Finland planning railway to Norway

The Finnish minister Paavo Väyrynen has been on a two day trip to northern Norway this week. Yesterday he met the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affaires, Jonas Gahr Støre in Tromsø.Väyrynen said that Finland is considering the building of a railway line from Finnish Kolari, to the harbour of Skibotn in northern Norway. This is a distance of approximately 320 kilometres.

Finland wants to be a part of the development in the High North and it will be essential for them to have a solid infrastructure in the north.

The Norwegian Foregin Minister replied to the suggestion from Finland that a railway line will have to be considered in relation to the need and demand.

– There is no use in building a railway line just because it looks good on the map, was Støres reply to the plans according Norwegian newspaper Nordlys.

Finland has already started upgrading their infrastructure in the northern part of the country. A lot of the railway lines will be electrified and the Government has decided to spend 65 million EUR to upgrade the road furthest to the north from Karesuando to the bordertown of Kilpisjarvi on the Finnish-Norwegian border. Väyrynen says that if Norway takes of the upgrade of the road between Skibotn and the Norwegian-Finnish border, Finland will speed up their project on the Finnish side. The proposal was not commented by the Norwegian Foreign Minister.

The General Secretary of the Norwegian Barents Secretariat, Rune Rafaelsen, says to Nordlys that Norway should take advantage of the Finnish initiative and build a cargo harbour in northern Norway. He thinks it would rapidly develop into an international cargo harbour. Finland has the technology to be part of the oil and gas development in the high north, but they don’t have access to any harbour in the area. Skibotn or similar places in northern Norway could be their solution to the problem.