Work package A: Grand Strategy and the Small State: The Great Powers, the German Assault and Norwegian Wartime Alliances
Since the 1980s, the so-called «traditional» topics in the history of Norway in the Second World War – grand strategy, defence policy and war fighting – have been marginalized in academic teaching and research. During the same decades, international scholarship has developed new methodological approaches integrating ideological, military and economic objectives in the study of policy formulation, and has also benefitted from newly available archives, especially in Eastern Europe. This WP sets out to explore how Norway positioned itself within the changing configuration of great and small powers in Northern Europe from the late 1930s, and how these changes affected Norwegian security thinking. More specifically, it aims to cover subjects not addressed by previous research, such as Soviet policy and the far north as an area of incipient Great Power rivalry, a pattern which later became evident during the Cold War. Despite the fact that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact created the overall diplomatic framework for the first two years of the war, Soviet policy towards Scandinavia and its interaction with German and Allied intentions has hardly been taken into consideration. After Barbarossa, Finnmark was drawn into hostilities on the Northern Front and the Soviet Union became an ally. The Norwegian government in London was forced to balance national interests against the overall objectives of the wartime alliance, as well as relations with neutral Sweden. From 1942, Norwegian interests in the far north were challenged and the region came to play an increasingly important role in government policy. Relations with the Soviet Union became more complex. Renewed Soviet interest in the Svalbard archipelago, alleged Soviet interest in free harbours in Northern Norway and the prehistory and the aftermath of the Soviet move into Eastern Finnmark in October 1944 directly affected national sovereignty and can be seen as precursors of the Cold War. Consequently, the WP explores to what degree the issues arising in the north during the war are among the formative factors behind the fundamental shift in Norwegian security thinking that took place in the years leading up to the signing of the Atlantic pact in April 1949.
A1: Soviet Policy towards Scandinavia 1939-1941
Professor Rolf Hobson (IFS)
The project focusses on Soviet policy towards Scandinavia during the first two years of the Second World War, especially with regard to the situation in the High North. It will evaluate how the Winter War and the Petsamo question were affected by relations with Germany; and further how the Soviet Northern Fleet reacted to the German invasion of Norway in 1940 and to the subsequent German presence in Northern Norway during the build-up to Operation Barbarossa.
A2/A3/A4: “The formative exile”
Professor Stian Bones (UiT) (A2) and professor Hallvard Tjelmeland (UiT) (A3).
The projects will reconsider the evolution of Norwegian war policies relative to the challenges that arose in the far north, based on Norwegian, British, Swedish and American sources not available to previous scholars. The extent to which the complex of specifically northern issues influenced Norway’s relations to other Western powers, and the long term consequences this may have had, has not been systematically addressed in previous scholarship. The projects will be carried out by Associate Professor Stian Bones (A2), Professor Hallvard Tjelmeland (A3). Bones will cooperate closely with Peder Roberts and Dag Avango (A4) at the partner institution, the Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm).
A5: “Perceptions of the Norwegian War Contributions to the Grand Alliance”
Professor Tom Kristiansen (UiT)
This subproject will investigate how the Americans and the British considered the totality of Norwegian war contributions. Regardless of the fact that Norway was a small country, the merchant navy provided a geyser of revenues that enabled the government in exile to establish an array of capacities. The sum-total of these achievements has previously not been comprehensively analysed. The study will be carried out by the academic leader of the project and result in a peer-reviewed article
A6: “The military and economic importance of Petsamo/Pechenga 1939–1947”
Researcher Lars Rowe (Fridtjof Nansens Institutt)
Lars Rowe aims to shed light on Soviet strategies in the High North through an examination of the wartime fate of Finnish Petsamo, which was transferred to the Soviet Union as part of the Soviet-Finnish armistice agreement in October 1944. What motivated Moscow to forcefully claim this border region, first in June 1941, and then securing it for the socialist state when German forces withdrew from Northern Finland? Rowe’s findings are presented in the article “’The USSR wants the Petsamo concession’: Economic Drivers in Soviet High North Strategies, 1939-44”, and are based on extensive studies in the Russian State Archive for Economic Affairs (RGAE). The article raises questions about the one-sided analytical emphasis on geopolitical factors in historical studies of Soviet interests in Petsamo, and argues that the economic benefits of acquiring the local nickel industry was of great importance to the Kremlin.
A7: Doktogradsprosjekt om Narvik-kampanjen
A8: Doktorgradsprosjekt om Finnmark fra krig til fred, mai 1944 til september 1945
A9: Biografi om forsvarssjef general Otto Ruge
Professor Tom Kristiansen