INTRO
“I am concerned with who will be the young women in the Barents Region in 2020”
Jarle Aarbakke
Leader of the national “Barents 2020” project
Senior researcher Britt Kramvig was asked by the editor of this website to write a text commenting on this theme. The geopolitical status of the High North may nowdays seam relatively peaceful and open for new interpretations. It has not always been like this, as Britt Kramvig explores. With the vast energy resources in the northern arena, it may not stay like this forever either.
Britt Kramvig Senior researcher
Norut Social Science Research Ltd
These days they call it the High North - the area where I lived as a child.
Back then it was part of the Cold North – on the frontier and border towards ”them” - the enemy, the Russian. My playground became the war-zone in the periods when the NATO-troops arrived. They came to practice. They practiced cold war. We used to hunt them down in the forest. Sometimes they gave us sweets and by this a taste of what the world tasted like on the outside – on the other side of our community. If we had good fortune, we could make them enter a competition in skiing or ski jumping. We almost always won. Soldiers in different uniforms, with different languages played and laugh with us. Soldiers in positions, behind canons and in tents – in the snow – in the cold north.
They came by ship back then. I could see them from my bedroom window. Loads and loads of tanks, cars, trailers, huge boxes of equipment, soldiers, guns – there were armed guards on the quay where we used too play. We could no longer enter. I bed at night, in the state between sleeping and waking – the sky was glooming in the light from the bomb coming from the east. A reminder of the present of the enemy, just behind those mountain. A reminder of the present of the deadly nuclear bomb.
Becoming woman, we were no longer part of the playful community searching for ways to entering the lives of the other. ”There are 10 gram women per men in this area” – they told us – with anxiousness and laughter in their voice. To scare us of. Young men - young soldiers. Fighting outside of restaurants and dancehalls. Protecting us as women they said, protecting us from strangers. The young local men where watching carefully every move we, as young women took. Who we danced with – who we talked to. Entering our bodies – our fragile sexuality. Those girls that did not followed the moral convention of the community left. Few of them returned.
These days they call it High north. Particular political attention is given to the northern areas. High North is, through the governmental Soria Moria declaration, said to be the most strategically important area in the coming years and where the Armed Forces will play a vital role. The international troops last winter were practicing what is said to be; “Cold Response”. 10 000 soldiers from 11 countries. The enemy - no longer the red team. The enemy these days difficult to identify. This year they were training how too handle local cold response, Cold Response from the communities the international forces enter. I was there. Guns where directed against us. I saw civilian being handcafted as we were driving by. Just for practice – just as part of the training program. But still; I wonder - what the local young girls dreams will look like?