, , , or is a village in

Sør-Varanger Municipality Sør-Varanger (; ; ) is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Finnmark Counties of Norway, county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Kirkenes. Other settlements in the municipality include the vill ...

Finnmark Finnmark (; ; ; ; ) is a counties of Norway, county in northern Norway. By land, it borders Troms county to the west, Finland's Lapland (Finland), Lapland region to the south, and Russia's Murmansk Oblast to the east, and by water, the Norweg ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. The village lies about south of the town of

Kirkenes (Norwegian language, Norwegian; ), (Northern Sami language, Northern Sami; , or is a List of towns and cities in Norway, town in Sør-Varanger Municipality in Finnmark county, in the far northeastern part of Norway. The town lies on a peninsu ...

and about west of the Norway-Russia border. The village has a couple of suburbs including

Hesseng Hesseng is a village in Sør-Varanger Municipality in Finnmark county, Norway. The village lies about south of the town of Kirkenes. The village of Hesseng lies at the intersection of the European route E105 and European route E6 highways. The ot ...

to the north and

Sandnes Sandnes () is a city and municipality in Rogaland, Norway. It lies immediately south of Stavanger, the 4th largest municipality in Norway, and together the Stavanger/Sandnes area is the third-largest urban area in Norway. The urban city of Sand ...

to the west. The

Bjørnevatn IL Bjørnevatn Idrettslag is a Norwegian sports club from Bjørnevatn, Finnmark. It has sections for association football and Nordic skiing. The men's football team currently plays in the Fourth Division, having had a run from 2008 to 2010 and an ...

is the local sports team. The name ''Bjørnevatn'' translates to "Bear Lake" in English. The village has a population (2023) of 2,536 and a

population density Population density (in agriculture: Standing stock (disambiguation), standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geog ...

of .

Mine

The bedrock below Bjørnevatn is located in the East Finnmark mountain formation (''Øst-Finnmarks grunnfjellsområde''). Iron ore deposits were originally discovered in the area during 1868 with commercial production of iron ore by 1910. The

Sydvaranger Sydvaranger AS (previously ''A/S Sydvaranger'') is an iron ore mining company in Sør-Varanger Municipality, Norway. The mining operations have not restarted (as of Q1 2025). With an open-pit mine in Bjørnevatn, it has traditionally hauled the o ...

iron ore mines are located just south of Bjørnevatn. The

Kirkenes–Bjørnevatn Line The Kirkenes–Bjørnevatn Line (), or the Sydvaranger Line (), is a long railway line between Kirkenes and Bjørnevatn in Sør-Varanger Municipality, Norway. Owned by the private mining company Northern Iron, the single track (rail), single-tr ...

is a short railway line that runs from the mines to the town and port at Kirkenes to the north.

History

The village used to be located near the shores of the lake Bjørnevatnet, but the lake was drained in 1958 so that the iron ore under the lake could be mined. During the liberation in 1944 at the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, a large number of people lived inside the mines during the fighting; estimates vary between 1,000 and 3,500. Their story is portrayed in the 1974 film '' Under a Stone Sky''.

References

External links

Sydvaranger Iron Project (Northern Iron)
Villages in Finnmark Sør-Varanger Populated places of Arctic Norway {{Finnmark-geo-stub