Finland–Norway border

A treaty with a codicil

In 1751 Denmark-Norway and Sweden, which then included Finland, signed a treaty fixing their border in the north. A codicil to it, the Lapp Codicil, dealt with citizenship and tax and guaranteed the reindeer-herding Sámi the right to move their herds across the border as they always had.^[3] Store norske leksikon calls it an important legal recognition of Sámi rights, since it treated the Sámi as a people of their own.^[3]

“Lappekodisillen er navnet på et tillegg til grensetraktaten av 1751 mellom Danmark-Norge og Sverige (som da omfattet Finland).”^[3]

Two tripoints

At the western end, on an islet in the lake Golddajávri, a concrete cairn marks where Norway, Sweden and Finland meet. The point was first marked in the 1760s and has moved several times, always around the east end of the lake, which drains both to the Gulf of Bothnia and to the Lyngen fjord.^[1]

The eastern end changed after World War II. Before the war Finland reached the Arctic Ocean; it lost that access in 1944, and Norway gained a border with Russia and a second tripoint, on Krokfjellet in the Pasvik valley, where the three countries’ three time zones meet.^[1]

The Teno and its salmon

The Teno, called Tana in Norway, is 361 km long and marks the border for 256 km. Natural Resources Institute Finland calls it the most diverse salmon river in the world, with about 30 genetically distinct salmon populations, and salmon fishing is central to local Sámi culture.^[2]

As salmon numbers fell, fishing was restricted in 2017, and for the 2021 season the Finnish and Norwegian governments banned all fishing on the river from May to December. Sámi fishers such as Áslat Holmberg criticised a total ban taken without local approval.^[2]