Save the Repparfjord!

 

Protest site at Repparfjord, Norway, July 2025

This summer, on the site of a Canadian-financed copper mine on the mountain above the Repparfjord in Northern Norway, an encampment has gone up to protest the current construction and its ruinous consequences for Sámi reindeer grazing lands and the fjord near Hammerfest. You can read about the encampment here in a recent issue of the Barents Observer and see an Instagram video on the protest made by Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen, a young singer and activist affiliated with Norway’s environmental protection organization Natur og Ungdom (the youth movement of Friends of the Earth Norway). Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen asks everyone to write to the Canadian investment company Hartree to demand they stop funding this project, which is taking place without the consent of the Sámi parliament and many local Sámi in the area. 

Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen

For more background on the project, read on: 

The Repparfjord, or Riehppovuotna, is a National Salmon Fjord; the rivers that feed into the fjord from the mountains above are some of the world’s most pristine waterways, fished by the local Sámi for generations, and also beloved by fly fishermen from abroad. The fjord is a spawning ground for salmon, for cod, pollack, and other species. This marine environment was first threatened in the 1970s when the copper ore Nussir Mine in the mountains first came into operation with the promise of jobs for the nearby municipality of Kvalsund, a community of Sámi, Kven, and Norwegians located at the western end of the Repparfjord. Because of the falling price of copper, the open pit mine was only in existence from 1972-1978, but it was long enough for the company, Folldal Verk, to dispose of tailings (crushed rock, water, and trace amounts of metals or additives used in the processing) in the Repparfjord. 

This was done without consulting the local population and the effects of the dumping were never monitored. But copper is now in great demand in the manufacture of electronics, and the amount of ore under the surface of two mountains above the Repparfjord, Ulveryggen (Gumpenjunni) and Steinfjellet (Nussir) is estimated at seventy-two million tons. Although Norway has a long history of copper mining farther south, in Røros and Løkken in the Trondelag area, the ore deposits around the Repparfjord are the largest known deposits in Norway. A renewed look at the Nussir brownfields began around 2005 with the establishment of an ASA (a public limited company), and some years of test drilling and raising money followed. The issue of what to do with the waste should mining be resumed was thoroughly discussed, but the plan was essentially the same as in the 1970s. The tailings would again spew into the Repparfjord, though this time the waste would flow through a pipeline from the plant to the fjord bottom. Dumping waste into waterways and the ocean has long been a human practice, but it’s a surprising fact that Norway is the only country in Europe and one of the last nation states to allow mining waste to be discarded in the ocean. 

The Repparfjord

The mine was approved in 2019, with the goal of operating the world’s first fully electrified mine with zero CO2 emissions, but it has been bitterly fought ever since, with protests at the site driven by Sámi activists and other environmentalists. In 2020, the German company Aurubis, one of the world’s largest copper smelters, provisionally agreed to buy raw materials from Nussir ASA. A year later they terminated the memorandum of understanding after opposition, citing concerns about the effect on wildlife and the livelihoods of the Sámi in the area. The tailings were not the main issue; here it was the effect of the mine itself on local reindeer populations. Nussir ASA, in fighting for the mine, has insisted that the mitigation measures they propose will work, but most of those mitigation measures are on land. The Sámi Parliament, which in Norway is given the right of consultation but never the final say in any dispute over the environment, disagreed with Nussir ASA. The suggested mitigations were not sufficient. 

There are conflicting ways of reading Norwegian laws and how they are to be interpreted with regard to Sámi rights. For instance, the Minerals Act of 2009 gives little agency to Sámi concerns, while the Natural Diversity Act, passed that same year, states that the purpose of the act “is to protect biological, geological and landscape diversity and ecological processes through conservation and sustainable use, and in such a way that the environment provides a basis for human activity, culture, health and well-being, now and in the future, including a basis for Sami culture.” There is currently a new Minerals Act, scheduled to go into effect in 2026, that speaks of “Extending the scope of the current special rules relating to Sámi interests to cover the entire traditional Sámi area.” But this revised Minerals Act is also focused on streamlining permits and encouraging production, in line with the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act of 2024. What some critics, Sámi and non-Sámi, have noticed is how little say the Sámi Parliament has over the marine environment. While the rights of land-based reindeer herders are often threatened, there has been progress at times in finding compromises and/or limiting damage. But the rights of the traditional Sea Sámi to clean waters and a healthy marine ecology seem to be more nebulous when it comes to the law. 

Hammerfest protest against dumping in the fjord

Although a number of people in the Kvalsund municipality are in favor of the mine because of the jobs involved and protests and continued pushback from the Sámi Parliament have slowed the process, the plans for the mine haven’t been given up. As of 2025, Blue Moon Metals of Canada is working with Nussir ASA to pursue mining operations. The Sámi Parliament President, Silje Karine Muotka, has been outspoken about the Nussir mine and about a “green shift” that depends on extractive processes that harm the environment and have an outsize effect on Indigenous populations in Norway. “It isn’t a question of economics, it’s a values question, a moral question about what we want to leave future generations. I do recognize that we need materials for new technologies – so we should look for better projects that don’t harm the environment and destroy our culture.” 

Sámi Parliament President, Silje Karine Muotka