One
day, usually the last Thursday of each month, Kirkenes' city square is
transformed into a marketplace, where traders from Murmansk sell their
merchandise. Here you can find everything from matryoshkas, the famous
nesting dolls, linen cloth, hand knitted socks and gloves, Russian
crystal and porcelain dishes from the prestigous Imperator porcelain
manufacture in St. Petersburg. After the border between Russia and
Norway had been opened in the beginning of the 1990s a lively cross
border trading set in. When the trading became too lively, Norwegian
authorities in their need to control this situation, closed the border
for Russian traders, which led to demands from the Norwegian population
to allow the Russians traders back in. The Russian Market in Kirkenes
was one of the first initiatives of a local municipality in the
Northern border region to reinstall a now more regulated form of small
scale cross border trading. |