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Friday, November 29, 2013

9

The sky had turned deep red by the time Ante and Bjorn reached the check point which was situated on a flat area with a commanding view of the fjord. Ante pulled the car up to a small box-like office with a barrier blocking the road on either side, waving his hand to the guard inside as the barrier was pulled up to let his car pass.

The living quarters were located to the left of the road, with a mostly empty parking space at the back. And Bjorn noticed to his surprise, as Ante drove passed the barracks that the road on to Neiden was not cleared of snow.

"I would think that has kept traffic down a bit," Bjorn said, trying not to sound too ironic.
"It has indeed," Ante said with a big smile as he parked the car right outside the entrance to the barracks. "But the road will be cleared in a few days from now, so we should see traffic increase pretty soon."
"So the road has not been open all winter?"
"Indeed. Life has not been too hectic."
"Has there been anyone coming up here at all?"
"Only the pizza delivery man, and the guy from Pingo, delivering groceries."

Bjorn had to laugh. People had been staying at the check point, with no other people to check than those delivering stuff that they had ordered.

"What can I say?" Ante continued, parking his car next to a blue Ford. "This is the military. Things don't have to make sense."

Thursday, November 28, 2013

8

It did not take long before the two men reached an abandoned air field with a surprisingly long runway, considering the modest size of the nearby village. And Bjørn remarked on this, also mentioning that he had seen the control tower from the ferry on the way into the port.

"It is a cold war relic," Ante explained. "The idea was to air lift soldiers and equipment into the area on short notice. This whole bay was to act like a fortress, impenetrable by the advancing red army. There are nuclear bunkers out there, remnants of a missile defence system, and all sorts of stuff."

"It was never properly opened," Ante continued. "All of Finnmark was unilaterally declared a demilitarized zone by the government to please the Russians, so this complex was never officially anything but a local air field. But it was closed down almost immediately after the fall of the Berlin wall, and it was completely abandoned when the village was de-inhabited after the iron mine closed a few years later."

"So it never saw much activity," Bjorn asked, intrigued by the strange site.
"Never. There were about twenty men here at the most, back in the sixties. The idea was to get troops and equipment up here super fast in the event of an attack, not to have stuff parked up here before hand. There was almost no interaction with the locals, though. I guess they were under strict orders not to mingle, so as not to give away any secrets. You see, the missile defence system was parked here all along, and it was fully operational. This was top secret of course. Very few knew of it before they started shipping the missiles out of here, and everyone could see what had been transported in at night over the decades, in big anonymous crates, so not to let anybody see what they were up to. The missiles were hidden in under ground silos. All part of a large system of bunkers."

Bjorn looked back at the empty expanse of tarmac, the tower, and a few barracks, as Ante approached a hill and a curve. The airfield disappeared out of view, and Bjorn turned back to look at the road ahead of them. When they reached the crest of the hill, they could see Lundby clearly in the distance. There was an intense orange glow from the setting sun illuminating the cloudy sky from behind the mountains to the west of the village.

Little wooden houses were scattered around on the side of a hill protruding out into the fjord, partly hidden from view by a nearer hill. Two cranes sticking up from behind the nearest hill bare witness of building activity, presumably in anticipation of the great influx of asylum seekers that would be moved to Lundby from other centres around Norway in the coming months.

More than ten thousand asylum seekers would have to either move to Lundby, or get out of the country by the end of the year. And this ultimatum had already had the effect of dramatically reducing the flow of asylum seekers to Norway, especially since all new arrivals were moved directly to Lundby. The expectation was therefore that less than half of all the asylum seekers currently in Norway would choose Lundby to deportation. But that would still mean an influx of several thousand people, so the building activity was still warranted.

Bjorn's thoughts drifted back to the woman on the ferry. He felt anxious on her behalf at the thought of the many desperate people who would soon be living in close proximity of her. He wondered if she fully realized what sort of danger she was setting herself up for. Moving into her grandparents' place at a time when the whole place was being turned into a modern day gulag was such an insane thing to do that he could not make any sense of it.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

7

Not being very interested in football, Bjorn remained standing in the front of the office, behind the men clustering around the TV screen. He followed the game with muted interest, looking out of the window every now and again to look for signs of anyone coming to pick him up.

After a few minutes, he noticed a car in the distance, a red sedan charging along the road down by the fjord, coming in and out of view on its way towards the Port. The bright head lights made it easy to spot in the grey surroundings as it flashed its lights directly in Bjorn's direction every time it came out from a curve that had briefly hidden it from view.

As the car came closer, it remained in view for longer periods of time until it was no longer hidden at all, charging down the final stretch towards the port. The car disappeared briefly behind a large shed by the entrance to the port before coming back in view, making a wide curve towards the check point, completely ignoring the markings on the tarmac, separating parking areas from lanes of traffic, bus stops, and the like.

The driver was, by the look of it, deliberately trying to make an extravagant point of breaking all the rules as he increased his speed during the final hundred yards just to slam on the breaks and bring the car to a complete stop as it slid screeching sideways into place in front of the office.

"That must be Ante," Trond said without  taking his eyes off the TV.
"That's my man?" Bjorn asked, putting down his mug of coffee.
"Yes," Trond replied, taking a quick look out of the window to make absolutely sure of the identity of the driver.

Bjorn took his back pack and left the office, not waiting for Ante to get in, and thanking the men for the coffee as he left. The car stood right across from the door of the office with the driver's seat facing it, and the driver rolled down the window to greet Bjorn as he stepped into the cold.

"So you are Ante?" Bjorn asked.
"And you must be Bjorn."
"Sure am," Bjorn replied.
"Then, hop in!"

Ante signalled to Bjorn that he should take the front seat before rolling up the window, quickly so as not to loose more heat than absolutely necessary. Getting into the car after tossing his back pack into the back seat, Bjorn sat down and strapped on his seat belt, anticipating correctly that the drive back to the Neiden check point would be at least as speedy as Ante's drive to the Port.

The road turned out to be in pretty bad shape, and Bjorn was tossed around in his seat as Ante ignored the smaller pot holes and swerved sharply around the bigger ones. But the need to focus on his driving to navigate the pot holes, did not prevent Ante from engaging Bjorn in small talk, pointing out things along the road as they passed them, and asking Bjorn about his trip and his first impressions of the arctic.

Ante talked in a thick local dialect that Bjorn could not help find amusing, since the man's extravagant driving and talkativeness had every mark of the typical stereotype portrayal of a North Norway inhabitant, flamboyant, foul mouthed and passionate. Dark haired and with subtle Asian features, Bjorn guessed the man to be Sami, and asked him politely if this was true.

"How did you guess?" Ante asked with a broad smile.
"Well..."
"Of course I am," Ante continued without waiting for an answer. "My family has been up here for generations."
"Really?"
"Rain deer herding and fishing, that's what we used to do up here before my grandfather gave it up and started working at the iron mine instead. And when that was closed down, and the fish processing plant folded too, that was the end of it."
"And now?"
"Well, most of my family has moved south. My parents are living on the dole in Kirkenes, and I'm the only one up here with a job."

Monday, November 25, 2013

6

Bjorn went for a short stroll along the perimeter of the ferry landing, taking in some more impressions of the place before returning to the checkpoint where he entered the small box-like structure that constituted the office. He had noticed while walking about, that Trond was checking diligently the cars that had lined up to drive on board the waiting ferry, and he asked one of Trond's colleagues, as he entered the office, if any of them had managed to catch anyone trying to escape the colony.

The man smiled at him, and said that they had not been having any such luck as of yet, before offering Bjorn a cup of coffee.

"No such luck?" Bjorn asked before accepting the man's offer to pour him a cup.
"No such luck, I'm afraid," the man confirmed, handing Bjorn a mug of freshly brewed coffee. "You see, there is a bounty on any refugee we manage to catch. We get an extra month's wage for each one."
"Is that so?"
"It is. The prospect keeps us diligent, and it makes it harder for the desperate ones to bribe their way to freedom."
"Makes sense. But you haven't caught anyone yet, have you?"
"I guess they know it's hopeless. Not only do they have to get passed us, they have to find their way into the parallel economy too, and Kirkenes is just too small for a refugee to hide."

The man looked like he was about to expand on his thoughts when he was interrupted by Trond giving him a signal through the wide window behind Bjorn, to raise the barrier that was preventing the cars from entering the ferry. The man excused himself, and turned to push a button on a dashboard, prompting the barrier to be raised, and the few cars that had been waiting to enter, drove onto the ferry, making a clattering noise as they drove onto the steel plate hanging out from the front of the boat.

Once the cars were well on board, together with two pedestrians that Trond appeared to know from before, the steel plate was raised, and pretty soon the ferry started moving away from the wharf and out to the fjord, heading for Kirkenes. Trond entered the office, and they all sat down in separate chairs, waiting for the ferry to return in two hours' time.

The sound of a TV that had been muted while the ferry had been at the wharf, was turned on again, and everyone returned to watching the football match that was being broadcasted, commenting on the game, and expressing their feelings with muted cries of excitement as the players chased the ball back and forth on the green grass, some distant place, far to the south, where spring was well on its way.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

5

The ferry came to a complete stop at a wharf separated from the deep water harbour by a large round rock sticking half way into the water. The ramp was lowered, and everyone were allowed to leave, with the police officer escorting the Africans to a small office in the middle of the open area directly in front of the ferry, and the young woman, with her oversized suitcase, hurrying over to a waiting bus a bit further up.

Bjorn´s instructions, which he received a week before leaving for his assignment, were to report to the chief officer at the Lundby Port checkpoint, which had to be the office directly in front of him. But, seeing that the men at the check point would have to take care of the Africans first, he went over to the rounded rock to the side of the wharf to waste some time, climbing its moderate incline to get another full view of the port.

The deep water harbour looked completely abandoned with no sign of any activity, and if it had not been for two cars parked over by a shed at the far eastern edge of the port, he would not have guessed that anyone was there at all. However, just as he was about to turn and go back down the rock, he heard the distant clatter of a heavily loaded train approaching the port.

And as if this clatter had been some sort of signal, two men came out of the shed, heading across the tarmac of the port in the direction of the machinery designed to move iron ore onto the heap at the other end of the port. The train came into view from behind a hill to the east, coming to a slow stop as it reached the port.

Bjorn was at once fascinated by the scene where everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Even the men walking briskly over to the heavy machinery seemed to move slowly, surrounded as they were by big structures on every side.

Bjorn tossed a glance towards the check point to see if he could stand and watch the spectacle across the water for a little longer, but to his surprise, the Africans were already gone, and nowhere to be seen. He hurried down the rock and over to the office where he presented himself to the first man he met.

"So you are Bjorn" the man said, clearly expecting him. "I´m Trond, chief officer at this checkpoint."
"Glad to meet you."
"Can I see your papers."

Handing him his papers, he could not help noticing the police officer that had escorted the Africans, standing behind him. And still puzzled about their whereabouts, he asked about them.

"They are on their way to Lundby" the officer explained, adding "on the bus" in way of further explanation.
"You just put them on the bus? Just like that?"
"Yes."
"With no escort?"
"With no escort."
"No interrogation? No nothing?"
"We just hand out these tokens, one to each of them, and the rest is up to them," the officer explained, pulling a plastic chip out of his pocket.
"You are sending them to the casino?" Bjorn asked in amazement.

The officer smiled at Bjorn´s bewilderment, before explaining that the tokens function as money in the village.

"They can of course be wasted on the casino," the officer continued, "but I think most people have other priorities when they get here. We only give them enough for the bus fair, and a single night at the local hotel. The rest is up to them."

So this was the new Norwegian policy towards asylum seekers, thought Bjorn to himself, shocked to hear that people were completely left to their own devices in this terribly hostile environment, where a night sleeping rough on the streets would see you dead before dawn.

The officer turned to a colleague, asking him to call the Neiden checkpoint to pick up Bjorn. Then he turned back to Bjorn again, explaining that the company taking care of the asylum seekers have promised to arrange shelter and food in return for non-interference by the authorities.

"We do go into Lundby to check on the conditions from time to time. And so far, everything seems to be in order," the officer continued, noting that Bjorn was still quite stunned to learn the cold hard reality of the country´s new policy towards asylum seekers.

Trond excused himself, heading over to an approaching car. "I´ll let you know when your colleague arrives. Feel free to sit down in the office, or walk around as you please."

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

4

The ferry passed through a narrow straight, only a few hundred metres wide, before entering a wider and more open landscape. The mountains that had come progressively closer together, pulled back, revealing a port on the south shore, and a small cluster of houses on a low hill protruding into the fjord some distance further up.

Everything looked small in the grand landscape, but the port turned out to be quite a lot bigger than Bjorn had imagined. It was equipped to handle at least two ships simultaneously, with one part of the port dedicated to handling iron ore, and another part equipped with a large crane that could be used to unload containers.

It struck Bjorn as a bit strange to have a big crane on a port that had iron ore as its only export. However, considering how isolated the port was, it probably made sense to have a crane capable of unloading whatever machinery the mine might require directly from a ship rather than to have such equipment delivered in parts through alternative routes, and Bjorn let the thought rest with this as he proceeded to look for other land marks and tell tale signs of his future residence.

Bjorn was scrutinizing the hills to the south of the village for any sign of the check point where he would be spending the next few months when he was interrupted in his thoughts by the ticket controller.

"Is this your first trip to Lundby?" the man asked as he punched the ticket that Bjorn handed over to him.
"It is," Bjorn confirmed with a thoughtful nod.
"Are you planning to spend any time in the village?"
"No."
"Really?"
"No. I´m going to stay at the check point over at the road to Neiden."
"And never enter the village?"
"I wasn´t planning to. Why?"
"Well. It has some nice places to visit."
"Like what?"
"Like restaurants and night clubs and stuff."
"Night clubs? In Lundby?"
"Well. Only one."
"Lundby has a night club?"
"It does. It is not a bad place."
"You mean to say that Lundby, which was completely abandoned until just a few months ago, has a night scene with restaurants and a night club, and stuff like that?"
"It sure does. You should check it out."

Bjorn was stunned. This was very unexpected. No one had mentioned anything about restaurants and the like in Lundby, and he had thought of the place as a prison camp more than anything else. Yet, here he was talking to one with local knowledge, basically claiming that the place is an entertaining place to visit. Bjorn was tempted to have the woman sitting up front confirm what the man was saying, but seeing that she was still completely absorbed by her book, he simply told the man that he might consider checking the place out one day.

"Make sure you have some tokens if you do. Most of the places only accept Gram."
"Gram?"
"Yeah. They are like casino tokens. They serve as money in most of the places."
"Really?"
"All the places are basically owned by this one guy who owns the casino, and he insists on using the so called Gram tokens as money."
"So there is a casino in Lundby too?"
"Well. That´s the name of the night club."
"Oh. I see. Well. I´ll get some tokens when I need them."
"They are the cheapest if you buy them over there" said the man, pointing to a vending machine over by the stair well.

So this was what the man had been driving at all along, thought Bjorn with a smile as he thanked him for letting him know about the casino tokens. It was all a sales pitch for using the vending machine. A sales pitch that Bjorn chose to ignore.

3

The ferry turned the cape that separates the bay of Kirkenes from the Lundby fjord, leisurely entering the fjord´s wide mouth. And as soon as Kirkenes fell out of view, all signs of civilisation were at once gone. No roads could be seen on either side of the fjord, no houses, no power pylons. No tell tale signs of man´s activities could be seen anywhere. The only man made object in the huge landscape was the ferry itself, steaming close to the southern shore, heading for an isolated village at the edge of the world.

The Africans, sitting at the other side of the passenger deck, looked as miserable as always. But the young woman, sitting up at the front looked completely at ease, reading a book, and ignoring the landscape as it slowly drifted by. She was going to Lundby voluntarily, moving into the house that her grandparents probably abandoned when the local iron mine was shut down some thirty years ago, and Bjorn could not help wondering about her motives.

The complete journey from Kirkenes to Lundby takes about an hour, with the ferry taking just under forty minutes, and a connecting bus ride to the village itself taking another twenty minutes, so Lundby is a bit out of the way for daily commuting, not least because there is no shortage of affordable housing in Kirkenes. Moving to Lundby without having a job there would make little sense, unless she was terribly attached to her grandparent´s house. But her cold indifference to both his attempt at small talk and the grand surroundings of the ferry, made it seem most likely to Bjorn that she had found a job at the village, and was moving out there to be closer to work.

Bjorn had looked up the history of Lundby on the web in preparation for his move, and this was how he had learned that the village had been completely abandoned for close to thirty years. There had been a short lived attempt to set up a fish processing plant at the village immediately after the shut down of the iron mine, but it flopped almost as soon as it opened, and the village was permanently abandoned shortly after this when the local ferry company decided to terminate the service.

During the following thirty years, houses out at Lundby have at best been used as vacation homes during summer, with people having to bring all their necessities with them for the stay, and the ferry service did not re-start before quite recently when the foreign minister got his plan to set up a single national asylum seekers´ centre in the village pushed through parliament.

However, just as important as the new asylum centre was the decision to re-open the mine. Parallel to pushing through his idea for a national asylum centre in parliament, the foreign minister arranged for the transfer of the mine and port from the municipality of Kirkenes to an old school friend for a very favourable price. And although this political favour was met with a lot of criticism at the time, the net result has so far been one of increased economic activity which in turn has resulted in some people moving back to the village.

And one of those people returning to Lundby, was the woman up by the front window, quietly ignoring her surroundings while reading her book. Had it not been for the latest political maneuvering in Oslo, Lundby would still have been an abandoned village, the mine would still be closed, and the ferry in which Bjorn and the other passengers were sitting would not be sailing the current route. A few powerful men in Oslo had set in motion a chain of events that had led to this, forever altering the direction of the lives of everyone on board the ferry.

Monday, November 18, 2013

2

The ferry pulled up to the wharf, lowering the steel plate at its front to let off a couple of cars and half a dozen people, all looking like locals. The young woman, and the police officer with the Africans exited the shed, heading for the ferry with Bjorn following right behind them.

Bjorn noticed that the woman was dragging a big suitcase on small wheels behind her, while the Africans did not carry anything at all. He himself was carrying a back pack with some personal belongings and a uniform. His requirements for his stay at the border post, in the way of personal possessions, were limited to two uniforms, one of which he was wearing, and some civilian clothes, in addition to his laptop. Not exactly a heavy load, unlike the suitcase that the woman was struggling to keep from falling over as she was dragging it behind her. Knocking into the steel plate joining the ferry to the wharf, her suitcase tipped over, and it took her a bit of effort to get it back on its wheels.

Well on board, everybody hurried inside, and up to the sheltered and heated passenger deck, from which there was a great view in all directions. Bjorn tossed his backpack into the luggage rack at the base of the stairwell together with the woman´s large suitcase, and coming face to face with her as he did so, he took the opportunity to comment on her luggage.

"It is quite a suitcase you are carrying" he said, stating the obvious.
"Yes," she answered, "I´m moving."
"To Lundby?"
"Back to Lundby. Or rather, back to my grandparents´ house."
"Your family is from Lundby?"
"Yep."

She gave Bjorn a cold smile before ascending the stairs to the passenger area, making it clear that she was in no mood for small talk, and Bjorn did not approach her again during the half hour voyage, spending the time quietly watching the view instead.

Patches of snow were everywhere, despite it being April, and the cold weather they were having served to underpin the general feeling of quiet despair resonating from the inhospitable and barren landscape. No plants bigger than a bush could be seen anywhere. Not even Kirkenes, slowly receding as the ferry headed for Lundby, had any vegetation to speak of.

Everything was draped in shades of grey, from the snow covered peeks to the random snow patches along the water, and the steel grey of the water itself. Only manmade structures like houses and cars were reminding the world of the existence of other colour pallets, but all of this was quickly becoming desperately rare as the ferry headed away from the village that some people call a town.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

1

Bjorn could see the ferry as it came round the cape on the other side of the bay, slowly turning towards the wharf where he was standing. Ten more minutes, and it would arrive with its passengers, ready to pick him and a handful of others up for the return journey. He stood there with the biting wind sweeping against his face, relaxing as much as possible to prevent himself from shivering as the cold forced its way through his thick winter jacket.

He took a final drag of his cigarette before tossing the butt on the ground, and feeling refreshed by the nicotine he hurried back into the glass shelter where he once again would be protected from the wind. The shelter could probably hold as many as a hundred people without becoming overly crowded. However, the only ones there were a police officer with four miserable looking Africans, a young woman, and himself.

What a terrible shock it must be to come all the way from Africa to this place, thought Bjorn, feeling a sting of guilt at the thought that he was now a part of this new system where all asylum seekers will be sent up to the arctic until their cases are properly reviewed. But the feeling of discomfort left him almost as quickly as it struck. He was after all wholeheartedly for the new and stricter immigration laws, and the Lundby colony was in his opinion by far the best political idea to be put into practice of the last decade or so.

And the miserable faces were in many ways a confirmation of the effectiveness of the new law. Only very desperate people will be willing to endure these kind of hardships in order to get asylum in Norway. Rumours spread quickly, and it will not take long before Norway becomes a dreaded destination for asylum seekers. Making conditions as miserable as legally possible for all the gold diggers out there will surely stem the tide of unwanted immigration.

But Bjorn could not help being curious about the Africans. What strange tales were these people going to tell the authorities, and how much of it would be true and how much would be fiction. Being an immigration officer must be incredibly difficult. Always faced with people desperate to get into the country, all of them telling lies and coming up with all sorts of stories. Compared to what the immigration officers have to deal with, Bjorn´s task was a no brainer. Which was precisely what attracted him to join the regiment of border guards in the first place.

Patrolling the colony, making sure that no one escapes, would be an easy way to make a living. The colony was after all separated from Kirkenes by eight miles of impassable mountains and ice cold water, and the nearest village accessible by foot was no less than forty miles away, forty miles of hills and arctic tundra. Any escape from the colony would therefore have to be well funded and well organized. Merely finding a way out of the colony would not in itself secure a safe return to civilisation. Rather, an escape from the colony would more likely result in death due to the harsh environment than a return to liberty.