Thomas Nilsen

Norway’s krone plummeting to new low, stock market down 9%

Coronavirus and a sharp dip in oil price are earth quaking the Norwegian economy. Thursday became all time single-day bad.
March 12, 2020

Russian submarine hunters on record long mission in north Atlantic

A pair of Northern Fleet Tu-142s has for the fourth time in just over two weeks been on mission outside Norway. The flight on Wednesday went all south to the Bay of Biscay.
March 12, 2020

Second track on railway to Murmansk gets extra funding

The double-track rail line from Olenegorsk to Murmansk is aimed at boosting Russia’s export via the port to the Barents Sea and will be ready by the end of 2022.
March 11, 2020

Norway cancels Cold Response due to coronavirus outbreak

More than 15,000 soldiers from nine countries will put down their weapons and start preparing to go home from their current locations in northern Norway.
March 11, 2020

British navy tested unmanned boat and other autonomy equipment off northern Norway

NavyX, a British special program aimed at develop new technology for maritime warfare, chose Arctic conditions when several of its new "James Bond style" craft were tested for the first time.
March 11, 2020

Video: Norway's new F-35 filmed from Russian anti-submarine plane

Exciting moment for the video-filmer in the Russian Tu-142 as two of Norway's new F-35 fight jets approach wing-by-wing.
March 10, 2020

Europe's top-notch dogsled race traverses Finnmark in changing climate

Wet snow, windy and +1°C for the first mushers arriving at check-point Kirkenes on Tuesday.
March 10, 2020

Electric aviation ready for take-off in Norway by 2030, report says

Few places in Europe are better suited for commercial scheduled flights with electric planes than Norway’s northernmost region.
March 08, 2020

Lifting Russia’s accident reactors from the Arctic seafloor will cost nearly €300 million

Experts are discussing the framework for safe lifting of dumped reactors from four submarines and uranium fuel from one icebreaker reactor in the Kara Sea, in addition to one sunken nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea.
March 08, 2020

Winter exercise underway in northern Finland with soldiers from seven nations

740 soldiers from northern Europe participate in the demanding winter war games taking place across Finland’s northernmost region Lapland.
March 08, 2020

Pages

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