The international seed vault that Norway administers on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen in Svalbard has been ranked among the world’s most influential projects during the past 50 years. That puts it on par with the Apollo 11 moon landing, bitcoins and Harry Potter. The vault landed on a list compiled by the Project Management […]
Norwegian vessel sails to North Pole
August 21, 2019
Norway’s polar exploration heroes Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen never managed to sail all the the way to the North Pole, but a vessel from the country’s coast guard finally did on Wednesday. The ship’s captain and an Arctic researcher planted flags on the North Pole at exactly 9:32am. “It all went much faster than […]
Russia posts missiles near the border
August 8, 2019
Russian officials have disclosed that they’ve moved a coastal missile system to a new location on Russia’s Sredny Peninsula in the far north. The new location is so close to Norway that it can be seen on clear days from Vardø, the northeastern Norwegian town that’s also home to a controversial radar and surveillance system […]
Norway braced for Russian exercises
August 6, 2019
The Russian Navy is expected to launch “unusually high activity” off the coast of Northern Norway next week, after announcing more military training exercises in the Norwegian Sea. Three US surveillance aircraft have joined Norway in efforts to keep an eye on the Russians. “A large number of naval vessels are on their way from […]
Calls roll in for a train line to Tromsø
July 30, 2019
Norway’s Socialist Left party (SV) is calling “all aboard” for its proposal to build a long-sought train line to Tromsø in Northern Norway. The country’s train service currently terminates in Bodø, but the state railroad directorate has just concluded a study on extending it to Tromsø via Narvik. Called Nord-Norgebanen (NNB), the train line would […]
White whale’s fate subject to debate
July 21, 2019
The tame white whale known as Hvaldimir disappeared from his refuge in Hammerfest late last week, only to resurface Sunday near Alta, more than 50 kilometers away. Debate flew during the weekend over whether he should be escorted back to Hammerfest and cared for by researchers and minders, or allowed to chart his own course. […]
North Cape battle polarizes community
June 25, 2019
A major hotel chain backed by the slimmest possible majority of local politicians won last week’s battle over control of the North Cape. The war is far from over, however, after heated debate over land rights has polarized the local community. “The people are split,” declared Kjell Walter Sivertsen of the Labour Party after the […]
Battle flares over popular North Cape
June 19, 2019
Norway’s North Cape is one of the country’s foremost tourist attractions where visitors have long had to controversially pay for access to the Arctic plateau. Now coastal voyage line Hurtigruten is challenging the Scandic hotel chain’s operating monopoly on the North Cape, through a complaint to the European Free Trade Association’s surveillance authority ESA. Conflicts […]
Two East Barents wells come up dry
June 18, 2019
State-owned oil company Equinor is disappointed while climate activists are relieved: Norway’s Petroleum Directorate has reported that a second well drilled by Equinor and its partners in a once-promising portion of the eastern Barents Sea was “classified as dry,” and has now been “permanently plugged and abandoned.” The failure to find oil in the well drilled […]
Oil-happy minister defies own experts
June 3, 2019
Oil & Energy Minister Kjell-Børge Freiberg set off more sparks heading into the weekend, when he invited oil companies to apply for 90 new exploration licenses on oil and gas fields his ministry is opening on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. Freiberg is thus once again defying the state’s own professional advisers, in addition to all […]
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