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Kirkenes, Norway—I’ve. always been fascinated by the way things look and work, and as I came to northern Norway for a series of articles, I thought I would like to see the beginning of the Iron Curtain, and how the border between Norway and the USSR is run. No high politics or principles concern me—my interest is that of a housewife who likes to know how other people keep their house in order.

First I should mention that Norway and Russia have a common frontier of about 125 miles in a countryside of lakes, rivers, and stony mountains and hills festooned with clusters of birch trees. Above the Arctic Circle but tempered by the Gulf Stream, this land is lovely in the warm summer, when the meadows flower and the trees are green. But now I think it even more beautiful under the snow. The sun, after six weeks’ absence, has returned on the horizon; the sky is a pale pinkish blue; and the frosty branches of the trees are filigree of a delicacy human hands could not produce. There is the great tangible silence of the North in the air, and the equally great luminosity of these latitudes which, once seen, take hold of you as the Sahara is said to do.

NH

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Nika Hazelton

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Kirkenes, Norway—I’ve. always been fascinated by the way things look and work, and as I came to northern Norway for a series of articles, I thought I would like to see the beginning of the Iron Curtain, and how the border between Norway and the USSR is run. No high politics or principles concern me—my interest is that of a housewife who likes to know how other people keep their house in order.

First I should mention that Norway and Russia have a common frontier of about 125 miles in a countryside of lakes, rivers, and stony mountains and hills festooned with clusters of birch trees. Above the Arctic Circle but tempered by the Gulf Stream, this land is lovely in the warm summer, when the meadows flower and the trees are green. But now I think it even more beautiful under the snow. The sun, after six weeks’ absence, has returned on the horizon; the sky is a pale pinkish blue; and the frosty branches of the trees are filigree of a delicacy human hands could not produce. There is the great tangible silence of the North in the air, and the equally great luminosity of these latitudes which, once seen, take hold of you as the Sahara is said to do.