“Links” – this is about us…

Journalist from Murmansk, Dmitry Ermolaev, has written a book which is devoted to the people from the border area. It is called “Links” and tells about the people’s life neatr the borders in the North over centuries and how the past reflects our reality.

Journalist from the archive

I worked with Dmitry on the Murmansk regional radio for many years. Even at that time he had a kind of investigative or philosophical potential. Now he is a member of the archive body that is why he was the best to select carefully a unique historical material about the people’s life from the border area. However, the book is not just a simple academy publication, but a vivid story about real people.

Dmitry Ermolaev

Picture from Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper

Lenina Street in Bjørnevatn

Do you know why the tsar official while dividing the border between Norway and Russia in 1826 gave rather a big territory to the neighbour? How did the Russian Kozyrev family live on this Norwegian land? Why do people jokingly name one of the streets in Bjørnevatn Lenina Street? How many Russian people live in  Finnmark and what do they do?

The main thing is how we imagine that people lived nearby in these places for centuries, and went through different situations.

Chains of memory

Introduction opens with:

“Dmitry Ermolaev’s book is an attempt to unite the links of the broken apart chain. The chain of the generations. The book is for those who love their motherland, big or small”.

It is nice that Dmitry Ermolaev describes in his book meetings with the Norwegian colleagues and his positive impressions he got due to the Barents Press seminars.

The most interesting historical information is given in the form of the author’s itinerary about his today and past journeys.

Elena Larionova

Translated by Irina Bykova