The Arctic Century

Norway's Office of the Auditor General warns that municipalities are far from ready for a rapid increase in the number of elderly residents, citing recruitment shortfalls and a lack of planning that could have serious consequences for the entire health and care sector.

The forum's first panel turned to a pressing question: with the old Western channels frozen, who does Russia work with in the Arctic, and on what terms? Scholars from Russia, India, and Italy weighed BRICS, the Northern Sea Route, rare-earth metals, the Eurasian Union, and the future of Arctic LNG.

The second subsection turned from the global picture to the Western Arctic itself: how a divided North America reshapes Europe's Arctic, why Sweden and Finland abandoned neutrality, what survives of cross-border environmental work, how spatial planning might be coordinated without official ties, and how Italian newspapers came to see the region through Donald Trump rather than the war.

Icelandic ministries and business bodies have signed an agreement to protect the country name Ísland or Iceland from misuse in foreign markets, building on a trademark dispute won against the British retailer Iceland Foods.

Child poverty in Finland has climbed to a record 14 percent even as the country is repeatedly named the world's happiest, raising questions about Gallup's methodology and the Orpo government's priorities.

The second edition of The Arctic—Our Common Home gathered diplomats, parliamentarians, scholars and entrepreneurs in Petrozavodsk. Four plenary presentations mapped the collapse of regional mechanisms, the Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor, the financing of the Russian Arctic and the broader geopolitical order in which the region must now be read.

A Danish scientist and municipal leader present their vision for the future of small settlements in Greenland, which are experiencing severe housing shortages, youth outflow, gender imbalances, and a shortage of jobs and social services. Sustainable settlements require the development of fishing, processing, and tourism, which are in need of government attention, which is currently lacking.

Two decades after the 2008 banking collapse, Iceland's image of equality and democracy has given way to an entrenched elite, soaring housing prices, and a young generation forced into rent slavery or emigration—framed around a cry from the heart of an Icelandic writer ahead of the August EU referendum.