Every design for Kirkenes

From Prestefjellet, the hill above the town, you look out over the Bøkfjorden towards a border only a few kilometres away. Kirkenes sits on a headland once called Piselvnes; it became 'church headland' when a church was built there in 1862, and it only became a town in 1998.

What sets Kirkenes apart is that its story has always been a border story. The land around it was a shared Norwegian–Russian district until 1826, and today the street signs are written in both Latin and Cyrillic letters. During the Second World War the town was a German base supplying the Murmansk front, and it was bombed so heavily that only 13 houses were still standing when the Red Army drove the Germans out in October 1944. Frigjøringsmonumentet marks the liberation, a memorial near the town remembers 11 freedom fighters executed by the occupiers, and Andersgrotta and Sør-Varanger museum keep those years close. Afterwards came decades of iron mining at Sydvaranger, and now tourism.

If you grew up here, under the midnight sun and through the polar night, the map holds it all: the headland, the fjord and the road out towards the border.