Blog – When a town in Arctic Norway transforms into “the world’s northernmost Chinatown”
Sitting on the rocky coastline of the slate gray Barents Sea, the hilly city of Kirkenes, Norway is located at a literal crossroads between east and west. Russia is only 20 minutes away by car, while Finland lies 40 minutes south.
Kirkenes’ location on the fault line between two civilizations often at odds has led it to fall repeatedly into the cross-hairs of war. But the city is also an unlikely melting pot where on street signs, the backwards R (“Я”) of the Cyrillic alphabet sits comfortably astride the A with a party hat (“Å”) of the Norwegian language, as one friend likes to call it.
Come February, Chinese characters will also be adorning local street signs. For the Barents Spektakel, a wintertime arts and culture festival held annually in Kirkenes since 2005 with upwards of 10,000 attendees, “lightboxes, signs and some quickly learnt Chinese phrases will make up the new streetscape, giving Kirkenes a new face and welcoming the future as the most important city on the Polar Silk Road,” according to the official website.
This year, the festival theme is “The World’s Northernmost Chinatown.” Michael Miller, who oversees media and public relations for the Norwegian collective behind the festival, affirmed that it was an “obvious choice.” Speaking by phone from Kirkenes, he explained, “With China’s White Paper about the Arctic and their Belt and Road Initiative, and by de facto their Polar Silk Road, Kirkenes is kind of placed along that route. And the development of Kirkenes and being a Chinatown, or being heavily influenced and invested in by China, it’s a very real possibility.”
Helle Siljeholm, artistic director for the festival’s 2019 edition, elaborated by phone on the deliberate choice of the “Chinatown” concept, which neatly captures an east-meets-west feel while conveying a creative buzz. “Most Chinatowns that I’ve been to have been hot spots for cultural invention and artists,” she described. Since the theme is also easy to understand, Siljeholm believes, “This will be a way to bring hopefully as many people as possible – locals, regionals, and internationals – into discussions about our potential future.” Emphasizing the plural, she stressed, “And there are many futures.”...MUCH MORE
A global history The rise of China is clearly affecting Kirkenes. Yet this is not the first time the city of 6,000 has found itself at the epicenter of global transformations despite lying at the edge of the European continent.
This past June, on a cold and blustery day, I listened to Rune Rafaelsen, the outspoken mayor of the Sør-Varanger municipality in which Kirkenes is located, run through the history of the complex borders in the place in which he was born and raised. In 1814, after Norway and Denmark lost the war against Sweden, the two countries entered into a personal union with their victorious neighbor. A final treaty demarcating the border was signed in 1826. “In Oslo at that time, which was called Kristiania, they didn’t know a thing,” Rafaelsen quipped. “And they still don’t.”
Throughout the long eighteenth century, international events reverberated across this corner of the North. During the Crimean War (1851-1853), fears that Russia would seize Sør-Varanger motivated Sweden to cease its alliance with Russia and instead take sides with England and France. “Big politics plays a role up here and has consequences on other places,” Rafaelsen reminded in an illustration of how global events can and do impact peripheries like the Arctic.
After the Soviet collapse, rather than be a pawn in yet another geopolitical great game, the city leveraged its strategic location to facilitate international diplomacy. In 1993, the International Barents Secretariat (IBS) was launched by the foreign ministers of four countries interested in establishing the so-called Barents Euro-Arctic Council: Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Russia....
