Friends & Neighbors

Among the rolling hills of the birch-covered Province of Finnmark is the little (pop. 4,000) town of Kirkenes. Kirkenes sits snugly on one of the richest deposits of iron ore in all Norway. Saturnine, bespectacled Gotfred Hoelvold sits smugly on Kirkenes. Respected citizens of the village bow politely when they meet Gotfred on the street, and whisper uneasily when he has passed by. Policemen salute him with obsequious care. Even the Norwegian army garrison is obliged to seek out Gotfred for help from time to time.

$115 a Month. Yet Gotfred Hoelvold is no proud mining tycoon or high government potentate. The only official job he holds is a humble one. He is secretary to the director of the town planning commission, for which he gets paid approximately $115 a month. A mild, soft-spoken little man with rumpled clothes, he lives quietly with his wife and four children. The thing that sets him apart in Kirkenes is his connections. "I have friends," says Gotfred, "in Moscow."

Forty-five years ago, when Gotfred was born in a village close to Kirkenes, that might not have mattered. Russia was a good 40 miles away. But things have changed since then. Gotfred, son of a Marxist day laborer, had traveled far & wide as a sailor, tramp printer and roustabout. In 1931 he went to Moscow. He returned to Norway after that, but during the war, when the mines and homes of Kirkenes were demolished and villagers huddled together in derelict mineshafts, Hoelvold was back in Russia as a Norwegian-language news commentator on the radio. By the time he came back to Kirkenes in 1945, Russia's peace treaty with Finland had wiped out a whole section of Finnish-Norwegian border and Russia was Kirkenes' next-door neighbor.

Damn the Communists. Kirkenes' Finnish neighbors over the line were carefully moved back behind a Soviet "security belt." Some six divisions of the Red army moved up to protect the new border. Norwegians were forbidden to go to Petsamo (which the Russians named Pechenga), the Finnish nickel center across the Pasvik River. Meanwhile, Hoelvold established himself as local Red leader. He built up an eight-man Communist bloc in Kirkenes' 28-man town council. He began to publish a Mimeographed party newspaper. With his Russian friends beaming from the other side of the Pasvik, he blasted Norway's labor government as full of "imperialist quislings."

Now once a week privileged Comrade Hoelvold slips across the border to have a powwow with his friends. The Norwegian government, certain that the U.S.S.R. would make him a cause celebre at the drop of a warrant, leaves him alone. The army finds him handy as an interpreter in tricky border disputes when a wandering cow or peasant gets lost on the Soviet side. As for the neighbors in Kirkenes--"Damn Communism," they whisper, bowing to Gotfred. "But the Russians could be here in a quarter of an hour. We don't want trouble."

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