The relocation of Kiruna is the biggest urban transformation in northern Europe. Priority is given to sustainability, pedestrians and public transport rather than cars.
A cruise ship in distress in freezing cold Arctic waters off Svalbard is the nightmare scenario for rescue services. On Friday, search- and rescue capacities from Longyearbyen were tested in a mass evacuation.
Officials from Norway, Russia, and the United States participated as the long-debated, Moscow-initiated, Second World War memorial was unveiled on October 7, Vladimir Putin's birthday.
The two rusty nuclear submarines K-27 and K-159 will be raised from the sea bed of the Barents- and Kara Seas and brought to a shipyard for safe decommissioning.
Rosatom officials and Norwegian project partners are Wednesday marking that it is 25 years since the first money check was sent from Oslo to help improve infrastructure at the ill-fated Andreeva Bay dump site for spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste accumulated from the operation of Cold War submarines.
The wind mills could symbolise the main reason why it is economical profitable to reopen the old mine beneath the ground at Viscaria outside Kiruna: A growing demand for copper in a world moving towards an electrified society.
The Reykjavik-based Arctic Circle Assembly will next month mark the start of a busy season for stakeholders and policymakers in the circumpolar north to reconvene. Such non-digital venues are more important than you think, especially in the Arctic.
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.