A Mayor In Norway's Arctic Looks To China To Reinvent His Frontier Town

Looking out across a foggy harbor toward a peninsula jutting off the Norwegian coast, Rune Rafaelsen has a bold plan that could raise the profile of his remote Arctic town — with a little help, he hopes, from China.

He is the mayor of Sor-Varanger, a municipality in the far northeast corner of Norway, close to the Russian border. His office is in the small town Kirkenes — population a little over 3,500 — which overlooks the icy gray Barents Sea.

Rafaelsen loves the view: "It's a very nice view, especially in the summer when you have the midnight sun is not going down in the horizon. You can see the sun all 24 hours."