Russo-Norwegian relations soured, Denmark complete, Sered visited

Hello subscribers!

First of all, a new DT Blog post went up this week. It was inspired by two cases of strained relations between Norway and Russia, namely where they share a border or a territory. The latter is the case on Arctic Spitsbergen, Svalbard, a politically Norwegian territory where Russia has old (pre-WWII) rights to keep operating the coal-mining town of Barentsburg (and also still runs the legendary Pyramiden). In the north-easternmost corner of Norway, namely at Kirkenes and the nearby borderlands at Grense Jacobselv, cross-border traffic and trade has diminished, though not ended completely, and relations remain practical, if strained, but more or less functioning.

The new Blog post then takes this as a cue for a reminiscing photo essay about those two places/areas, which I visited back in 2012. Some explanations and observations are added in the text too. The photo above was taken from that Blog post. It shows an old wooden house in Barentsburg that seemed abandoned when I was there. The stairs outside the closed door were missing, so I entitled the photo “doorway to nowhere” … which also had a kind-of symbolic ring to it, I thought, given the vexed political situation these places now find themselves in due to the Ukraine war … Do go and take a look at this new Blog post!
  

The other news is that I’ve finally managed to complete all the new and updated chapters for Denmark on my main website – in particular Copenhagen, which features a total of seven new stand-alone subchapters too. Also well worth a look!
  

Finally, nearly two weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit the relatively new Holocaust memorial museum in Sered, Slovakia, about an hour’s drive east of the capital Bratislava. It’s the only memorial of its type in the country, and it was late in coming about. In fact it’s still a work in progress. But it already features three separate exhibitions housed in the preserved/refurbished original barracks of the former concentration camp that was operated here during WWII. My impressions of the commodification/interpretation of the site were quite positive.

I’m currently still processing all the photos I took there, and then I will have to make a new chapter for Sered on my main website and maybe also do a Blog post about it. We’ll see. I haven’t decided on the latter yet.
  

So much for this time,

and have a decent weekend.

Best wishes,

Peter