ARCTIC: Norway’s Surprising Dual Elections & more – 16th Sep 2025

Góðan daginn from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Arctic Update from the 16th of September twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what’s going down North of the Arctic Circle!

Let’s kick things off in Norway with their election results. On Monday the 8th, state broadcaster NRK confirmed that the Norwegian Labor party and Jonas Gahr Støre, its leader, have secured four more years in government. The left coalition of parties secured a majority of parliamentary seats with eighty-eight, compared to eighty-one seats in the right coalition.

While Labor’s win takes the headlines, the biggest story might be coming from the right wing. The Conservative party had its worst election results in decades, with the far-right Progress party becoming the largest opposition party.

That wasn’t the only election taking place in Norway this week that featured a surprise second place. On Monday the 8th, NRK reported that in the Sami Parliament elections, the ruling Norwegian Sámi Association won the most votes, with about thirty-eight percent. Coming as runner-up was the Nordkalottfolket party, which took about thirty-two percent of the vote, up from about eighteen percent in the prior election.

Nordkalottfolket’s platform believes in equality between Norwegians, Sami, Kvens, and all who live in Norway, but wishes to achieve this by removing all land rights and other special privileges for Indigenous groups. They believe industrial development should proceed across Indigenous lands without the need for consultation or consent. This result shows that the desire for a move away from a traditional lifestyle is growing within Norway’s Indigenous communities.

Norway sees its Arctic future as being one in close cooperation with its Nordic neighbours. On Friday the 12th, the State Administration of Troms and Finnmark announced that the northern counties of Norway, Sweden and Finland are joining a new EU program to improve national security in northern Europe.

The project is called the High North Civil Preparedness Forum and will spend the next three years strengthening international cooperation for emergencies. Northern regional governments will arrange courses for their citizens to learn emergency response strategies, share information with each other, and ensure the Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian militaries can move freely within each other's territories.

Denmark and Greenland are looking to prepare for a military emergency too, in the form of record defence investments. On Friday the 12th, the Danish Defence Ministry announced its largest single military investment in the country’s history, with $9 billion US dollars destined to purchase eight new air defence systems.

With conflicts growing in Europe and threats to Greenland’s sovereignty coming from the US, Denmark has seen the need for record investments to defend its territory.

In other news, tourism in Greenland is booming. According to an article by the Greenlandic newspaper, Sermitsiaq, from Wednesday the 10th, international tourism exploded in the capital city of Nuuk. From January to June in twenty twenty-four, 3,400 international visitors arrived in Nuuk. That number has grown to over 53,000 this year. This has strained infrastructure in the city, with the municipal government announcing plans to create a new area to build hotels.

Companies such as Air Greenland, and TNT Nuuk already have advanced plans to construct new hotels, as tourism starts to have a huge impact on the Greenlandic economy.

Meanwhile, on Thursday the 11th, Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, unveiled a list of five projects intended to be massive economic kickstarters for the country. None of the five projects is located in the north, but Carney noted that an Arctic economic and security corridor that would link Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and the Prairies could make the list next time around.

The Nunavut and Northwest leaders both responded with positivity that this corridor is being considered for the second investment round, which Carney said will be confirmed in mid-November.

Canada’s north has historically faced many threats, including frostbite, Russia, and polar bears. But northern residents say there’s a new threat, the US. According to the initial results from the first-ever Annual Canadian Arctic Survey by the Observatory on Politics and Security in the Arctic released on Thursday the 11th, when asked about the most serious threat to life in the Canadian north, over thirty-seven percent responded the US, with China coming in second with thirty-five percent.

When asked about how to deal with such threats, eighty-five percent of respondents said Canada should actively assert its sovereignty and take serious action to do so.

Over in the US Arctic, economic forecasts for Alaska’s largest oil development are turning bleak. On Thursday the 11th, The Alaska Beacon reported that the state’s Department of Revenue has sharply downgraded its projections for the Willow oil project. While earlier forecasts in twenty twenty-three predicted $6.3 billion US dollars in lifetime revenue, the latest report estimates Alaska’s treasury will only see around $2.6 billion. The decline is linked to rising operating costs and falling oil prices.

The department also found that Willow is set to receive more in tax credits than it will generate in state tax revenue, meaning Alaskans will actually lose money to sustain the project, in what could become an economic burden rather than a boost.

Education in Alaska is also taking an economic hit this week. On Thursday the 11th, Mike Sfraga, the Chancellor of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, announced that the federal government has terminated all funding for Alaska native students. Sfraga says this amounts to almost $3 million US dollars of grant money, and will affect about twenty percent of the current students enrolled at the university.

This funding withdrawal comes a day after President Trump said he would terminate $350 million dollars of grants to education bodies aimed at supporting minorities, saying he believes the money is better spent elsewhere.

Next, Sweden is banking on mining. On Wednesday the 10th, Swedish mining company LKAB announced it is investing about $650 million US dollars into building a new mining facility in Gällivare, in Swedish Lapland. The nearby Malmberget iron mine has increased its extraction capacity and needs a new facility to sort and process its raw iron ore, and should be able to process an additional 8 million tonnes of raw ore every year once completed in twenty twenty-eight.

Moving over to Russia, where efforts to mitigate climate change might be struggling due to Western sanctions. On Wednesday the 10th, The Moscow Times reported that the sanctions issued by the US and Europe against Russia have prevented the country from accessing the technology and research needed to address serious climate threats.

The Russian Arctic consists of half of the entire Arctic region. If Western nations are serious about slowing climate change and keeping the north healthy, they may need to consider the removal of some sanctions on Russia.

This is a fascinating analysis worth a read. Check it out with the link in the show notes.

Speaking of research, a new study is changing just how we see ice in the north. On Tuesday the 9th, Stanford University published a study into exactly what lives in Arctic ice. Long thought to be a lifeless desert, the researchers have discovered that diatoms, a kind of single-celled algae, are thriving in the coldest places on Earth. The diatoms live on the bottom of sea ice, and skate around it using mucus secretions.

With this discovery, science now needs to understand how these diatoms affect the Arctic food web. If they turn out to be a key source of food in the north, the need to protect sea ice will grow even higher.

Finally in sport news, we’ve often covered the meteoric rise of the Arctic Norwegian football club, Bodø/Glimt, in previous episodes and now the club has made yet another huge step forward. On Thursday the 11th, the club announced that at a shareholders meeting, ninety-seven percent of voters voted in favour of the club building a new stadium, budgeted at over $120 million US dollars. The new stadium will increase the crowd capacity from 8,200 to 10,000 people, and hopes to secure Bodø/Glimt’s place as the most successful Arctic football club of all time.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

Our first Arctic Ramble is out now! In this special episode, Jack Ball, the Arctic Update writer, talks with political geographer and associate professor in the Geography Department at the University of Washington, Mia Bennett, whose new book, Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic, comes out on the 23rd of September. Check out the show with the link in the show notes!

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