By Laurel Colless
August 3, 2026

Plans were drawn up. Maps were made. And engineers were calculating costs. The new railway would link Finland’s Rovaniemi with the port of Kirkenes, high up in Norway, as well as reshape northern logistics by carrying goods from  Europe all the way to the Arctic Ocean. There was only one problem: many of the people living along the route had never  been asked what they thought of it.

For veteran Arctic writer Markku Heikkilä, this now-abandoned railway project characterizes a much wider problem. With the Arctic increasingly viewed from afar through the lenses of security, critical minerals and geopolitics, decisions are too often being made from the outside in.

“The Arctic is not some object far away,” Heikkilä says. “It’s a place where four million people and many other species live their lives.”

The railway project eventually stalled after local Sámi communities voiced concern about the impact on reindeer herding and other local livelihoods. Environmentalists also warned of damage to fragile ecosystems, and calculations showed that the line would cost far too much to be profitable.

“The outcome was testimony that the North can’t just be viewed on a map from Brussels,” Heikkilä says. “It must be first understood as a place people call home.”

Softly-spoken and quick to smile, Heikkilä has spent three decades travelling the Arctic, first as a journalist and later as Head of Science Communications for the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland. Today, he’s in Helsinki after making the long journey south from Rovaniemi. Our conversation over coffee drifts from abandoned railways and reindeer to Arctic diplomacy, Russian scientists and what makes a place feel like home.

As Head of Science Communications at the Arctic Center at the University of Lapland. Markku Heikkilä leads the international Arctic Spirit conference – Finland’s leading Arctic policy event. Photo: Arctic Center

Home means more than strategic assets

When asked what makes a place worth living in, Heikkilä says: “Of course jobs, healthcare and a sense of community and belonging, but also, self-determination. People want to know that they can guide their own futures.”

He can cite many other cases in Finland where military and mining projects were proposed and appraised without the input of local communities — and often with competing values.

There’s talk right now in Finnish Lapland of a proposed Sakatti Mining Oy copper-nickel mine under an area of protected peatland in Sodankylä, Finland. “It would not be an open mine, instead a kind of a tunnel,” Heikkilä says.

The wetland site is protected under the EU’s Natura 2000 as well as Finland’s national conservation program. However, supporters of the project say that because it is an underground mine, the protected area above should stay largely intact.

Like many locals, Heikkilä is skeptical of this. “Can you really excavate a huge mine and extract minerals while still protecting the biodiversity of the ground on top?”

The project also highlights a paradox of values at the EU level. While the proposed site is protected under an EU protected area network, the proposed mine aligns neatly with the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act, targeting sourcing at least 10% of annual raw material needs from mining from inside the EU by 2030.

In the end, Heikkilä believes it comes down to a question of how divided our values are. “People need jobs and regional development, so some mines are needed, but also there have to be limits.” For him, the debate also illustrates how climate, biodiversity, and livelihoods have become inseparable from security. Climate change hasn’t gone away; it’s just disappeared behind geopolitics and defense.

“Yet, if we want to talk about defending our societies, there has to be something left worth defending,” Heikkilä says

Arctic working together for the Arctic

In his 2025 book Once We Had the Arctic, Heikkilä writes about attending the first ever ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council in 1996. And the hope that came with it. All eight Arctic states gathered round the same table with a shared ambition: to shape the future of the region together.

The inaugural meeting of the Arctic Council in Ottawa, Canada, 1996 Photo: Markku Heikkilä

Things continued in a positive direction until the shift, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

An anecdote from Heikkilä’s book that captures this changing mood in Russia was on a visit to the Kola Science Center in Apatity for a conference in 2014. Heikkilä was summoned to the office of a senior Russian official and berated for Finland’s lack of cooperation. He recalls the room as almost bare, containing only a cactus, a bottle of cognac and an English copy of Finland’s Strategy for the Arctic Region.

Heikkilä quietly accepted the reprimand without mentioning that he had written most of the content of the only book on the shelf. “During those times, there was a palpable change in the demeanor of Russian officials,” he later wrote.

“Russia,” he says, “has never really been a team player, but it could still be pragmatic.”

An abandoned railway station in Kirovsk, Russia taken during a visit in 2014 when Heikkilä saw a shift in Russian attitudes following the annexation of Crimea. Photo: Markku Heikkilä

The Arctic Council continued to function. However, the real surprise came in 2019 with an unexpected setback — not from Moscow, but from Washington. The meeting took place in Rovaniemi and Finland had the chair. Heikkilä, who was at the event, recalls how for the first time in the council’s history, the eight countries failed to agree on a joint declaration. And a paper was finally published in Finland’s name only.

“The sticking point,” Heikkilä says, “was the U.S. delegation led by then State Secretary Mike Pompeo, who did not want the words ‘climate change’ mentioned in their common document.”

Preparing for positive futures

Now, following the full-scale invasion by Russia of Ukraine, ministerial meetings have ceased altogether.

“It’s a mess,” Heikkilä admits. Although he notes that the Arctic Council has been kept alive on a technical level, which one day could be useful to restart talks — if the wider geopolitical picture allows. “History is a never-ending story. There are ups and downs.”

He points to a brief time, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, when independent scientists, Indigenous, and other Russian voices began to come forward with independent viewpoints. “Although things quickly changed again when Vladimir Putin came to power.” He pauses, smiling, “And how should I say it? They started to standardize their opinions again.”

Markku Heikkilä at the Syöte resort in northern Finland in 2023 following the launch of the Finnish version of his book, Once We Had the Arctic. Photo: Arctic Center

Heikkilä is unwilling to accept the current state as permanent. Although his book documents journeys across a place and time and a level of cooperation that arguably no longer exist, he is cautiously optimistic. He wonders whether governments at home and abroad are spending too much time preparing for conflict, and not enough time preparing for possible peace.

“We are always preparing for the worst possible scenarios,” he says, “and never for the good ones.”

Our interview is wrapping up, and Heikkila has a train to catch. He signs a copy of his book and hands it to me. There’s time for one last question. In light of his last point, I ask him what the sequel to Once we had the Arctic might be? My question surprises him and his swift reply surprises us both.

“Maybe we call it Once Again We Have the Arctic.”