A SMALL GROUP of Northern Norwegians visited the location of the former prison camp for captured Russian soldiers near the medieval Trondenes Church on 4 February 2017 in order to pay their respects to the Russians and remember the inhuman treatment they received from the Germans seventy-five years earlier. More than two hundred camps were located in North Norway. The prisoners’ main task had been to support the upkeep of the four coastal artillery cannons at Trondenes, part of Germany's coastal fortification of Norway in 1940–45, referred to as the Adolf Guns by the local population. One cannon is still maintained as a reminder of times past. The barrel diameter is 40.6 cm and it had a range of 56 kilometres. The German occupational power introduced a comprehensive extension of coastal artillery in Norway, reaching two hundred and eighty batteries in five years, seen as an essential defence measure. Harstad became the centre for this rearmament in the North.

Today, China explores the seabed in a quest for mineral wealth and has laid claims to the world's greatest deposits of deep-sea minerals. She now has the largest number of deepsea mines in the world and has secured access to 86,000 sq. km of the international seabed. One manned submersible can dive over 7 km. Thus, China turns to the ocean to secure resources for its high-tech electronics industry, laying sovereignty claims in the South China Sea. The Spratly islands have been fortified. It is part of national security.

What does Russia do? In 2007, two Russian submarines touched the seabed two and a half miles beneath the North Pole and planted a titanium Russian flag on the Lomonosov ridge. Samples were collected from the seabed to prove that the ridge is connected to the Russian continental shelf and is a part of Russia. Who will own the Arctic in the future, asked Putin. He answered in Greek, arktos (the Bear). Russia has renewed the claim on the North Pole to the UN Continental Shelf Commission and the Vice-Prime Minister Dmitrij Rogozin had a stop over at Svalbard on a visit to the North Pole in 2015. The Arctic region is seen as a future economic lifeline for Russia and the Arctic presence is part of an extensive security strategy and extended military capacity.