---
title: "On the Neiden and the Pasvik, the Sámi Find Their Old Border Has Grown Teeth"
description: "Two centuries after Norway and Russia drew the line, war has made crossings, GPS trackers and friendships risky in Finnmark"
author: "Jan Sokol"
published: 2026-10-31T12:58:28Z
modified: 2026-11-01T01:08:10Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/on-the-neiden-and-the-pasvik-the-sami-find-their-old-border--7222a4
language: en
tags: ["russia", "war", "sami", "security", "europe"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# On the Neiden and the Pasvik, the Sámi Find Their Old Border Has Grown Teeth

*Two centuries after Norway and Russia drew the line, war has made crossings, GPS trackers and friendships risky in Finnmark*

By Jan Sokol · October 31, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/on-the-neiden-and-the-pasvik-the-sami-find-their-old-border--7222a4

## In brief

- Sámi communities have been split by the Norway-Russia border since 1826; about 2 percent of Sámi live in Russia
- Cross-border trips from Finnmark have largely stopped since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022
- A Kirkenes businessman was detained in Russia in June, suspected of possessing a firearm or ammunition
- Russian tourist visits to Norway fell from 250,000 in 2019 to 52,000 last year, and several local shops have closed
- GPS jamming has pushed herders to phone-network trackers, as the EU funds €16.4m in Norwegian border surveillance

The Neiden River runs into its fjord in Finnmark, Norway’s northernmost county, and splits around a rocky island called Skogerøya. Under the water, by the hundred, are king crabs, the fisherman’s bounty. A man whom [Eibhlis Gale-Coleman, writing for Al Jazeera](https://aljazeera.com/features/longform/2026/10/31/on-the-norway-russia-border-the-sami-people-face-a-growing-divide), calls Nils Boine looks out over this water. His grandmother was Sea Sámi, one of the Indigenous coastal people who have fished these fjords for generations.

Their homeland, Sápmi, does not recognise the map. It runs across northern Norway, Sweden and Finland and on into Russia’s Kola Peninsula, one of the most heavily militarised places on earth. In 1826 Norway and Russia fixed their border, and the Sámi of this corner of the Arctic woke up, so to speak, in two countries. Two hundred years on, most Sámi live on the Norwegian side; about 2 percent live in Russia. Around them now live Norwegians, Finns, Ukrainians, Russians and seasonal workers from abroad.

For most of its life the line was something people stepped across. An agreement between Oslo and Moscow still allows visa-free travel for residents living within 30km of the border. People went over to shop. They went over for weekends.

Then came February 2022.

## An arrest in Murmansk

Since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the crossings have stopped, partly out of solidarity with Kyiv and partly out of fear. To the West, Finnmark is the exposed northern flank of NATO, facing the armed Kola directly. Kirkenes, the Norwegian border town, has become a stage in a spy war: several Russian operatives have been caught there posing as tourists and fishermen.

“I have friends in Russia,” Boine says. “We used to go shopping in Russia, and go there for weekends.” Now, he says, “A local person was just arrested in Russia, so people are afraid to cross the border.”

![A snow-covered wooden bridge with a red barrier overlooks a river, with two distant figures on opposite banks and forested mountains beyond.](https://rews.cc/img/e941a5970759741bf12b592751071cbfa8ce796d.webp)

The local person is a Kirkenes businessman. The [Barents Observer reported](https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/news/norwegian-citizen-detained-in-russia/452051) that he was detained in June, that he often travelled to the Russian town of Nikel, and, citing Dagbladet, that he was arrested in Murmansk; it was unclear whether the police or the FSB had taken him. His lawyer, John Christian Elden, told the newspaper VG that the man had been remanded in custody until 25 July on suspicion of “possession of a firearm or ammunition”. Norway’s foreign ministry said through a spokesperson, Mariken Bruusgaard Harbitz, that it was “working to establish contact and provide practical assistance.” Writing at the end of October, Al Jazeera said he had been held for two months.

In a region where people hunt for pleasure, the charge landed close to home. On earlier occasions, the Barents Observer noted, Norwegians have been fined after Russian border guards found forgotten hunting cartridges in their cars. Residents now fear one stray box of shells left in a glovebox.

Boine believes the Norwegian foreign ministry is hampered “because we don’t have any diplomats in Russia.” That is not quite the official picture: Norway still keeps a mission in Moscow, which the Barents Observer has reported [received a defence attaché](https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/security/norways-mission-in-moscow-gets-defence-attache-from-northern-border/445240) from the northern border. But a man’s sense of how far his state can reach is also information.

The money has dried up along with the traffic. Russian visitors to Norway fell from 250,000 in 2019 to 52,000 last year. Boine’s family runs a tourism company that has survived because 80 percent of its customers come from Asia or Finland. Others have not been so fortunate. “Shops in the area have lost a lot of income without Russian \[tourists\],” he says. “Several shops have had to close.”

![A snow-covered wire basket rests outside a rustic red wooden building with a green door, overlooking bare trees, mountains, and water.](https://rews.cc/img/cbfd835520f61d518a5bb687a59eae0a27c22df7.webp)

His friendships across the line are frozen. “They are afraid to do something wrong or write something wrong,” he says. “You never know what might happen if they have too close contact.” And then: “I want to be careful.”

One could reflect that this is how empires reach the ordinary person. It does not take a tank. It takes a sentence a friend decides not to write.

## A screen that says Tromsø

Henrik Hoffmann, a German, came to Kirkenes in 2021, stayed, and co-founded Kirkenes Tours, working with Sámi herders and on hiking trails along the border. “I was nervous the first time,” he admits. “I kept checking my maps to make sure I hadn’t accidentally crossed.” Here the frontier is marked only by posts and clearings in the forest, and a careless walker can step over it. Touching a Russian marker brings a heavy fine. In June 2026, three Swedish tourists were reportedly fined 8,000 Norwegian kroner ($830) each for throwing stones across the line.

The granite and birch look empty, but they are watched: towers on the horizon, cameras hidden in the branches overhead. Hoffmann says he sees more Norwegian military patrols than civilians. What interrupts his walks is mostly reindeer.

Each animal carries its owner’s mark, a pre-approved pattern cut into the ear, an ancient practice. In May and June the siida, the herders’ organisation, rounds up the calves with huskies, snowmobiles and drones so that every one is marked correctly. For years herders also fitted reindeer with GPS trackers. Along this border, that no longer works reliably.

![A vintage-style illustration shows three reindeer in a birch forest, with a red tracking collar on the foreground reindeer and a tree-mounted camera nearby.](https://rews.cc/img/ad232aebbc178feb39a9495f739565f08f4e7d5e.webp)

The area is often hit by GPS jamming and spoofing. Aircraft landing at Kirkenes have had navigation symbols blocked or replaced with false positions. The interference has reportedly begun reaching lower elevations too, into the hills where hikers and herders move. “I have experienced it saying I am in Tromsø,” Hoffmann says, a city roughly 800km away by road. He carries a satellite phone. Many herders have given up on GPS altogether. “Now, they’re mostly using GSM trackers, which rely on the phone network,” he says.

## Animals do not read treaties

Finnmark’s brown bears are increasing, and they cross between Russia and Norway freely. Some residents link the rise to less hunting on the Russian side; with cross-border conservation work in decline, nobody can say for sure. “Last year, a man was bitten,” Hoffmann says. At a stable where his girlfriend rides, a bear attacked a horse in its paddock. Bears and wolves threaten reindeer that roam unattended for much of the year, and bears break the fences that keep herds from wandering into Russia.

The state, meanwhile, is building. After a 2024 report by the Norwegian National Police Directorate, the European Union granted Norway 16.4 million euros ($18.5m) for border surveillance. The money comes from the EU’s Integrated Border Management Fund, the [Barents Observer reported](https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/news/norway-strengthens-border-security/439747), and pays for new fencing at the most exposed points, including the Storskog checkpoint and the old crossing at Skafferhullet, along with sensors, cameras and drones along the 198-kilometre frontier. Norway first fenced part of this border in 2016, after some 5,000 migrants came in from Russia in 2015. By 2033 the Finnmark Brigade is meant to be fully operational across the Arctic north.

On the Pasvik River the boundary can be seen. It rarely feels settled. The bears cross it, the reindeer drift toward it, the false signals pour over it from the east, and the people, who once crossed it for the weekend, now stay home.