Between two borders – a podcast by Passeurs from Kirkenes
A podcast takes us to Kirkenes and immerses us in a town between two borders, marked by war and which, through culture and sport, tries to preserve the friendship between Russians and Norwegians.
Swiss director Marie Geiser decided to visit this Norwegian town on the border with Russia, when she came across an article about a Kirkenes orchestra that crossed borders to play music during Cold War. After the outbreak of war in Ukraine, how are the people of Kirkenes living and what is their daily life like since the borders closed? And how do entertainment, art and sport keep people connected?
Equipped with a light, discreet sound device, the director captures the exchanges with her interlocutors – local residents, guides, journalist and Sami – on their relationship with this border. A real immersion in the life of Kirkenes through a six-episode podcast entitled Passeurs. Interview.
Tell us about the genesis of this project. How did you come up with the idea of interviewing the people of Kirkenes?
It was in 2022. War in Ukraine had just started as the Covid period was ending. While doing some research on the Internet, I came across an article in the Swiss newspaper Le Temps entitled “Kirkenes, la ville où on savait vivre avec les Russes” (“Kirkenes, the town that knew how to live with the Russians”). The article spoke of the tradition of individual-to-individual collaboration in the Barents region, a tradition that would have enabled peace to be maintained and borders to be opened up after the Cold War more quickly than in the rest of Europe.
In this article, there were two anecdotes that particularly struck me. The first concerned a music group that went to Murmansk to play concerts while the borders were closed. The second anecdote was about the Barents Hockey League team, which has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. I work in cultural circles, circles that had been described as non-essential during the pandemic, and I was thinking that it was precisely these “non-essentials” – sport and culture – that had opened up the frontier there. With the war in Ukraine just beginning, I wondered what life was like in Kirkenes and what remained of this tradition today.
What stands out in your podcast is the extent to which war is always present in the background. This is reflected in the testimony of the first guide you meet, who talks about the Second World War he experienced. War is also present in the monuments that adorn the city, the training shots that can be heard in the distance, in conversations…
Yes, very clearly. There’s the Second World War and the current one, and in between there’s the Cold War. During the Second World War, the two populations came closer together when Kirkenes was liberated by the Red Army. Then the border became hermetic. The populations were separated against their will, before being able to reunite after the fall of the USSR.
What the locals are seeing now is that history is repeating itself in two ways. On the one hand, the area is clearly being remilitarized, and the spectre of the Second War is returning. On the other hand, borders are closing and communication is becoming more difficult, echoing the Cold War.
Speaking of Barents Spektakel, you say that places of cultur have become places of therapy. What do you mean?
It’s not me who says this but Irina Ivanova, one of the people I interviewed. She comes from Murmansk and is involved in this cross-border festival. She said that Covid had been good training for those working on the festival because it had trained them to be discreet while continuing to communicate on both sides of the border in order to organize the event. Organizers then integrated the production of remote events and interactive, online works, which they still use a lot today, even if it doesn’t solve everything.
The original idea behind Barents Spektakel was to work on the idea of borders. Now, the festival is turning towards Europe. Things have changed in a year, and it’s getting harder and harder to keep in touch with Russians in Russia. Norway wanted to keep this door open, but on the Russian side, at least as far as the government is concerned, the same desire is less clear.
Of all the people you met in Kirkenes, who left the biggest impression on you?
It’s the first person I met. It was Ernest Sneve, my first guide, during the visit in the bunker. I didn’t expect to realize so quickly and so strongly that war was present at this point, that it had never really left the people of Kirkenes.
When I left, the story of this music group was in a way the pretext to go meet people. The idea was to find out if there were still people alive who had taken part in this adventure in the 1960s. So I didn’t expect to find people who had lived through the Second World War and could tell the story. It was overwhelming to meet someone like Ernest who was still so moved when he told his story.
Have you found the orchestra in question?
No, it wasn’t even the right city (laughs). In the Swiss newspaper article, they talked about Kirkenes but didn’t explain that the orchestra wasn’t actually in Kirkenes, which I understand because that wasn’t really the point. In fact, the group was 250 km away, in Vardo.
The podcast Passeurs is available on YouTube with an automatic translation in English. It is also available (only in French) on Spotify and Apple Podcast.
Interview by Mirjana Binggeli, PolarJournal
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