“We were like a family”: how Covid strained ties between Nordic neighbors | Europe

Thorild Tollefsbøl was born in Norway but has lived in Sweden, with the border in her backyard, for over 70 years. She found it hard to believe her ears when, while taking a daily walk in the woods near the small farming town of Lersjön one day last spring, she encountered a uniformed soldier from the Norwegian National Guard who told her said to turn around and go back to the Swedish side. “We never really thought about the fact that some houses were on the other side,” Tollefsbøl said of the pre-Covid era.

The longest land border in Europe is the one between Norway and Sweden. For the most part, it’s marked by little more than a 10-meter clearing in the woods and an occasional roadside welcome sign, accompanied by mostly unmanned customs posts – reminders only as you enter in Norway, you leave the EU.

But during the pandemic, friendly road signs were exchanged for checkpoints. Sweden’s hands-off approach to the pandemic has left it with higher rates of Covid-19 infection and death per capita than figures for Norway, Denmark and Finland combined. As a result, these countries closed their borders to the Swedes. The epidemics of nationalism linked to the virus have sparked another concern: that Covid may have eaten away at the powerful sense of community among the Nordic peoples, born out of similarities of language and culture and of which they have always been extremely proud.

After 562 days of enforcing social distancing, Norway this week lifted its last pandemic travel restrictions for fully vaccinated people. The last border posts closed to Sweden are also reopening. The first hard border between the two countries for decades has again been relaxed.

Still, some fear the animosity triggered by the pandemic has left its mark. Trafficking has almost dried up for over a year, and some border communities are bitter about the severity of the economic shock they have suffered.

At the height of the pandemic, Swedes living or working in other parts of the Nordic region said they felt stigmatized due to their government’s lockdown approach.

“I think we have taken our relationship for granted,” said Anna Hallberg, Swedish Minister for Nordic Affairs. While she acknowledged that Sweden was doing worse than its neighbors in containing the virus, she feared that a hardening of rhetoric between countries would leave a lasting impact.

“I was surprised at how quickly what one might call the ‘dangerous face of nationalism’ surfaced in our interpersonal relationships, with the notion of ‘us and them’. I think a lot of us thought we were immune to it, ”Hallberg said, adding that centuries of shared history had created what looked like a tight-knit region. “We thought we got over it all, that we were so civilized and the Nordics were like family. This turned out not to be the case.

Although Norway is not a member of the EU, the Nordic economic region is one of the most closely integrated in the world. For over 60 years, people have had the right to study, work and settle in another Nordic country, a regime older than the EU’s freedom of movement. Similar languages ​​in Norway, Sweden and Denmark – and Swedish as one of the official languages ​​in Finland – have helped create a single labor market, with more than 50,000 people crossing an intra-Nordic border every day to getting to work – before the pandemic. Norway and Sweden are both in the Schengen Passport-Free Travel Zone.

“There has never been a real border there for me,” said Sofia Bernhus, who travels to her work in Norway from her home near the small town of Töcksfors in western Sweden. She grew up with her grandparents 50 meters from the border, but hardly thought about the clearing in the woods. “We used to go tobogganing up the hill and then we would end up on the other side. When we went swimming we didn’t think twice which side of the line we were on – it’s the same water, ”she said. But after Covid, until recently, every time she approached the border, her phone rang with an automated message from the Norwegian health authorities.

Bernhus does not consider her Norwegian husband to be a foreigner, but fears that with so much talk about “imported infections” during the pandemic, attitudes towards Swedes in Norway have changed. “I think the way we are seen on the other side has changed. When you are driving down the road in a Swedish car, people turn to look at you, ”she said. “In the past, we Swedes were seen as an attractive workforce in Norway. Now there seems to be an attitude that we should go home. “

The Norwegian government has gone further than most European countries in restricting international travel. Unlike Denmark, which has granted exemptions to Swedes living in areas near the Öresund Bridge, which connects the two countries, Norway has banned travelers from high-risk areas. Until the EU vaccination certificates came into effect in July, this meant that most Swedes who did not live or work in Norway were subject to entry bans or mandatory quarantine, regardless or their vaccination status.

In Töcksfors, the local cross-country ski trail that crosses the border into the woods was barricaded over the winter, with Norwegian police advising skiers that they could be fined if they ski in Sweden. A group of Norwegians with vacation homes in Sweden even sued their own government for not being able to spend a night there without entering quarantine hotels on their return to Norway.

Jan Tore Sanner, Norwegian Minister of Finance, who oversees Nordic cooperation, said: “Closing the borders obviously has negative consequences, but if we had not taken these steps we would see more people infected, get sick and more people would die. With just over 800 Covid-related deaths reported, Norway has maintained infection levels well below those in most countries.

Sanner said he was convinced that the sense of neighborly love among the Nordic peoples would return. Not everyone is so sure. “On days of really big shopping, we might have a queue of several hundred meters in front of the liquor store,” said Kent Hansson, mayor of Strömstad, a Swedish town on the Bohuslän coast that is heavily dependent on Norwegian tourists and cross-border shoppers. While the border was closed, his town’s income fell by almost two-thirds and unemployment soared 700%.

The mayor fears the economic fallout is what leaves the deepest scars long after all restrictions are lifted.

“We have seen a sharp increase in polarization on both sides,” said Hansson. While some Norwegians were quick to blame Sweden for not keeping infection levels low, some Swedes blamed Norway for an uncompromising approach that caused unnecessary economic damage to their border towns. “In my experience we have seen increased nationalism, it just seems wrong. We started to denigrate ourselves.

The small red wooden chapel of Lersjön is located in Sweden. Its steeple across the courtyard is in Norway. Lighting his pipe on the chapel stairs, pastor Günter Hölscher explained that simply walking through the clearing to ring the weekly Sunday service bell meant incurring a fine. “All of a sudden people had a hard line in their lives,” he said, nodding at the border marks.

Hölscher and Tollefsbøl, a parishioner, said that no matter how deep the division the pandemic may have caused, the desire to reconnect with loved ones on the other side was stronger. “I just hope we can get together here again this Christmas,” Tollefsbøl said. “And that people on both sides can do it.”