Adrian Braun, researcher and member of the Northern Political Economy team presents a unique place of the Arctic in the Barents sea coastal area in northern Norway.
Bugøynes is indeed an extraordinary spot in the European Arctic. It is a place that carries its history to this date and visitors can perceive an idea how it is to live next to the Arctic Ocean. Today, around 230 inhabitants live in Bugøynes, located in the Sør-Varanger municipality in northern Norway. With its colourful buildings and roofs, Bugøynes appears to be a typical tiny Norwegian fishing village, however a strong Finnish identity is still vivid inside Pykeijä (the Finnish name of Bugøynes) as people from Finland settled in this area in the 18th century, resulting into the fact that the Finnish language is still practiced today within the village. Consequently, this place is also often called Pikku-Suomi (Little Finland).
In the past decades, two profitable ways to do business were established in Bugøynes. The first one is related to the fishery sector by considering the hunt for one specific species in particular. Every autumn is the fishing season of King Crabs in the sea, a popular delicacy that is also exported into numerous countries. The Red King Crab is the largest crab species, a single crab could weigh more than ten kilograms and these animals allow a considerable market price. For instance the Japanese cuisine considers the King Crab of enormous value.
The other business sector with high relevance is tourism. Many tourists visit every year the village, particularly in the winter season, to get an impression of the surroundings of the Arctic Ocean area and some are excited to go for winter swimming at the Bugøynes beach. Such a touristic trip brought me almost five years ago to this exciting place when I was doing an exchange term for a Master semester at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Our group was just a few hours there, but I received many interesting impressions that I did not forget to this date. It was an afternoon in late November, the far North of Europe was covered with a big layer of snow, except of this beach in Bugøynes and some other parts of the coastal area that were frozen but free of snow while the waves of the Arctic Ocean were arriving continuously. A bright moon was hanging low over the horizon, making the scenery a very beautiful spot.
Bugøynes with its dark winters, beautiful environment, Norwegian & Finnish cultural diversity and businesses in fishery and tourism is a remote place in the Arctic but it is certainly not a forgotten one.
Text and photos: Adrian Braun