Every design for Bjørnevatn

Bjørnevatn is the mining village of Sør-Varanger, built on iron ore that was first found in the area in 1868 and mined commercially from 1910. The Sydvaranger mines lie just south of the village, and a short railway, the Kirkenes–Bjørnevatn Line, carried the ore north to the port. The name means Bear Lake, after the lake the village once stood beside, until it was drained in 1958 so the ore beneath it could be dug out.

The village lies a few kilometres south of Kirkenes and only a short way west of the border with Russia, with Hesseng to the north and Sandnes to the west. In Skolt Sami it is Kuõbǯǯjäuʹrr, in Northern Sami Guovžajávri and in Kven Kruuvakylä, three names that say a great deal about this corner of Finnmark.

History came close here at the end of the Second World War. During the liberation in 1944, a large number of people sheltered inside the mines while the fighting went on, a story later told in the 1974 film Under a Stone Sky. Andedammen, the stadium at Bjørneparken and the matches of Bjørnevatn IL belong to the everyday Bjørnevatn, the one its people come back to.