Nikel and Kirkenes: a Twin City Pair over the Polar Circle

The paper is devoted to the issue of twin-cities using this term in a narrow sense, with geographical proximity as an important criterion (as opposed to the broad sense of the twin-cities where the distance between cooperating cities doesn't matter). The paper is based on academic literature and research field work in the selected towns which included collecting questionnaires and holding interviews. On the basis of the analysis of relevant Russian municipal legislation the article proves the specificity of Nikel and Kirkenes relations as one with less municipal limits for development of the twinning process. Although the town halls claimed to have weekly interactions between each other the joint vision of twin-cities has not come into place: usually in the strategic doctrines the focus is made not on the joint transborder potential but on the closeness to the border. The status asymmetry of Kirkenes and Nikel within the Barents region is named as one of the constraints for creating a transborder agglomeration and pooling the resources.