206
Arctic Yearbook 2013
New Possibilities for the Northern Peripheral Regions in the Post-Cold War Era
There are new kind of political actors and acts ―on the border‖ also in the Torne Valley and the
Bothnian Arc. Actors in these regions have operated across the borders so effectively that
sometimes it may have seemed as if there were no borders between the states. The best example is –
of course – the common Eurocity of Tornio and Haaparanta. The next step is the cities‘ common
centre on the border of Finland and Sweden. Especially in Torne Valley and the Bothnian Arc, the
constitutive factor for the post-Cold War political acts has been the European Union. The European
Union has abolished the formalities for border crossing. It is no longer necessary to cross the border
via the official border stations only. During the Cold War, Finland had official security political ties
to the Soviet Union, and Sweden was the unofficial ally to the west. In these circumstances the
border between Sweden and Finland was also the border of the West and the East. The EU-
memberships of Sweden and Finland implied that the situation had changed. Nowadays it is possible
to plan deep economic co-operation between Swedish and Finnish municipalities in the Torne
Valley (e.g. Eurocity between Tornio and Haaparanta and mine cooperation between Kolari and
Pajala).
Furthermore, the political conflicts which have divided the population of the frontier regions during
the Cold War are becoming history now. They had been imposed by the industrial society and
enabled by the Cold War. Instead of the conflict between communism and capitalism, the most
significant conflicts in the frontier regions of Northern Finland have dealt with, for example,
questions related to the ownership of land and the possibilities to utilize the natural resources of the
region. At the core of the new conflicts are the borders and frontiers – not the hostilities between
the superpowers of the international system. Part of the post-Cold War transition is also the general
shift from hierarchical industrial societies to the service orientated network societies. For Manuel
Castel, the crisis of industrial statism was one reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union (Castells,
2000: 5–67). The shift also affects the northern-Finnish frontier regions. The households and
companies in the area are part of the global network society and the improved accessibility is very
important for all the actors in the Barents region. One indicator of the region‘s better accessibility is
the growing tourism from all over the world in all the northern-Finnish frontiers.
In addition, the changes in the kind of security threats give possibility to the deconstruction work in
the northern frontier regions. As in other parts of the world, during the Cold War in the Barents
region, the balance of military power and its related security risks defined both the operations of
national states and those of individual companies and citizens. A large number of nuclear weapons
were situated in the Barents Sea. As the end of the Cold War neared, the political importance of the
Barents area in the military context increased further: during the 1980s, a region central to the
juxtaposition of the great powers emerged from what was formerly an area of low tension
(Heininen, 1989: 36; 1999). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, more attention was given to
changes made to the role of military policy in the region. Concurrently, there was discussion in
regard to which sorts of new modes of cooperation the changes produced in the wake of the fall of
the Soviet Union would be made possible in the communities of the Barents region. Following the
Cold War, networking at the civil society level was possible from Lapland to the East. Nowadays
networking is linked with the development of technology – especially information technology – as
well as expertise respective to an increase in standards: new technology enables totally new forms of