War has upended Russian-Nordic friendships forged on Arctic ice hockey rinks. Can they ever recover?

Ban on Russian teams competing internationally has been lifted but days of friendly relations between Norwegian, Finnish and Russia players are a distant – if fond – memory

For years, playing ice hockey against teams from Russia was a central part of Janne Tervahauta’s social life.

Through his team, Tunturi-Kiekko, based in Ivalo, a rural Arctic town close to Finland’s most northerly border crossing with Russia, he would travel around the Arctic with his teammates. But the Barents Hockey League went on hold during the pandemic, and after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, all contact with Russia was stopped.

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