On September 30-October 1, the Nordic Border Committees met at their annual Border Regional Forum (Gränsregionalt Forum), helt in Trondheim, Norway. The Forum was organised in two days and gathered representatives from all 12 Nordic Regional Committees as well politicians from Norway and Sweden and members of the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Freedom of Movement Committee.
The theme of this year’s Forum was Preparedness and Security. The discussions in the room concerned ways in which communities across Nordic borders can be prepared in case of crisis and how, after the pandemic, the management of border can be better coordinated across the Nordic countries. Interestingly, borders are both an obstacle and an opportunity for the communities living around them and the Border Committees are organisations that work with and lobby for specific questions concerning these communities.
We were invited to present our project by the Border Committee Fjellesrådet, which organised the meeting. Our project members Elena Raviola, Bengt Andersen and Bertil Rolandsson focused their presentation on their work on internal borders and how they are more or less technified to both make them secure and enable mobility. We introduced some preliminary considerations around the digital layering of borders (specifically around the Swedish-Danish border) and all the patchwork of making borders secure and open. The presentation was very well received and fostered a lot of conversations.
We hope this will trigger even more conversation in the upcoming months and years!