NATO forces to train in Arctic Norway
NATO personnel from Great Britain and Germany will be training in Porsanger, Finnmark County, this winter.
Sometime in the period January 4 to March 18 2010 an exercise with allied forces will be conducted in the municipality of Porsanger in Norway’s northernmost county Finnmark. This is part of a larger exercise that takes place in Troms and Nordland at the same time, the County Governor of Finnmark’s web page reads.
There will be no large allied troops training in Finnmark this winter - the allied training center in Porsanger will be hosting some 50-100 British and 50 German soldiers, newspaper Sagat reports.
Norway has a tradition for limiting allied exercises in Finnmark, the border county to Russia. In the late 1950’s, Norway introduced constraints on port calls of allied naval vessels east of 24°E and allied air activity over both Norwegian and international waters east of the same longitude. From the early 1960’s, Norway also refused allied forces to train in Finnmark. These restrictions were in force until 1995, when Norway decided to loosen up on the regulations, an article from the Norwegian Atlantic Committee reads.
