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Arctic Yearbook 2013
Kirkenes-Nikel
borders preserving their natural frontiers up to the beginning of the twentieth century (Niemi, 2005).
The period of openness was then followed by one of closure premised on notions of unfamiliarity
above all because of the Russian Revolution in 1917. With Finland gaining independence in 1917,
the Norwegian-Russian border became a Finnish-Norwegian border-line up to 1944. This implied
that Nikel (Nikkeli) and the surrounding area of Pechenga (Petsamo) were part of Finland up to the
end of WWII with the border turning again into a Norwegian-Soviet/Russian one.
The various historical turns implied that the Sør-Varanger region remained for a long period quite
multicultural, in essence containing Norwegian, Finnish-speaking Kvens, Sami as well as Russian
elements. The interaction was locally premised for a large part on familiarity whereas the policies
pursued by the Norwegian state rested on ―Norwegianization‖ (Rogova, 2008: 11; Viken et.al., 2008:
27).
The Second World War implied that security – or rather insecurity – gained the upper hand. There
was much resistance against the German occupation particularly in northern Norway, and to some
extent with the partisans cooperating with the Soviet forces (Niemi, 2005). Towards the end of the
war the Red Army liberated north-eastern areas of Norway, including Kirkenes, from German
occupation. Although the fighting amounted to an almost full dismantling of the dwellings in the
region and caused profound destruction, the image of the Soviet forces has remained rather positive
as indicated among other things by the statue devoted to a Soviet soldier still standing on a hill-top
in Kirkenes.
However, the war implied in general that security remained a core constitutive argument and
impacted also forcefully the Norwegian-Soviet relations. It also implied that the emphasis on
Norwegianization continued with the state of Norway pursuing policies based on unfamiliarity and
exclusion rather than familiarity and inclusion. A garrison-mentality prevailed both on the
Norwegian as well as the Soviet side amounting to the presence of various military installations and
entities as part of the ideological and systemic East-West conflict. The dominance of the quite
securitized national discourse implied that the border remained almost entirely closed. The border
was for a long time comprehended as ―a symbolic end of the world for people living on the two
sides of it‖ as noted by Anastasia Rogova (2009: 33).
This changed, though, with the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the 1990s. More space
opened up for the application of notions premised on familiarity and the border turned increasingly
flexible allowing for various transactions to unfold. The discourses waged not only change locally as
also various state-related authorities changed footing in encouraging interaction. Notions pertaining
to the more multicultural and interactionist periods in the history of northern Norway grew in
significance as also evidenced by the frequent use in the current discourse on Norwegian-Russian
cross-border cooperation of the term Pomor, i.e. a reference to ancient coastal trade between
Russians and the rest of the local population (Niemi, 1992). Even the Norwegian and Russian
military have exploited the connotations of commonality embedded in the term by naming their
joint exercise in 2013 as Pomor.