Citizen number 10.000 was born in March this year, an event that was celebrated with a flag parade during the local festival Kirkenesdagene in the beginning of August.
Sør-Varanger has a very mixed population with people from 64 different nations. Russians make up the largest group of foreigners, with Poles and Finns on the following places.
The last time there were this many inhabitants in Sør-Varanger, was in 1996, when 10.010 people lived here. That was also the year when the iron ore mine Sydvaranger was closed as a result of falling steel prizes on the world market. People started moving out, and the population dropped to 9463 in 2005, numbers from Statistics Norway show. Since then, the population has been growing steadily.
