Northern Findings

Tore Tanum, Senior Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

My point of departure is formed by my background in history and political science and my work for the
Norwegian foreign service at home and abroad the last decades. It is a very simple assumption: political
climate sets the borders for the development of natural resources – and that the political climate is
determined by the degree of interaction between the human beings in the region. That is if this population
has a say in their own development.

There is a man in the border city of Kirkenes called Willy Bangsund. For more than forty years his has
struggled for the interchange and cooperation in the sport of greek-roman wrestling between Russia and
Norway. In cold war, economic and political crisis he has managed to keep a little opening in the border
between the Soviet Union, later Russia and Norway for kids who want to compete in sports, until today
when the border is open thanks i.a. to such activities. Willy was awarded this year’s cultural price of the
county of Finnmark. Willy is one of many individuals in Russia, Finland, Sweden and Norway who has
kept the dream of a Barents-society without borders alive. Still the borders between Russia and Norway –
196 kilometers long – is Norway’s youngest border, negotiated between the Tsar and the Swedish king in
1826, being Russia’s oldest border. The 196 kilometers marks the border between Russia and the only
neighbor with whom Russia has never been at war. This border to day is a dramatic border between
different levels of standard of living, different economic and political systems and traditions… and the
only border in the world with a time difference of two hours.

Given the fact that Norway is the only NATO-country in the region, it is natural to look at this border as
an important challenge in finding a strategy for peaceful cooperation and development in the region. The
natural resources are there, we need to attract new resourceful individuals, and to develop new
multicultural societies based on modern needs as well as traditional knowledge, respecting that this area
once belonged to the various indigenous tribes. Among them the Sami people who live in all four
countries in the Barents region – and several other groups living in Russia. A positive global development
in the High North is dependent on low tension in the Barents region. The 196 kilometer long border
between Norway and Russia will be in the center of my attention.

The High North-strategy of the Norwegian Government dates back to 2005. In this strategy the
government i.a. mentioned people-to-people cooperation and cultural regional cooperation as important
factors on the roadmap towards a modern society in the region.

We were challenged to develop a network to promote direct cultural cooperation and in the voluntary part
of civil society – a strong sector in the Nordic countries, practically unknown in Russia. The last 8 years
form the story of efforts and results in these fields and how we Norwegians and to find ways and means
to strengthen the communications between individuals in the region, without having to go the long way
via the respective captials, to achieve a directs dialogue between Tromsø and Murmansk, not Tromsø –
Oslo- Moskva-Murmansk.

Before we can talk about transforming societies and/or landscapes we have to agree upon what kind of
society we want, the balance between economic activity and ecology. In the High North strategy the
government talks about a balanced development where it is good for children to grow up – where society
is founded upon equal rights between men and women, respect for indigenous traditions – in short a very
Scandinavian type of development. In order to advocate this model in Russia you are dependent of the
border crossing dialogue- between indigenous groups, women’s organizations, groups of children and
students etc. The last 8 years form the story of numerous attempts in this respect, including a few failures.

The artist group “Pikene på Broen” ( Girls on the Bridge) in Kirkenes presented in 2009 in theis annual
festival Barents Spektakel a performance of folk-singers and dancers from Norway and Russia where the
artists met on the ice of lake Pikevann a very cold night in February and challenged the border between
Norway and Russia crossing the same lake. Big bonfires at each of the borderstations marked the limit of
the stage, and the dancers tried to cross the border without succeeding. (Illeagal crossing would cost you
1000 USD) This festival was called “Border Control – or Rock-n-Roll”, a few years later, in 2012 the
festival was called “Dare to Share” and could celebrate the political agreement to open the border with
easier visa-rules. This year anybody from the Russian bordertown Nikel could visit Norway using a regular
bus-service, a revolution developed through daring ideas and dreams in the heads of artists that showed
politicians that daring ideas should be tried out.

The role of culture in the development of modern society deserves attention. In a multicultural society –
as we face in the high north – too much emphasis on the different groups traditions could be
counterproductive, border-crossing experiments where indigenous music melts with modern jazz for
example can contribute to create unique expressions. These expressions will form part a unique future
cultural profile of the region, the foundation of a regional identity. The transformation of the landscape is
to create the home of – the frame for - such a multicultural new society.