Traffic across Storskog increasing, but less visa cases

The influx of visa cases so far this year shows a decrease of about 12 percent, according to the Visa Section of the Royal Norwegian Consulate General in Murmansk, Russia.

However, the traffic across Storskog shows an increase by 9 percent so far this year, the Consulate reports in its newsletter.

- We believe that the decrease in applications may be related to the weakened exchange rate for the Rouble, but also that a lot of our applicants get visas valid for a long period of time, so that they do not need to apply that often anymore.

- The increased traffic across Storskog suggests that the interest to travel to Norway is still strong, and we also see a lot of visa applicants who plan to go fishing, to see tourist destinations in the far north of Norway, to visit the fjords or to travel to music festivals around the country in addition to just go to Kirkenes for shopping, writes Marit Egholm Jacobsen, Head of the Visa Section.