Arctic Ocean Highway

Arctic Ocean Highway (Finnish: Jäämerentie, Swedish: Ishavsvägen, German: Eismeerstraße) was a 531 kilometre-long highway in Lapland, Finland connecting the town of Rovaniemi to the port of Liinakhamari by the Pechenga Bay of the Barents Sea. It was opened in 1931 as the first highway in the world reaching the Arctic Ocean.

Arctic Ocean Highway and the Liinakhamari port became vital during the World War II in 1940–1941 as the only export route for Finland and Sweden not controlled by Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. After the war, Finland ceded the area of the former Petsamo Province to the Soviet Union and thereby lost its connection to the Arctic Ocean. The highway was rerouted and today it is a part of the Finnish national road 4 leading to Norway.

The Arctic Ocean Highway was mostly built on the tracks of the 16th Century Finnmark Path which connected the Finnish Lapland to the Finnmark county of Norway. In the early 1900s, the northernmost point of the Finnish roads was in the village of Tankavaara, 225 kilometres north of Rovaniemi. The road to Ivalo was finished in 1913 and the construction of a new road to Petsamo was launched in 1916 by the order of the emperor Nicholas II of Russia. After the 1917 Independence of Finland, the old narrow routes were widened to the width of 5 metres and the new Petsamo Highway was finally opened in its full length in 1931, renamed as the Arctic Ocean Highway. During the 1930s, the traffic grew rapidly as the Petsamo nickel mines were opened, and Liinahkamari soon became one of the major ports of Finland. It was the only year-round ice-free harbour in Finland.

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