nearby waters by cod and other species, are allowed to tie up at the port, although they are no longer allowed to visit the shops and restaurants in Kirkenes and two other Norwegian port cities and their ships are searched by police.

For decades, the vast amounts of cod in the Barents Sea – home to one of the world’s last surviving stocks of the fish – have drawn people and businesses from both countries to this Arctic Circle community. Norwegian fishermen alone landed fish worth US$2.6bil in 2022, according to government figures. Kirkenes’ most important industrial employer is Kimek, a shipbuilding company that has prospered by repairing trawlers, especially the Russian ones.

Reverberations of war

A shared interest in maintaining the cod stocks yielded a unique bilateral agreement forged during the Cold War.

The cod tend to spawn in Russian waters but then reach adult size in Norwegian waters. Fishermen from Russia are permitted to catch their quota of cod in Norwegian waters in exchange for not catching the young cod in their own national waters.

“The main fish stocks migrate across both countries’ zones,” said Anne-Kristin Jorgensen, a researcher with the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, which focuses on international environmental, energy and resource management.

“Norway and Russia have to cooperate in managing them if they want to continue fishing,” Jorgensen said. “Both parties know that this is necessary.”

But that agreement is coming under strain.

Last year, Oslo limited the Russian trawlers’ access to only Kirkenes and two other ports. And this spring, as fears simmered that Russians, under the guise of fishing, could sabotage critical infrastructure like sub-sea cables, Norwegian authorities cracked down on the services they could receive in port. Only necessities, such as refuelling, food and emergency repairs, are now allowed.

That sent tremors through the shipyard of Kimek, the largest industrial employer in the region. Its towering building is visible nearly everywhere in town.

In June, the boat repair company said the restrictions had led it to lay off 15 people.

Hans Hatle, the founder of Barents Safari, a tour company, spent years as an army officer training guards to defend Norway’s frontier with the Soviet Union.

The cruise ship terminal at the port of Kirkenes, Norway, just five miles from the border with Russia.

He now escorts tourists by boat to that same border, recounting the role of the Russians and Finns in the region.

“We have had a lot of shifting politics here,” he said, standing atop a rock on Western Europe’s edge.

With warming temperatures making popular destinations in Spain and Italy unseasonably hot, he is confident that Kirkenes has a bright future as a tourist destination.

“We have to keep thinking in new ways,” Hatle said. “But I am confident that we will make it.” — ©2023 The New York Times Company