Borderlands II - Kirkenes

Kirkenes as a town doesn't have all that much to recommend it. In many ways it's a simple industrial town in the far North. But because it is placed at the point where Northern Norway touches Russia, it has an interesting history. Up on the hill nearby you can find the Borderland Museum, which deals mostly with the situation of Kirkenes during the Second World War and the Cold War. The museum building was constructed around a WWII aircraft, which sits in the centre of an impressionistic exhibition on the ground floor. The writing for the exhibition has been done in verse and includes the texts of poems and hymns. On one wall there is a swastika made from Nazi propaganda posters, selling the Reich to the Norwegian people and denigrating the USSR and the allies. Many are still quite effective today, especially one showing a monstrous figure representing US cultural imperialism; its head is a Klu Klux Klan hood, its Kali-like arms carry vinyl records, a monkey in a cage and a Miss America contest winner. One of the monster's legs is made of bolted metal and has a ribbon wrapped around it which reads, "World's Greatest Leg." At the bottom of the frame is a small sign with the message, "The USA wants to rescue Europe from cultural apocalypse." Of course, if the Nazis hadn't been racial supremacists who destroyed literature they disapproved of it would have strengthened their case somewhat.

It must have been weird for the people of Kirkenes and the surrounding area. The Nazis left, but the Soviet Union remained on their doorstep. There was a short-term agreement for a time that locals could travel across the border to the nearest Russian town for trade and a party once a month, but when the Russians offered to extend the agreement, the Norwegian government declined, concerned about the fostering of Soviet sympathies and the opportunities for spying and recruitment. Today the people of Kirkenes have a special visa agreement with Russia and you hear a lot of Russian being spoken in the town centre.

We stayed a little out of town in a cabin on a husky farm right by the border. The hotel is called Sollia Gjestegård, and I can recommend it to any visitors. From there we walked up into the hills to the place where the border between Russia and Norway is marked. We followed little white wooden markers through the undergrowth and up the mountainside. There was still some snow lying on the ground, but it was spring, and though it was almost midnight the sun was in the sky, reflecting in the small bodies of water on the hilltops. First we saw the horizontally striped sticks which mark the border between countries. Then we climbed higher up and came to one of the border-stones. 

 

 

"You can go right up to the border-stone, but you can't go past it or you'll get arrested," the manager of our hotel had told us. "You don't need to wonder whether you'll get arrested, because you will." So we stood on the top of the hill and looked over into Russia, and back into Norway, and down at the place where the river turns Russian. There didn't seem to be anyone around to arrest us, but we didn't risk it. Marthe was convinced that there was a Russian border officer crouching behind the stone, just waiting for us to take one step too many towards his homeland.

Endtimes

The first thing to say is that I think this blog has been moving, like all things, slowly but inexorably towards its natural end. I started writing here to record observations about my life in the Arctic, to give myself a forum and so that my friends could follow my progress (that way they needn't imagine me freezing in grim darkness beside an igloo). But Marthe and I have now entered our last days of Arctic life. We left our jobs for good yesterday. We are packing all we own into cardboard boxes. This is not because we don't love it here, but simply because we are moving on. In a few days we'll start the journey south to Trondheim and from there to elsewhere. Some weeks from now we'll be starting a new life all over again, this time in Bergen.

Like many people who read too much fiction, I tend to view my life in chapters. This new move should signal some kind of ending, moving as we are from the country to the city. All being well, I'll also be moving from full time work into full time education. It would be strange to carry on this same site after such a complete upheaval so I think I'll soon stop posting here. Even the name of this page is tied up with discussion of Nordreisa and the surrounding area. Though I haven't always written as much as I'd like, I hope I've succeeded in communicating something of this incredible place. I encourage anyone who hasn't been to the north of Norway to come and experience it for themselves. Maybe I'll feel compelled to write about Bergen once we're settled there, but if so I think it would be better to start a new page than to do so here. Either way, I'll leave this diary up as a souvenir, and for anyone who might happen by and find themselves interested to hear about the time we have spent here.

The story is not quite over yet though. The spring came here with an incredible heatwave that saw us swimming in the sea a few weekends ago. Now the beginning of summer is upon us, and like last year that has meant that the area we live in has been characterised by low-lying cloud and legions of free range sheep, as well as the migration of the reindeer. We've gone to places and seen things I haven't had chance to write about or share pictures of here. So, over the next few days and weeks I'll be posting a series of final updates, starting with the post about Kirkenes and the Russian border that I originally intended to put up some weeks back before I got caught up in work and exams. I also want to write a little about the witch trials in North Norway, amongst other things. I'll probably also want to share something of the trip from here southwards. The chances are that I'll still be looking back at the time Marthe and I have spent here in the far North while we're settling into our small flat in the west country.

So, I hope those people who read this blog will enjoy these final posts, and I'd be happy to hear from anyone who's been reading regularly here over these last 20 months (there are not hundreds of you, but I know there are a few). I'm looking forward to putting these coming posts together, and I'm looking forward to the future beyond that too. 

Coincidences - Two

Last Saturday I was talking about Stockholm with Marthe and her friend Frøydis. We were standing in the kitchen, making coffee and discussing the Swedish capital. Of the three of us, I was the only one who had never been there, but I was saying that for a long time it had been a city I'd wanted to visit. 

I've actually wanted to visit Stockholm since long before I ever really thought about Norway, ever since hearing the album Dynamite by Stina Nordenstam in the late 90s. (She made the record in her flat there). I thought aloud that I might travel to Stockholm alone when Marthe and Frøydis are on their planned road trip across America next year. 

At the same time as we were having this conversation, someone I had never met was sitting in Stockholm and writing me an email. I sat down with my coffee, opened up my computer and got a message from Jonas Alexander David, telling me that he was going to play one of my songs on his radio show at 6pm that day.

The show, which is called Explorations, goes out every week on Stockholm College Radio. Each broadcast focuses on a different area of the world. It's a kind of journey through music. Last week's Explorations was about North Norway. I became the UK's unoffical musical representative in the far North!

You can listen to all Jonas' shows after broadcast on his blog. The North Norway show you can hear below. It's in Swedish, obviously, but if you don't understand the language you could still enjoy the music. It's a selection of pop, modern folk and electronic music from Bodø, Tromsø, Nordreisa and beyond. My song appears around the 20 minute mark.

Sometimes the internet seems like a tyrannical force in my life—some kind of time-sucking black hole that I can't escape. But then something like this happens: Just when I'm thinking of a city I'd love to visit, someone in that city is thinking of me.