European route E6 (Norwegian: Europaveg 6, Swedish: Europaväg 6, or simply E6) is the main north–south thoroughfare through Norway as well as the west coast of Sweden. It is 3,056 km (1,899 mi) long and runs from the southern tip of Sweden at Trelleborg, into Norway and through almost all of the country north to the Arctic Circle. As many travellers who love road trips use E6 to get to Nordkapp, a common misconception is that E6 leads to North Cape, but the route ends in Kirkenes close to the Russian border. To get to North Cape, one has to fork off E6 at Olderfjord and take European route E69, from the mainland through the North Cape Tunnel, onto the island of Magerøya. The Norwegian part of E6 functions as Norway's transport backbone, often being the only continuous paved road, connecting north and south. When E6 gets interrupted, Norway gets cut into two pieces (Norge er delt i to), and detours are often hundreds of kilometers long, through Sweden, or along the coast, involving ferry crossings. For more examples of frequent closures of E6, please see below, in chapter Vulnerable infrastructure, often interrupted.
>>>PUT SHARE BUTTONS HERE<<<
Kirkenes in the context of Barents Region
The Barents Region is a name given, by advocates of establishing international cooperation after the fall of the Soviet Union, to the land along the coast of the Barents Sea, from Nordland county in Norway to the Kola Peninsula in Russia and beyond all the way to the Ural Mountains and Novaya Zemlya, and south to the Gulf of Bothnia of the Baltic Sea and the great lakes Ladoga and Onega. Among the projects is the Barents Road from Bodø in Norway through Haparanda in Sweden and Finland to Murmansk in Russia. The region has six million inhabitants on 1.75 million km; three quarters of both belong to Russia.
The regional cooperation was formally opened on 11 January 1993, initiated by Norway under foreign minister Thorvald Stoltenberg. It includes Nordland, Troms, and Finnmark counties in Norway; Västerbotten County and Norrbotten County in Sweden; Lapland region, Northern Ostrobothnia, Kainuu, and North Karelia in Finland; and Murmansk Oblast, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Komi Republic, Republic of Karelia, and Nenets Autonomous Okrug in Russia. The four countries take turns at chairing the cooperation. Norway's participation is coordinated from the Norwegian Barents Secretariat in Kirkenes. Sweden's and Finland's participation is administrated from the county administrations in Umeå (Västerbotten) and Rovaniemi (Lapland). In January 2008 there was established an International Barents Secretariat which is to provide technical support for the multilateral coordinated activities within the framework of the Barents Euro-Arctic Council and the Barents Regional Council. This Secretariat is located in Kirkenes in the same building as the Norwegian Barents Secretariat.
Kirkenes in the context of Northern Norway
Northern Norway (Bokmål: Nord-Norge, Urban East Norwegian: [ˈnûːrˌnɔrɡə], Nynorsk: Nord-Noreg; Northern Sami: Davvi-Norga) is a geographical region of Norway, consisting of the three northernmost counties Nordland, Troms and Finnmark, in total about 35% of the Norwegian mainland. Some of the largest towns in Northern Norway (from south to north) are Mo i Rana, Bodø, Narvik, Harstad, Tromsø and Alta. Northern Norway is often described as the land of the midnight sun and the land of the northern lights. Farther north, halfway to the North Pole, is the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, traditionally not regarded as part of Northern Norway.
The region is multi-cultural, housing not just Norwegians but also the indigenous Sami people, Norwegian Finns (known as Kvens, distinct from the "Forest Finns" of Southern Norway) and Russian populations (mostly in Kirkenes). The Norwegian language dominates in most of the area; Sami speakers are mainly found inland and in some of the fjord areas of Nordland, Troms and particularly Finnmark – though ethnic Sámi who do not speak the language are found more or less everywhere in the region. Finnish is spoken in only a few communities in the east of Finnmark.