Thomas Nilsen

Ore exploration sharply up in Finland

Lapland is especially attractive and investments in mining grew for the second year running.
March 25, 2018

Tourist boom fills up Scandinavia’s northernmost cross-border flight

Bigger plane with extra seats makes NextJet’s route between Oulu, Luleå and Tromsø more attractive.
March 25, 2018

10,000 people without heating at Arctic submarine base

Boiler at the central heating plant broke down in Zaozersk, the military town serving several of Russia’s nuclear powered submarines at the bases in Zapadnaya Litsa.
March 24, 2018

Solberg congratulates Putin on re-election

Unlike after Russia’s Presidential elections in 2012, the Norwegian Government is now silent about the way the election was conducted.
March 21, 2018

Swede wins Finnmarksløpet

Petter Karlsson from Slussfors, northern Sweden came first to the finish line in Europe’s longest dogsled race.
March 17, 2018

Northern Fleet submarine claims Russian record in undetected tracking of enemy sub

K-317 «Pantera» was tracking the foreign submarine for days, one of the crew members says in a TV-interview.
March 16, 2018

Half of IKEA founder’s private fortune goes to economic development of northern Sweden

Ingvar Kamprand was very interested in Sweden’s rural Norrbotten region.
March 16, 2018

Widerøe's first jet plane soon ready for take off

Flying to 41 regional airports in Norway, Widerøe har for before Second World War connected the remotest corners of Norway. In April, the airline gets its first jet.
March 15, 2018

Russia’s Arctic nuclear dump may become promising fishing area

Thousands of containers with radioactive waste were dumped in the Kara Sea during Soviet times. Now, Russia’s Federal Agency for Fishing believes it’s a good idea to start fishing.
March 15, 2018

Europe's longest dogsled race traverses Finnmark

39 mushers from 10 countries are racing through 1,200 kilometers of snow and cold in Finnmarkløpet, the world’s northernmost dog sled race.
March 14, 2018

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Thomas Nilsen is editor of the Independent Barents Observer with its news desk located in Kirkenes, northern Norway. He has a long experience in media cooperation across the borders in the high north of Europe, both as radio- and newspaper reporter all the way back to the days before the breakup of the Soviet Union. 

Nilsen has been editor of Barents Observer since 2009.

He was Deputy Head of the Norwegian Barents Secretariat from 2004-2009. Until 2003, he worked 12 years for the Bellona Foundation’s Russian study group, focusing on nuclear safety issues and general environmental challenges in northern areas and the Arctic. 

Thomas has been traveling extensively across northern Scandinavia and Arctic Russia since the late 80’s working for different media and organizations. He is also a guide at sea and in remote locations in the Russian north for various groups and regularly lectures on security issues, environmental and socio-economic development.

Thomas Nilsen studied at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Mobile: +47-90573143

thomas@thebarentsobserver.com
@nilsen.thomas