Over the last couple of decades, East-West interaction in the European North has increased dramatically, at both institutional and individual levels. Until the early 1990s, foreigners were a rare sight in the streets of Murmansk - and Russians in northern Norway. The chapter provides a glimpse into how inhabitants of the Kola Peninsula perceived their Scandinavian neighbours - and themselves as Russian - some fifteen years after the border was ‘opened’. It is based on a series of in-depth group interviews aimed at investigation how Kola inhabitants spoke of themselves as northerners and Russians, contrasted to (Russian) southerners and Scandinavians.