The Barents could become a valuable shipping route. Russia and Norway have agreed a deal to divide up their shares of the Barents Sea. The deal follows decades of negotiations between the two sides over how to divide the region.The accord will allow companies to explore for oil and gas in the 68,000 square mile area.

The agreement has been approved by the two countries’ parliaments and will be implemented on 7 July this year. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Norwegian counterpart Jona Gahr Stoere ratified the deal during a ceremony in Oslo on Tuesday. It splits the disputed part of the Barents Sea into two equally sized areas.

The region has become more accessible recently as global warming has caused the ice to melt. Analysts say the melting ice could open up new, shorter, shipping routes between Russia and Norway and Asia…  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13686049

In those days, interesting visits to Lapland where the Sámi, Europe’s northernmost and the Nordic countries’ only officially indigenous people are located. Their nomadic life-style takes them where ever their herds of reindeer may roam. Pix from that time are either in SIN or they might have unfortunately been lost; today’s  pix are all downloaded from various sites…

Strange memories at the Russian border as they were willing to exchange vodka against Playboy magazines and Levi’s blue jeans then and all the bartering was going on in sign-language. Unfortunately did not have a copy Playboy and was not willingly to take off my jeans, not knowing how good the vodka was 🙂 🙂 🙂

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods – WH Auden