After six weeks of solid travel, I have arrived in Tromsø, a town bustling with shops, restaurants and cultural activities– and headquarters of my host institution, the Norwegian Polar Institute. Reporting since mid April from a remote science base, a coast guard ship and small fishing villages, I feel like I’m in a big city– and by Norwegian standards I am.

As Norway’s seventh-largest city, Tromsø boasts a whopping population of 70,000. For many Norwegians, the far north is culturally and geographically a separate world from the south, narrowing to as little as 10 miles (16 kilometers) from coast to border (Sweden) near the town of Narvik . This is the far north’s appeal– a vast, forgotten land of rugged mountains, endless tundra and jagged coast begging to be explored. Just two counties comprise the stretch from Tromsø to the Russian border, with the largest, Finnmark, twice the size of Vermont and less than two people per square kilometer.

Even in Tromsø, unspoiled nature is just minutes away. Sveinn Are Hanssen, an evolutionary biologist with the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, has been studying the eider duck colony on nearby Grindøya Island for nearly 20 years, zipping across a short stretch of sea in a skiff every other day each spring. As we approach the island, a gull fearlessly dives on a huge white-tailed eagle as flocks of male eiders in tuxedo plumage eagerly crowd lone females swimming offshore. We are worlds apart from the city.

Male eiders (Somateria mollissima) crowd around lone female along shore of Troms County near Tromso, Norway. © Randall Hyman

“It started out as a theoretical study on a large population that was conveniently nearby,” says Hanssen, “but nests have dropped from 1000 to 150 and now breeding success and blood sampling is practical data we can apply to other Arctic animals, including polar bears.” Because females fast 23 days during nesting, residual pollutants like PCBs that are normally trapped in body fat are released into the blood, weakening hormonal and immune systems. Lactating polar bears endure similar stress after hibernation, so Hanssen also tracks an eider colony in Svalbard each summer.

Connecting such data with the big picture has become increasingly urgent as Norway’s far north experiences dramatic shifts in weather and human activity. Tromsø-based Barents Watch is emerging as a key tool toward this end, pooling heretofore scattered data on fisheries, climate, ship traffic and industrial development in one central data bank that instantly generates intricate, layered maps in endless combinations– easily accessible at www.barentswatch.no. “We celebrate our first birthday this week,” says regional director Frode Kjersem. “Norway wants to develop the Arctic Ocean and Barents and Norwegian Seas, and we want to show the world that we are in control of these waters.”

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Tromsø, Norway. © Randall Hyman

It all ends here. And it all starts here– with mind-blowing facts and historical contradictions. Norway’s Russian border is defined largely by one river, Grense Jakobselv, near the town of Kirkenes. Likewise the island town of Vardø sits at the end of a peninsula protruding far above Russia in the Barents Sea, farther east than every single capital in Europe. All of Sweden, most of Finland, all of the Baltic nations (and even St. Petersburg!) lie west of this longitude. While there are tensions along the border, this is the only land the Red Army ever invaded and then retreated from without keeping any territory. And so begin the contradictions.

At the frontier of one of the most peaceful nations on Earth, cradle of the Nobel Peace Prize, the border is festooned with guard towers, warning signs and surveillance cameras, yet a statue of a Russian soldier commands a hilltop in the middle of Kirkenes with a plaque thanking the Red Army for liberation from the Nazis (and from Finland, an Axis ally). Vital to the German attacks on Allied naval convoys supplying Russian troops, Kirkenes shares with Dresden the distinction of the most frequently bombed city in WWII, courtesy of the USSR. Now a staunch NATO ally, Norway hosts an expansive radar installation at Vardø which the West claims is a space junk tracking station, but which Russia angrily denounces as an early warning system.

Nation’s easternmost town is dominated by radar domes and historic star fort equipped with old and new cannons overlooking maritime Russian border; Vardo, Norway. © Randall Hyman

No stranger to militarization, Vardø also boasts a star fortress which Denmark built in the mid 1700s. It is now purely ceremonial, but is especially popular each year when the sun first returns after winter’s long darkness and two cannons are fired to signal a day off of school. On the mainland sits another vestige of occupation,  a sturdy stone church King Oscar of Sweden erected in 1869 at the mouth of Grense Jakobselv, firmly rooted in bedrock of  Norway’s oldest mountains, tagged at 3 billion years.

Long at the crossroads of invasions, occupations and retreats, this part of Norway has its own personality, formed by Finnish Samis, Russians, and dozens of other nationalities that feel at home in this occasional no-man’s land– resulting in an alluring mix of racial features in the faces of the local population. International politics aside, Norwegians and Russians have a surprising tradition of friendship. Even during the deep freeze of the Cold War, they cooperated in building five hydroelectric power plants along the border. Fittingly, the fishing grounds that lie between their nations deep in the Barents Sea are jointly controlled and known as the Gray Zone, somewhat blurring the line that defines the end, and start, of Norway’s Arctic waters.

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Girls’ faces show mix of Sami and Norse ancestries common in Kirkenes, Norway. © Randall Hyman

“Hip hurra for syttende mai!,” is the cheer heard throughout Norway on this day, the equivalent of America’s July 4th. It is National Day, and Norwegians celebrate their 1814 constitution in grand style.  No military bombast and no fireworks, just parades, flags, national costumes (bunads) and endless ice cream and cake. It is a day for kids, including high school seniors (aka “Russ”), who end their two-week-plus graduation celebration today before taking final exams.

In tiny Kirkenes, where the West ends and the Russian bear casts its long shadow along a 195-kilometer border, independence and freedom are keenly felt. Three children at the local grammar school deliver a speech in Norwegian, Russian and Sami, extolling the importance of dialog, not guns, to protect Norway’s abundant blessings. Russian artistic director, Luba Kuzovnikova, who runs the annual arts festival, gives a keynote speech in town square jokingly declaring herself a member of the Barents Liberation Army, reflecting local concerns that outside oil and mining interests may soon call the shots.

“Of course we realize that oil and gas must be developed,” she tells me afterwards, “but there should be a balance.” Thanks to the 1993 Euro-Arctic Barents Region agreement between Norway, Russia, Finland and Sweden, hundreds of regional projects have hatched in the past 20 years without the interference of federal bureaucracies, but this may change as the Russian bear grows restive and multinational companies step in.

It’s all fun and games today, though. Children fill their bellies with sweets and admiringly chase after Russ students to collect the personalized photo cards they carry with slogans that range from sassy to risqué. National Day is bittersweet for high school seniors, with a carefree existence coming to an end. Norway is egalitarian in terms of salaries, but the educational system is rigidly split. Red-pants Russ go to liberal arts universities, black pants go to vocational college and two-year apprenticeships in their chosen trades. Red or black pants, white or blue collar, everyone is Norwegian today.

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Celebrants wave Norwegian flags during 17th of May parade in Kirkenes, Norway. © Randall Hyman

From the moment I arrive in Honningsvåg, I see this is a visit about passages. I already have lots of landscape pictures of North Cape, northernmost point in Europe, but this visit is about people, the community, and huge changes ahead. I am greeted by a group of high school girls, full of life and mischief, standing in the middle of the main street, music blaring, whistles blowing, jumping about in bright red pants with the letters “Russ” written down their legs. It is the 17-day high school graduation celebration, aka Russ, with wild antics and parties leading up to a finale on National Day, May 17th.

Unfortunately, it is also the week BEFORE, not after, exams! With great wealth and seismic changes in the cultural landscape, the celebration is increasingly a venue for binge drinking, promiscuity and lavish spending on custom-painted, sound-rigged party vans and even buses. It looks innocent, and in small towns it generally is, with a list of pranks that earn knots tied onto the Russ cap tassle for each success, ranging from kissing a teacher to going 17 days without changing pants. Adults look the other way, figuring this is a final blast before more serious life begins.

At the other end of the innocence spectrum come confirmations this same week, with 14-year-olds and their relatives filling churches and banquet halls in white gowns and bunads, the national costume, which are distinct in design and decoration for each region. At a cost of $5000 each, bunads are bestowed upon confirmants to last a lifetime.

A few days later, the older generation has its day at a coffeehouse party presented by Perleporten, the town’s new culture house. Musicians perform songs from yesteryear and a local movie director tells funny tales of his life making films. No one wants it to end. One elderly woman, with tears in her eyes, tells owner Birgit Johansen, “This was my best day in years.”

Each age has its rite of passage this week, all against the backdrop of a major announcement in February that oil discovered offshore will will be pumped to an enormous storage facility to be built outside town in underground reservoirs blasted out of solid rock, bringing unimaginable wealth. “Up till now we’ve been based on fishing and tourism,” muses Hans Hansen, regional marketing director for Rica Hotels, “but this society is going to go through tremendous changes.”

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High school girls pose in their red Russ pants in Honningsvåg, Norway. © Randall Hyman

Hammerfest, northernmost town in the world, is at the crossroads of past and future, from vestiges of the fiery annihilation of northern Norway during the Nazi retreat, to the world’s first subsea natural gas well and liquefaction plant in the Arctic.

On May 8th, 68th anniversary of the last day of WWII, a small cadre of veterans lays wreaths and salutes the flag in a snowstorm outside city hall. “My uncle was local communist party secretary,” recounts naval officer Gunnar Bolle, “but the membership list was hidden in a barn in the hay. The cow ate it and when her calf was born they named it Red for Josef Stalin. Nazis had spies, though, and sent him to a concentration camp. He and hundreds of others were saved by the ‘white buses’ when the Swedish Red Cross evacuated Scandinavian prisoners toward the end of the war.”

Norwegian World War II veterans gather outside city hall in snow storm to commemorate May 8th VE Day in Hammerfest, Norway. © Randall Hyman

Not a single building stood amid the ashes after the war, but locals rebuilt. Citizens never destroyed the Nazi gun batteries in the cliffs which overlook the sea and Melkøya, a nearby island that is now a mass of shiny pipes and huge tanks storing liquified natural gas. Numbers are impressive: converting a sleepy fishing town just a decade ago into a vibrant hub employing 600 in the gas industry, the Melkøya facility runs five 45MW, 70,000 HP gas turbines cooling incoming gas from sea temp to -163ºC, compressing the gas volume 600 times and producing 4.3 million tons of LNG annually.

Admirably, the facility recaptures all of the resident CO2 (approx 800,000 tons) in the natural gas itself and pumps it back into the subsea extraction reservoir, but the huge turbines that compress the gas to liquid and power the sprawling plant emit some 700,000 tons into the atmosphere each year– 2% of Norway’s total output. The pipeline and borehole lie hidden 140 kilometres (87 mi) to the northwest, with nary a rig nor floating platform to belie what lies 300 meters (1000 feet) below the surface of the Barents Sea.

The race for oil, gas, and other natural resources in the Arctic Ocean is gathering speed, with multinationals vying for position. Paradoxically, the average Norwegian home runs on 95% renewable energy, as compared to 10% on mainland Europe. Hydroelectric dams, windmills and tidal turbines provide clean energy at home, but Norway’s unparalleled standard of living and social welfare is solidly based upon oil and gas exports and the development of new reserves in the Norwegian and Barents Seas.

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Specialized tanker docks at Melkøya island to fill up with liquiefied natural gas in Hammerfest, Norway. © Randall Hyman

Traveling by cruise ship from the dark nights of the Lofoten Islands to the endless daylight of the midnight sun along the northernmost coast of mainland Europe, I am back in the Arctic Ocean. With roots as a coastal steamship company serving isolated towns along Norway’s western and northern shores in 1893, Hurtigruten (The Fast Route) is now a modern cruise line with five-star food and accommodations.

What makes it different from any other cruise you’ll ever take is that it is still a ferry and shipping company providing vital goods and services to the same remote towns it was founded on. While tourists sit on the upper decks eating gourmet food in the lap of luxury and watching breathtaking mountains and scenic fishing villages roll by, serious business travels below. Cars, trucks, hardware, heavy equipment… all the things that are better shipped by water than land or air. Small villages no other cruise ships ever visit are vital stops along the way and gateways to the real Norway, enhanced with onboard programs and shore excursions featuring special landmarks and activities.

No easy sailing for the skippers, though, according to Bjørnar Johansen, purser aboard the M/S Richard With: “We have only a five-meter draft so that we can pass through inner channels where it’s just six meters deep at ebb tide– that’s one meter clearance. In these winds, it’s like maneuvering a haystack.” With tourism booming in the Barents Sea and the Hurtigruten plying these waters year round, this is indeed the fast route to the soul of Norway.

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Hurtigruten ship, Richard With, sits in port at Harstad, Norway. © Randall Hyman

A week aboard the Norwegian Coast Guard frigate, K/V Andenes, has taken me southward 1125 kilometers (700 miles) across the Greenland Sea from the High Arctic of Svalbard (with a stopover at the weather station on Bear Island, most southerly of the Svalbard archipelago– and an obligatory skinny dip in subzero water)  to the much warmer waters of the Norwegian Sea in the Lofoten Islands, where midnight sun has not yet arrived.  Strange to see darkness again!

Arctic seas are the wintering and spawning grounds of Norway’s biggest fishery, cod. With climate change and warming waters, fisheries have moved dramatically northward.  Cod and haddock have never been more plentiful in the Barents Sea and the main problem can be catching too much too quickly, with the record being 40 tons of cod in five minutes! The Coast Guard (Kystvakt) boards these vessels to ensure quotas are not exceeded and check that nets and lines meet regulations.

Kystvakt also provides vital search and rescue, saving vessels like a Russian cruise ship years ago that hit an iceberg and began sinking with nearly 1000 passengers.  A sister ship of K/V Andenes, built for a crew of 60, rescued everyone leaving barely enough room aboard to stand, let alone sleep, until docking in Svalbard. Even without 1000 extra guests, room aboard the K/V Andenes is tight. Norway requires that men serve one year in the military, optional for women. Many women do enlist, six aboard the Andenes.

Norwegians are informal, with no military stiffness or saluting, but real dedication to their jobs. As fisheries migrate to the northern reaches of the Greenland, Norwegian and Barents Seas and bigger cruise ships chase the ever-receding ice into polar regions like Svalbard, the Coast Guard will need plenty more sailors to patrol the melting Arctic.

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Norwegian Coast Guard frigate on patrol in Arctic Ocean. © Randall Hyman

As I leave the town of Longyearbyen aboard a Coast Guard ship bound for the Lofoten Islands, snapshots of  Svalbard life play through my mind… kids riding bikes on snow and ice, a high school parking lot filled with nothing but snowmobiles, schoolchildren skiing into the mountains on a field trip with teachers carrying rifles, lone skiers trudging 700 feet up fjord walls above town for 45-second downhill thrill rides (no ski lifts here!), moms driving kids to school in snowmobile cabs past the occasional reindeer.

Svalbard gun laws are unique, too. You can carry a gun once you’re 18, but no training is required unless you join a hunting club, legal age 16. Student dorms, where I stayed, all have weapons lockers. Snowmobiles never head out of town without at least one rifle strapped on the back. High school sports teams snowmobile 55 kilometers (34 miles) south over the roadless tundra to the Russian coal mining town of Barentsburg to compete four times a year and hang out afterwards partying and staying the night.

This relates to Svalbard’s unique status in the world of geopolitics, where it has long been an outpost for staking claim to Arctic Ocean resources. After WWI, over 40 signatory nations agreed it would be a non-militarized Norwegian territory open to all treaty nations for resource exploitation. Few nations aside from Russia ever exercise these rights, but as polar ice disappears, fishing boats, cargo traffic and petroleum exploration push increasingly farther north.  The Norwegian government recently awarded Longyearbyen $40,000,000 to build a new port for accommodating cruise line traffic that has nearly quadrupled in the past ten years.

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Longyearbyen in April snows of Svalbard, Norway. © Randall Hyman