Just past the detection gates for radioactive substances, on the Norwegian side of the border crossing with Russia, Ørjan Nilsen runs a souvenir shop. Here, high within the Arctic Circle, the hand-painted matroshkas depicting Vladimir Putin (75 euros) have been unsaleable since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Nobody wants them anymore,” he says with a sour smile. “I don’t really anymore either.” Why does he still have the Putin doll on the shelf? Nilsen turns the wooden casings open one by one until he reaches the figure of Stalin. “Look,” he says. “Putin’s true nature.”
It was Liberation Day in Norway on Sunday, a day before Russia celebrates Victory Day this Monday. Normally, Norwegian and Russian guards line up on either side of the statue of a Red Army soldier, which recalls that the fishing village of Kirkenes was liberated by Soviet soldiers in 1944. But that friendly atmosphere has turned into hostility.
There is nothing to celebrate at the moment; we have been thrown back in time
Norwegian-Russian Friendship Association website
For the first time since the Cold War, the Russian delegation was not welcome at the traditional joint wreath-laying ceremony. “There is nothing to celebrate at the moment,” the secretary of the Norwegian-Russian Friendship Association reports on the website. “We have been thrown back in time.”
The Cold War atmosphere is back in this village. Kirkenes is eight hundred kilometers as the crow flies from Novaya Zemlya, where the Soviets conducted underground nuclear tests. In the nuclear bomb shelter under the school there is room for three thousand residents, and there is food for three months.
Outside in the melting snow heaps are yellow and red-green border markers, Norwegian versus Russian. Watchtowers are set on the hills, sensors in the tundra. The local tourist office has canceled excursions to the border, but minibus driver Michael doesn’t care. “Don’t make strange hand gestures,” he instructs his guests, pointing to the onion-shaped towers of a Russian Orthodox chapel. “Certainly not obscene.”
No more when neighbors cross the border
Storskog/Boris Gleb, the only border crossing between Norway and Russia, is almost closed. From the Barents Sea to Finland, a new Iron Curtain is descending rapidly. Since 1 May, freight traffic by road has been banned; Since May 7, Russian ships are no longer allowed to dock in Norwegian ports. Norwegians and Russians with a ‘Border Neighbor’s Card’ to be able to cross freely within the border region no longer want that.
“I’m so mad at Putin that I got rid of my samovar,” said Anton Kalinin, a Russian biath-lon-at-leet (‘skiing and shooting’) who runs a diving school in Norway’s Jarfjord, right below the watchtowers. “Too Russian”, he thought of his kettle.
He was in Russia’s Murmansk, 220 kilometers away, in January to visit his mother-in-law and refuel. “The atmosphere was already changing. Some of my Facebook “friends” have painted a Z on their cars. I have added the Ukrainian flag to my profile picture.”
Traveling overland to Murmansk would still be possible for a Russian, but even with a tourist visa this is no longer possible for others. There are flights there, but from Dubai, Serbia or Turkey.
Kalinin dives for king crab, he has had the constantly grumbling TV chef Gordon Ramsey and biologist Freek Vonk in March, but now he demonstrates on Saturdays in front of the Russian consulate in Kirkenes. It is a yellow-painted building that resembles an army barracks, with rust-brown bars on the windows.
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In order to prevent confrontations in the 3,500 souls of Kirkenes, the city council has banned the waving of flags other than Norwegian ones on Norwegian Liberation Day. Norwegian flags have been hoisted before dawn on both masts at the Soviet liberation monument. Yet someone has placed a bunch of red carnations with a ribbon in the Russian tricolor at the foot of the pedestal.
Diver Kalinin, who is seriously considering giving up his Russian nationality, finds it unheard of. “That my compatriots are not ashamed.” He has signed a petition to remove the Cyrillic script street signs from Kirkenes, “at least while Putin is in power.”
The unwieldy church from which Kirkenes gets its name stands on the Kirkegata. Under a lean-to hangs the announcement of the next worship service, but also the poster of an upcoming benefit concert by a Johnny Cash cover band. It has a subtle blue-yellow bezel. The proceeds go to Ukraine.
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A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of May 9, 2022
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