"Barents is dead. And Kirkenes needs to reinvent itself"

Bjarge Schwenke Fors heads the Barents Institute, a local research organisation that is part of UiT Arctic University of Tromsø. The research leader has followed local developments in the small border town of Kirkenes over the past two decades. In this podcast, he reflects on how the collapse of relations with Russia has led to the need for a reinvention of local identity.

See transcript of the conversation below.

Over three decades, Kirkenes actively sought to position itself as a bridge between east and west, as a 'laboratory' for cross-border people-to-people cooperation, as a hub for Barents cooperation. Why did it all fail?

Well, first there has been a certain mismatch between brand and reality here. Norwegian actors, from the MFA to the local authorities and the Barents secretariat for years conveyed this idea of Kirkenes as a something extraordinary, a very important place, with the mission of being a sort of mediator between East and West, a great transnational center with an even greater future… Yes, Kirkenes was to some extent a center for regional cross-border cooperation and cross-border relations but the magnitude and importance of these were always wildly exaggerated. 

Perhaps this exaggeration today makes the failure appear even worse than it really is. 

Anyhow, the failure of the Barents cooperation is of course very much related to the fact that meaningful cross-border cooperation with Russia in the end proved to be impossible. This had to do with the authoritarian turn taking place in the country, with the crumbling of civil society. “People-to-people cooperation” becomes meaningless if the people has no real saying or freedom to act. 

Can we conclude that it all was an experiment, which ultimately showed that this kind of cooperation was not viable?

If we think of the last decade of cooperation, yes, for sure. 

But we also have to keep in mind that in the early 1990s – three decades ago – when all this started – things looked much different. At that time one could not imagine how it would all end. Was it then wrong to try? I am not sure. 

What is left of cross-border relations in this region? What can be learnt from it? Did anything good come out of it?

Across the Norwegian-Russian border some cross-border cooperation takes place but of a new character: While cross-border cooperation actors previously worked in tandem with the authorities on both sides of the border, they now tend to challenge these authorities.

First, there is a small group of actors that openly defy the new position of the Norwegian government with regards to Russia. These actors emphasize the importance of maintaining good cross-border relations with Russia, despite the war. They are involved in organizing festivals, in commemorating and celebrating Norwegian-Soviet collaboration during WW2, and they organize so-called “dialogue clubs” on both sides of the border. 

Second, there are the cross-border networks that involve Norwegians and Russians – sometimes exile Russians – in opposition to the Russian regime and/or the war in Ukraine; artists, journalists, indigenous organizations, or LGBT activists.

But generally not much is going on – as compared to the situation a few years ago.

The Barents cooperation, if we still can speak about it, now mainly takes place across the Nordic borders. 

Did anything good come out of it?

Yes. Clearly, it meant something for people on both sides of the border, especially in the early phases of the cooperation. It provided people in the borderland – on both sides of the border - with new opportunities for meeting with the other side, and indeed experiencing life on the other side. The good memories still exist. 

Barents Institute was established to do research on cross-border relations. How can you fulfil this mission now when the border is more or less closed?

Our main field is border studies and borders that are closed may also be the object for study. 

Also, we should keep in mind that the Norwegian-Russian border was a relatively hard border also prior to 2022. It never really opened. 

Naturally, we always adapt our research to the time in which we are living. Like the rest of this community we need to reinvent ourselves. 

The government in Oslo actively supported the normalisation of relations with Russia and invested billions in the building of relations in a wide range of different fields. Culture was one of these fields. What was Barents cultural cooperation like? Was it successful?

Cultural cooperation has been a rich field and an important pillar in Barents cooperation. Some of the reason for this is that one failed to establish real cooperation in harder (so to speak) fields like business or infrastructure failed. 

In the field of Russo-Norwegian cultural cooperation, a top-down state involvement has coexisted with cultural initiatives from below.

Sometimes we have seen Barents artistic projects being instrumentalized for foreign policy aims, serving either as pure entertainment for various Barents events or as propaganda for the Barents project and for Norwegian-Russian friendship. These projects – although often praised for their “positive message” – were, in my opinion, not very interesting from an artistic point of view. They also, I would argue, meant less for those involved. 

I believe cultural cooperation has been most fruitful when it has emerged from below. That is when art has been created without being instrumentalized for other purposes. This form of cooperation has also been more interesting and rewarding for those involved – on both sides, both artists and audience, because it involved a real meaningful exchange. 

Some years back, Kirkenes tried to build a so-called Twin City relationship with neighbouring Russian towns. What was the idea behind this initiative?

This was an initiative involving Kirkenes and the town of Nikel in Pechengsky Raion. 

The process towards the formal declaration of Kirkenes and Nikel as twin cities with a letter dated 13 March 2008 that was addressed from Norway’s Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre to the mayor of Sør-Varanger at the time, Linda Beate Randal. In the letter, the foreign minister urged the mayor to begin immediate talks with the mayor of Pechenga to develop a proposal for a twin-city cooperation between the two municipalities that could be presented during the meeting between Støre and his Russian colleague Sergei Lavrov that would take place in Kirkenes in June the same year. 

In the letter, Støre made it clear that the twinning initiative had already been clarified with the Russian authorities. 

Three months later the agreement proposal which was ceremonially approved during the foreign ministers’ festive dinner…

What was the idea?

Twin is a metaphor for close relations – familiarity… similarity… The idea that was communicated was that the twinning would create a deeply integrated transnational space that would span the border. 

The only problem was that the actual content of the twin city agreement more or less a duplicate of the older Friendship Agreement signed between the two municipalities in 1973. Thus, the twinning did not bring anything new into the cross-border relation. Actually, no further integration took place. 

From a practical point of view, the twinning was a failure (as shows studies by Figenschou Haugseth etc). 

In my own doctoral thesis I have, however, argued that the real intention of the twin city declaration was not to spark integration but rather to give the impression of integration. It was not substantial politics but symbolic politics. The twinning should – I believe – be seen as a performance – an example of make believe. As such it was also more successful! It sparked a sort of optimism – and it strengthened the desired image of Kirkenes as a progressive transnational center. (In Nikel they did not care so much about this agreement, but for Kirkenes it was worth a lot, symbolically)

Do locals in Kirkenes have reason to feel disappointed, and even bitter, considering all the resources, time and efforts that they have been spent on trying to build a relationship with Russia?

Yes. 

There are people in Kirkenes who have devoted much of their life to this “experiment”, and for whom Barents has been an important part of their identity. Of course, it is disappointing for these people to see their dream crushed, to experience that the efforts that they have put into this have been in vain. 

Some people may also rightfully feel that they have been fooled, not only by the Russians, but also by Norwegian national and local authorities that kept on encouraging these efforts even after it was clear that they did not work…. 

Kirkenes tried to build a kind of local 'Barents identity.' Is there now a 're-identification' going on? How is Kirkenes building a new future without Russia and Barents cooperation?

Kirkenes was the only place where a Barents identity emerged. Not as a transnational regional identity, but as a local identity. Barents provided Kirkenes with greatness and importance. Since the early 1990s Kirkenes promoted itself as the Barents Capital, and everything Barents was celebrated. Just look at the number of names in this town with Barents in it. We could start with the Barents institute, and Barents observer. Barents safari, barentsbadet, Barents buss…. 

Today, Barents is dead, and for sure this town will have to reinvent itself. This reinvention is going on. What it will be we do not know. Perhaps back to the mining town identity of the Cold War? Perhaps a garrison town? Something will emerge. What is certain is that the new identity will relate less to cross-border relations and less to Russia.

To what extent is the local population today divided, disunited, polarised with regard to relations with Russia?

I think the polarization tends to be exaggerated and overcommunicated, by outsiders – by visiting journalists, and – of probably also – by Russian actors. 

It is certainly a myth that people here are more pro-Russian than elsewhere, as a research report from NIBR (Jørn Holm-Hansen, Marthe H. Myhre og Aadne Aasland) has recently argued. The exception would be the small Russian population where we find the entire specter of political attitudes from ardent supporters of the regime to vocal anti regime exiles. 

The main division with regard to Russia locally is not between pro Kremlin and anti Kremlin, it is between those who would like to mark a definite end to the local investment in Barents and Norwegian-Russian friendship, and those who will not. 

We have seen this division with regards to the debate about Russian street signs, the debate about whether to terminate friendship agreements with Russian municipalities, and whether or not to introduce restrictions for the movement of Russian sailors visiting Kirkenes. In general, the political right supports a tough stance, the left - especially the Labour party – argues against it. 

But again, this does not at all mean that the local Labour party is pro Kremlin. I believe it makes more sense to look at it as an expression of ownership to and nostalgia for the old Barents identity of the town. The left is, I believe, more strongly attached to this old identity than the right.  

Shortly after Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine, you wrote a column where you called for a local debate about whether local Russian-language street signs in Kirkenes should be removed. Should the signs be removed?

There was an upheated debate at the time about these signs. There was a petition campaign to remove them. It eventually failed. 

At the time I did not argue that the signs should be removed, but rather tried to bring in some facts and aspects that I thought was important for the politicians who eventually should make a decision about whether to keep these signs or not, an important decision if you ask me.

One important fact was that the signs had been raised for commercial reasons, as a way of branding the town as a transnational place, not as an effort to represent a minority in public space, like for instance the Sami road signs. The Russians in Kirkenes were never involved in setting up these signs, nor did they intervene to keep them in 2022. It was the Norwegians, again mainly the left, that defended the signs. 

I also urged the politicians to consider whether the signs really represented the desired identity of Kirkenes in a post Barents time. My advice was: If yes, keep them, if not, why not remove them? 

Finally, I recommended the politicians to consider whether these signs – and other public symbols of Russian-ness – can be exploited in order to challenge Norwegian territorial sovereignty. At the time the signs were set up (2001) the local chief of police) actually expressed concern that the signs could weaken national sovereignty in the volatile borderland. “We should mark that we are in Norway”, he said. At the time no one listened to him 

Kirkenes was site for bloody fighting during WW2 and there is today a major Soviet-style war memorial in town. What is the symbolic force of this monument?

Following Moscow's aggressive use of memory policy, do locals want to remove it? 

This is really a question for my good colleagues at UiT Joakim Aalmen Markussen and Kari Aga Myklebost who have been writing extensively about this. I have been writing a little bit about it. 

This monument has played a key role in Norwegian-Russian relations since it was raised in 1952. Since the end of the Cold War even more so. It has been an arena for Norwegian-Russian meetings and symbol for Norwegian-Russian brotherhood, and it has also worked as a concrete manifestation of local gratitude to the Red Army.

It is my impression that there is an increasing understanding in the borderland for how Russia (and also Norway!) engages in memory politics, thanks to the informative work of scholars, journalists and politicians. 

Still, there does not seem to be much support for removing this monument. Rather – I believe – there is a support for reclaiming it – for using it to tell our stories about the wars of past and present. Here, the current mayor has played an active role. Also, on more than one occasion, the monument has been the site for local protests against the Russian regime and its narratives. In this way, the monument mat actually serve as a site for geopolitical deterrence.