Finland has Nokian, Sweden has Tretorn and Norway has Viking. Have owned multiple pairs from all brands, and they're all decent. Currently rocking a pair of Vikings as my dailies. (am Finnish)

Alexander Mercouris: Huge Russian Kiev Strike; Missile Smashes Key Bridge; EU Blinks Putin Unyielding When Leaders Call

"...In the middle of all of this, we have had an actual diplomatic initiative by the Europeans. The PM of Norway, Mr. Støre and the President of Finland, President Stubb, both btw bitter hard-liners, the same pair that basically handled Zelensky during Zelensky's recent meeting with Witkoff, the meeting that took place directly before Witkoff flew to St Petersburg, met with Putin in the Konstantinovski Palace in St Petersburg, had what I'm starting to think was a fairly bruising encounter with Putin, in which Putin again refused to give an inch, and insisted that any future talks must be about the security architecture of Europe, the topic of my video yesterday.

Anyway, Støre and Stubb, out of the blue, perhaps increasingly concerned by information that might be trickling through to them, about how Putin rejected outright the proposals that the Europeans and the Americans and the Ukrainians had cobbled together, a proposal basically giving the Russians a choice, either take Donbas and accept that Ukraine will join Nato, or agree to a seizefire on the conflict lines, in which case Ukraine won't join Nato for the time being.

Anyway, perhaps Støre and Stubb were alarmed by what they heard about what happened in St Petersburg in the Konstantinovki Palace, and perhaps they are also further alarmed by the information they are getting about the situation in Ukraine, the attacks on Kiev, the strikes on the Dniepr bridges, all of those things. But apparently, shortly after the strike on the south bridge in Kiev took place they contacted the Kremlin and asked to speak to Putin and a conversation took place in which Støre and Stubb both spoke to Putin, and Putin of course spoke to them.

Now, we've had some explanations from the Finns and the Norwegians about what the Finns and the Norwegians were trying to do, and according to what we're hearing from them, it was an attempt to try to get Putin to agree what they describe as a de-escalation in advance of the start of the negotiations in a few weeks' time. And what they mean of course, by a de-escalation, is an attempt to get the Russians to stop, or at least to slow down what they are currently doing in Ukraine.

I've discussed in many programs now, going back to the beginning of September, how the entire Western diplomatic effort directed at the Russians, has been in some form or other intended to try to persuade the Russians to stop. That was Radcliffe's purpose when he went to Moscow, that was Witkoff and Kushner's purpose, when they also went to Moscow a little later, both in September, that was Trump's purpose, when he telephoned Putin in September, that was again the further purpose of Witkoff's visit to St Petersburg where he met Putin at the Kontantinovki Palace a couple of days ago.

Witkoff in fact was quite open about it, that it was all about working towards a cessation of hostilities. A seize-fire in other words, something which of course Putin has always and consistently, flatly rejected. And, well, the American initiatives, as we read in the New York Times, originated with the Europeans, the Europeans were pressing the Americans to resume contacts with the Russians, to try to get the Russians to agree to stop, and the Europeans have been increasingly alarmed that all the American efforts have come to nothing, and they're probably even more alarmed at the news that instead of getting the Russians to stop, the Americans are now preparing or proposing or agreeing to talk about the security architecture of Europe instead, something which of course the Europeans do not want under any circumstances.

So, in this very difficult situation, Støre and Stubb apparently took the decision, so far as I can tell, without much consultation with the other European states, and before any chief European negotiator has been appointed, they took the initiative to call Putin, and to try to get Putin again to stop.

Now, we have a readout about this conversation from the Kremlin, and the readout makes it absolutely clear that Putin refused to stop. And this is what it says and I'm taking it from the Kremlin's website, it says that "there was an exchange of views on settling the Ukraine crisis in light of Vladimir Putin's talks with Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on October 21st, as well as Stubb's and Støre's own recent contact with Witkoff and Zelensky in Oslo.

The parties welcome the agreement to resume trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and the US in Abu Dhabi, in early to mid December, intended..." and notice this is what the Russians say, "...intended in particular to discuss ways to ensure the security of both Russia and Ukraine, once a complete cessation of hostilities is reached." In other words, again the Russians making it clear that the topic that is going to be discussed in Abu Dhabi is the security architecture of Europe.

And then the readout continues: "Vladimir Putin assessed the current situation in the Ukraine conflict zone", in other words again lectured them on what was actually the situation on the battlefronts and in the sky, not the fairytales about stalemates and Russia only gaining 100 km2 of territory in Ukraine since the start of this year, that much of the Western media has been saying and as Western leaders doubtless say to each other.

So, "...Putin assessed the current situation in the conflict zone, reiterating its root causes", in other words the expansion of Nato and the coup that the Russians say took place in Ukraine in February 2014, and its concequences, just to say.

And then, to continue the readout "...and emphasizing that a just and lasting peace would only be possible if the interests of Russia are considered in full, and without any conditions attached. In addition, Putin noted the EU and Nato's confrontational policies which has resulted in prolonging the war."

So that is Putin said to Støre and Stubb, 'if you want to end the war, if you really want to see this war end, you have to have a realistic view of what is actually happening in the conflict zone, you have to stop the confrontational policies which have extended the hostilities, your help with the drone war, your continued funding and arming of Ukraine, you've got to agree to stop this policy of expanding Nato eastwards, and you also got to take our security concerns into account, and you've got to do that in full, and without attaching any conditions.'

It is the demands for unconditional acceptance of Russia's security demands which stands out for me in this readout. So, if the Russians decide for example that in order for there to be peace, all Nato forces must be withdrawn from Eastern Europe and from the Nordic states, and that Nato must return to the positions that it had in 1998 before Nato expansion began, well, in order for there to be peace, the Western powers must accept that unconditionally.

Now, that is an extreme demand, I wonder whether Stubb or Støre understood the implications of it, but, well, it is as I said an extraordinary comment, but it is there in the Russian readout that you can find on the Kremlin's website.

And then of course Putin had more to say, he also came and brought up the situation in the Baltic, he said "ensuring security in the Baltic Sea and Northern Europe", well that was discussed as well. "In this regard, both the President of Finland and the PM of Norway reaffirmed the importance of upholding international maritime law and the freedom of navigation."

Now, that paragraph contains within it what I suspect was a very intense discussion indeed. Putin telling the Norwegians and the Finns 'what's all this that is going on in the Baltic. What are all these military maneuvers that you are engaging in. What is all of this talk about Kaliningrad that we are hearing. What is all of this chatter about naval blockades and blockades of Kaliningrad. Do you understand, that if you actually act on any of this, if you continue to seize tankers and other ships...', something which btw I've noticed has not been happening for some time now. '...but if you continue this practice of seizing tankers, do you not realize that we're going to respond? And if you have any ideas of denying the Baltic to our shipping, if you fall for this delusional myth that is circulating on some parts of the media in the West, that the Baltic is now a Nato lake, well be prepared for a very tough reaction from us.'

Anyway, after all of that, according to the Russians, Støre and Stubb gave this assurance to Putin 'we're not planning any interference with your merchant shipping, we're not going to seize any of your ships, or maybe we are but we're not really planning to interfere with freedom of navigation, there is no possibility of any blockades, be it on Kaliningrad or St Petersburg or anywhere else in Russia, in the Baltic being imposed, these ideas are entirely alien to us.'

Of course the Russians are not going to simply accept assurances of that kind, particularly assurances doubtless extracted over what I suspect was a very intense call, but it does again highlight the sort of subjects that this call covered.

Anyway, there was that, there was also apparently a discussion over the current humanitarian cease-fire in Alesjki in Kherson region which I'm not going to discuss, and interestingly, Støre and Stubb and Putin agreed that they would all remain in touch. One might assume perhaps correctly, that Støre and Stubb, Stubb perhaps in particular, have just on their own initiative, appointed themselves Europe's representatives in conducting negotiations with the Russians."

I wonder why the Danish PM thinks her opinion is needed on who our PM is talking to.

I went to Norway and asked locals questions about social norms — things like talking to strangers, personal space, and why Norwegians can sometimes seem reserved.

I’ve always been curious about different cultures, and this was all coming from genuine curiosity. I actually really liked Norway, and everyone I spoke with was incredibly nice.

I put some of the conversations together in a video: https://youtu.be/NgXZgpdzccc?si=GgpqKP9Po0H8kx8M

I speak natively a Finnish Swedish dialect colloquially called Grundsprååtsi. I was told by my mom in the 70s the dialect is very close to the dialects spoken in Northern Norway. I recently moved for work to Narvik and recalled what my late mom had said. So I asked the locals if they understand me if I speak Grundsprååtsi. To my surprise it did not even raise eyebrows or smiles, they just said "yes". Also when asked, the locals prefer me to talk my dialect rather than proper Swedish. Hence, I use grundsprååtsi as the working language and have stopped speaking Swedish at all.

The vocabulary is very close, and most of the dialectal words of Grundsprååtsi such as Gårr and Görr are present in the local Norwegian dialect, The same diftongs are used, Stein, Heim, Bein etc. I find it really fascinating that the dialects are so similar, my estimate is that I understand over 90% the local language and the rest can be figured out from context. The funny thing is that while I can fully understand Narvik Norwegian, communicating with my colleagues from Oslo has to be done in English as I do not understand them and neither do they understand me if we try to speak our dialects.

Is there research done on this? We have the Gulf of Bothnia and the Scandinavian mountains between us and still speak almost the same language and the locals feel like cousins I have not met for a while.

Warning. Paywall.

Interview w/Pål Steigan where he claims that support to Ukraine is most popular in the Nordics and the Baltics, whereas ie the biggest German and French opposition parties want to normalize relations with Russia. If and when others stop the support, some Nordic and Baltic countries might remain, the "Viking Alliance" that gives more than 2% of our GDP.

PS: "Norway is making a run here together with the Baltics, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. And I think that is worrisome, because these are almost the same countries as supported Operation Barbarossa. That is, Nazi Norway participated in Operation Barbarossa. So too were the Finns and the Baltics. In Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, they have revered Nazi veterans the whole time after the so-called independence from the Soviet Union. There are flower ceremonies for SS officers and such every year.

So it is very special cirquits we are allying ourselves with. And today, we published an article by a Serbian intellectual who points out that small countries sometimes have a tendency to function like ignitors of conflagration. They assume the great powers will come along and help them. So therefore they run around in the gunpowder depot with lighted torches. And that is a very perilous role.

Here we can mention for example the role of Serbia to ignite the 1st World War. There was a militant group called the Black Hand which ignited it, while the government didn't really want it. One thing took the other, and suddenly we had a war between great powers. And in a way, Polen and Austria functioned in this way with South Slovakia before the 2nd WW.

And you know Norway is talking about war with Russia. Norway is going to produce long ranged weapons that are supposed to reach Moscow or further. Ok. At some point perhaps the Russians are going to say, like Putin said at the meeting in New Dehli here the other day, sure, if you want war with Russia you can have it. And that will be a short war. And I think he is right about that. And then these Nordic leaders, or what one is supposed to call them, they believe that Uncle Sam is going to come to their rescue. There is no chance that the Americans are going to sacrifice a single soldier to defend crazies in the Nordics. There is no chance."

TA: "No, this is pretty interesting, because in reality this is a war that to a large degree is provoked through many many years by USA. But now USA in a way has managed to let the Europeans take over the management of this war. And earlier this week, 8th sep, the General Secretary of Nato, Mark Rutte, drummed together some people who constitute a sort of donor countries group, in order to continue to support Ukraine with money and weapons. And he says we have no choice. We just have to continue supporting Ukraine. We have no choice. And yesterday i listened to Helgemorgen on P2, NRK, where [foreign minister] Espen Barth Eide, manages to come back to the same. We have no choice. We just have to support Ukraine. That is the scenario here that our media has pushed since the war started. Ukraine's war is our war. And Norway's front line now goes in East Ukraine."

PS: "And so how many soldiers have Norway sent to Ukraine? They are presupposing that it is the Ukrainians who are going to continue to die."

TA: "Yes."

PS: "And now European countries are abolishing the protection of the asylum seekers, to chase not just men, but also women, back to Ukraine, into the front, to suffer a quick death to advancing Russian forces. So it is an unbelievably cynical game. And I don't think EBE and Støre necesarily understand this. Their strategic thinking ability I don't put very high. But there has to be one or two professional military strategic thinkers in Europe who understand what this is about.

In USA at any rate there are lots of them. The American think tanks have been researching this for a long time, New York Times wrote two and a half years ago that Ukraine is going to lose. Spectator wrote it a couple weeks back. "Ukraine is losing the war". We know this. And then they say they are to continue.

With what? So far the Russians have not used the heaviest conventional weapons they have, only as an exception have they tried some of them, but they have studied meticulously Iran's experiences, there is now a de facto alliance between Moscow and Tehran, Moscow has supplied Iran with many important things, radar systems and surveillance systems that have been important in the war. And Moscow sees that if Iran hits American bases, the Americans aren't going in with full force and try to defend it. They don't have the ability to. They are using so many Patriot interceptors just against a few Iranian drones or missiles. And the Russians know this very well. They know there are no Patriot missiles in Europe to protect the bases. I don't think Putin wants war with Europe. Why would he? On the other hand, it is fully possible for the Europeans to make a provocation that the Russians have to react to. And that will be scary for Europe, and the Americans are not coming to the rescue. That is not going to happen, and then we are standing there.

And there is something strange with that Nordic war activism. To me it seems a little like Bjørnsson's glorification of the Scandinavianism. And egged the Danes to war with Prussia, no? And it ended with the catastrophy on Dybel Skanse which incurred a terrible defeat upon Denmark. And why go on in that way?

Small countries need to realize that it is the great powers who own the game. Norway should realize it, because Norway has three times become more or less free because of the great power game. After the Kiel Peace 1813 it became possible to gather the Storting and vedta the constitution in 1814. That was to be fair short lasting, and the war against Sweden lasted very short, but that was the great power game at that time. And in 1905 it was the great powers again, among others Russia, who made it possible to establish a Norway independent of Sweden. It didn't come to war between Norway and Sweden because the great powers didn't want it. And again, it was the Soviet Union first and foremost, who made Norway free in '45, fundamentally.

TA: "We must not talk so loudly about that. I suppose our viewers should see a Gallup poll, how is the feeling among Ukrainians in Ukraine? .. And here we see a clear tendency. At the war outbreak there was over 70% of Ukrainians who wanted to fight against the invasion militarily. This support for the war in Ukraine, among Ukrainians it has fallen quite drastically. And in both 2025 and 2026 it was measured to just 24% of the Ukrainians wanted to fight militarily in this war. 66% want now want a negotiated solution as soon as possible. And this is a Gallup made by the American Gallup institute. Very credible. Nobody has cast doubt upon the correctness of this study. So the feeling in Ukraine among Ukrainians is very clear. They want a negotiated peace solution. So why in all the days should Norwegian politicians overrun the Ukrainians' own wish?"

PS: "That has to be because there are other interests behind. One can evaluate what that is, but as it happens, this this war is first and foremost a financial operation.

The war is an enormous support to the weapons industry, and thereby to the finance capital who owns the weapons industry. And as a whole, what we have seen in the recent years, lockdown with the Corona fckery and so on, was also a financial war, Ukraine is a financial war, most of these billions go to American weapons industry. American weapons industry is owned by Blackrock and these companies, BlackRock is inside Ukraine with large assets there. So in the last instance this is finance. And Norway is actually a significant finance imperialist. The oil fund owns 1.5% of the world's stocks and is deeply integrated into Wall Street and the BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard system.

So Norway here operates as an international finance capitalistic warmaker. And these war stocks are enormous. The Kongsberg Group makes huge profits on this. So this is capitalism as of today, it has in reality stopped doing normal capitalist production, but it is all about finance.

In addition comes an important aspect because everybody knows that Ukraine is Europe's most corrupt society. It is said that 15-30% of the money that comes in is simply stolen by the system. Recently the State Attorney had to resign. Why, because the State Attorney's office got enormous profits of a system of call centers that is criminal, and the international police authorities say this bigger internationally than drug trade. So this is gigantic. And once you are inside that system, you are on team with the blackest of the black economy in the world. This is criminal to the core. Those who send these money from Norway, must know they are part of this. It can not have escaped them.

Therefore, they also have personal interest in that this war doesn't end. Because when this war ends, this whole laundry is coming on the table, and the blame for having used, how much, a quarter of a national budget, on swindle and scams, that will be distributed. Clearly the persons, Støre, Stoltenberg and so on, they have personal interests of this not being seen. So they have personal interest in that the war continues."

TA: "The problem here Pål, is that the whole Storting is behind this. There is no opposition on the Storting. So who in all the days are going to put the responsibility to whom?"

They move on to among other things the connections between Norwegians and "the White Fuhrer" in Ukraine, General Biletskyj.

Who keeps track of the money and connections between Nordic politicians and corporations, the Ukrainian corruption and international finance capital?

I feel like rain is a part of our daily lives and as my rain coat is about to need to be replaced I’d love to here what people are buying and who has the smartest setup to stay dry during these rainy times. I have regular rain pants but hate the inconvenience of taking them off when arriving at a friend’s house.

Taking into account intense wind is a bonus as well as the wind where I live is out of this world.

How come user flairs are disabled here? Most Nordic or similar subreddits even force you to use flairs to indicate where you're from.

En sejr for Nordisk integration! 💛💙🤍❤️