Kirkenes Things to Do

In the summertime it is best to get to Kirkenes during the so-called "Midnight-Sun" ! In the Arctic summertime the sun is shining almost all day long and for more than 2 months you will even see the sunlight to never totally disappear and that is the time of the Midnight-Sun. The time of the Midnightsun varies of course and the further north you get the more days that time will last. Get on a large hill and watch the sun going down between 11.00pm and midnight and you will see that before touching the ocean the sun will start raising again.

Nordic Lights / Aurora Borealis
that is a natural phenomenon that you can watch mainly in wintertime and you need to have a perfect combination of various situations:
1) the sky has to be without clouds
2) the sky needs to be dark, so you are able to see the reflections
3) you need certain activities of the sun, that are sometimes stronger and sometimes weaker
The way that I understood this is that these activities of the sun will happen all year long, but in summertime you cannot see them because of the bright sky.
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I was never lucky to see the Northern Light myself
so I took this photo of it painted in a mailbox in Hammerfest

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The town of Kirkenes is flat, easy to walk though and also easy to walk to from the Hurtigrutenship to the towncentre, that is in a distance of just some hundreds of meters.
There is also a viewpoint, from where i took my photos,and there are some nice villas on that hill as well.

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The Jet-d'eau of Kirkenes looks a bit deplaced out on a lake and surrounded only by empty landscapes, but all citizens of Kirkenes seem to be very proud of it and this is why it is also shown on each and every sightseeingtour there.

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This is the parking at the russian border, there are some souvenirshops (hidden behind the bus in my main photo), some toilets and thats it. And there are the flags of Russia and Norway of course. And the borderline of Russia does not look any special,it rather looks like the entrancegate to a big company that is fenced in and in the distance you see the counter for the formalities, but you almost never see anyone of their guarding-staff there.

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Hurtigruten offers an excursion to the russian border, you will see a bit of the landscape plus this very special point at the border that had a lot more sense to go in the times of the Cold War of course. It was a nice excursion, but you will miss to see the town of Kirkenes, except for a few minutes, when you are driven through some roads.
I had the hope to see the distance-pole that way that they show in many brochures of Kirkenes, but that place is not so easy toget to.

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Well actually Im now pretty sure that I was just seeing the edge of them when I was in Harvik one night but there were buildings in the way and couldnt get past them - but otherwise I definitely got to see them on my last night in Kirkenes Feb 2007 - so I was tremendously thankful and pleased that they finally came out to dazzle for me!

I had been up in the Arctic Circle in Finland one year for 5 nights and not seen them, had been in the Arctic Circle of Sweden and then to Harvik and then on the Hurtigruten for 3 nights and not seen them then been in Kirkenes for a night until finally....!

Here the colour is green - I had a bit of difficulty taking them - as only had my SLR on automatic setting but it turned out my digital didnt too bad a job...!

There are many different activities offered in Kirkenes. Like reindeer safari, snow hotel, visit to the military tower, snowmobiling, climbing, diving, lavvu, sledding, deep sea rafting, riverboat safari, dog sledding, king crab fishing and other adventures.

You can also visit the russian frontier and even go on daytrips to Russia. Pasvikdalen is a beautiful valley where many different companies offer daytrips or longer stays.