Government steps on the gas
April 23, 2013
Oil & Energy Minister Ola Borten Moe remains as bullish as ever in his drive to step up oil and gas exploration and production in Norway’s Arctic areas. Despite low gas prices and opposition from both industry professionals and environmentalists, Moe and his government colleagues are poised to open up Norway’s newly defined southeastern portion [...]
Spring chill blamed on warmer Arctic
April 22, 2013
As Norway woke up to yet another chilly, even frosty, morning on Monday, experts were linking this year’s unusually cold spring weather to melting ice in the Arctic. They blame another rise in Arctic temperatures last year, and ice that’s melting at a record pace in places like Svalbard. The sub-freezing weather that continued to [...]
Film team fined on Svalbard
March 19, 2013
A film team working for the BBC on Norway’s Arctic archipelago of Svalbard is being fined NOK 50,000 (nearly USD 10,000) for allegedly disturbing a polar bear mother and her two cubs. Local officials are concerned about the increasing number of film crews, both Norwegian and from abroad, that are perhaps too keen to film [...]
Sled dog racer conquers Finnmark
March 18, 2013
Thomas Wærner, a 40-year-old musher from the mountains of Synnfjell in Oppland County, relished weekend celebrations after he logged what commentators called a decisive victory in this year’s 1,000-kilometer Finnmarksløpet, the long-distance sled dog race over much of Finnmark County in northern Norway. Wærner rode back into the far northern city of Alta on Friday [...]
Hurtigruten ship ran aground
March 5, 2013
Norway’s coastal shipping line Hurtigruten suffered another accident Monday night, this one rather embarrassing, admitted the captain involved. While showing tourists the opening of the famous Trollfjord on the eastern end of the Lofoten peninsula, the vessel ran aground. “This isn’t any fun, but what can I say,” Brynjar Ulvøy, captain on board the Hurtigruten vessel [...]
Huge new energy reserves detected
February 27, 2013
The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (Oljedirektoratet, NPD) unveiled new studies of southeastern portions of the Barents Sea and the area around the Arctic island of Jan Mayen on Wednesday, and predicted the sea floor contains enormous amounts of oil and gas. The new resources are expected to boost earlier estimates of undiscovered resources by at least [...]
Tourists in Tromsø need ‘brodder’
February 25, 2013
Norway’s northern city of Tromsø has been welcoming record numbers of winter tourists the past few years, many of them coming to see the Northern Lights. Some wind up seeing entirely different sorts of lights instead, inside local emergency rooms after falling on the ice. Doctors now want the city or its hotels to help [...]
New terminal to fuel Arctic growth
February 14, 2013
The mayor of the area around Norway’s famed North Cape was jubilant this week, after Statoil announced that it intends to bring oil from its huge Skrugard and Havis fields in the Barents Sea to an onshore terminal near Honningsvåg. Statoil and local officials alike hope the new terminal will fuel further exploration and development in [...]
New cathedral lives up to its name
February 13, 2013
PHOTO FEATURE: It’s called “The New Cathedral of the Northern Lights,” and it’s already reflected them even before its formal opening last weekend. The spectacular building in Norway’s far north has been a long time coming, but it got a royal welcome and is considered a new local landmark. The new cathedral in Alta, Finnmark [...]
Northern Lights keep drawing crowds
February 4, 2013
Tourists from all over the world continue to travel to both Northern Norway and Norway’s Arctic archipelago of Svalbard in the hopes of seeing the Northern Lights (Nordlys, or Aurora Borealis). Tromsø also been attracting hundreds of performers lately for its annual Northern Lights festival. Around 400 artists from 14 different countries have been gathering [...]
Eide shifts from Algeria to Arctic
January 22, 2013
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide shifted his attention from the aftermath of a hostage crisis in Afghanistan to the future of the Arctic this week, when he joined leaders of other Arctic nations at a major conference in Tromsø on Monday. Eide, who’d been working day and night on the hostage crisis, addressed the [...]
‘Let’s drill off Lofoten this year”
January 16, 2013
Oil and Energy Minister Ola Borten Moe now wants to open up waters off scenic Lofoten for oil drilling later this year, stirring up a heated debate among government allies, opposition politicians and members of his own Center Party. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of the Labour Party rejected Moe’s comments and said the area would [...]
Arctic drilling dispute heats up
January 9, 2013
As top government officials and business leaders huddled in southern Norway this week to discuss energy and environmental issues, oil and gas exploration plans continue to swirl around Norway’s northern areas. The government’s willingness to consider exploration in colder, deeper and more remote waters than ever before is fueling more debate over the risks of [...]
NRK’s ‘slow TV’ won more viewers
January 3, 2013
Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) made television history with its record-breaking “minute-by-minute” coverage of a coastal voyage on a Hurtigruten vessel two summers ago. It’s since made similar “slow TV” shows, and the latest coverage of a trip on Norway’s northernmost train line was another big hit over the holidays. More than a million Norwegians, or roughly [...]
Norwegian waters brimming with cod
December 31, 2012
This winter’s cod haul in Norway is predicted to break all records, and the Barents Sea is brimming with the fish. The fishing industry, however, fears that without an increase in demand, cod prices may drop, and they have embarked on a global hunt for new consumers. The North East Arctic cod stock, the largest [...]
