Север и рынок. 2022, № 2.

СЕВЕР И РЫНОК: формирование экономического порядка. 2022. № 2. С. 124-130. Sever i rynok: formirovanie ekonomicheskogo poryadka [The North and the Market: Forming the Economic Order], 2022, no. 2, pp. 124-130. НАУЧНЫЕ СООБЩЕНИЯ close cooperation with voluntary organizations [10]. This was in line with the governmental "Voluntary declaration" from 2015 prompting the municipal level to map all voluntary organizations that were active in the communities and to work out a policy for volunteer work. The volunteer centre (Frivilligsentralen) is an essential local structure to put this policy into practice. Troms and Finnmark county consists of 37 municipalities, and most of them had a volunteer centre in operation when the pandemic hit. The volunteer centre is a meeting place for mobilizing and coordinating voluntary work, for mapping the needs of vulnerable groups, and for finding organizations or individuals who can help. The volunteer centre also engages in recruiting volunteers and teaching charitable practices. Such structures became paramount for the municipal mobilization in the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. The Red Cross has local units in most Norwegian municipalities, and volunteers in the organization helped the municipality with corona-related tasks. For example, the Red Cross in Troms0 helped the university hospital to test employees for COVID-19, provided safe transport of infected or suspected infected persons, ran a test station for foreign visitors at Troms0 airport, helped the elderly, disabled, and foreign workers in quarantine or isolation with shopping, and manned a "phone-a-friend" service for lonely and isolated people. The organization contributed with 4000 hours of voluntary COVID-related work in 2020 [11]. The COVID-19 situation also forced the organization to find new methods of helping. Because of social distancing, the service where volunteers regularly visit lonely people in the community became virtual or phone based. A survey conducted in May - June 2021 among volunteer organizations in Northern Norway highlights the resilience of voluntarism by finding new and innovative ways of helping people in need as well as taking responsibility for new tasks such as passing on and explaining information from the authorities about COVID-related issues. Conclusions This Research Communication sheds light on national COVID-19 response strategies in Troms and Finnmark county and Murmansk oblast and focuses on how volunteer work with vulnerable groups in two neighbouring regions in the Arctic was organised during the initial stages of the pandemic from March 2020 to June 2021. We show how structural and political differences framed volunteer work during the crisis in two national and regional settings. We have discovered that despite similarities in the COVID responses such as mobilization of volunteers and the rise in volunteer movements, political systems and health crisis responsibilities at the state, regional, and local levels have been quite diverse, and this explains differences in organizing volunteer work in the case regions. Russia has employed a centralized mobilization type system for its COVID response involving all levels and many sectors. The regional level, with the governor heading the newly established regional COVID-19 headquarters, has substantial power to decide on measures to fight the pandemic. This is contrary to Norway where the regional level has only a minor role in the COVID-19 response. Here the municipal level has a relatively strong position in the implementation of national policy and municipal bylaws, though in close cooperation with state health agencies. Before the pandemic, voluntary work did not play a substantial role in health and well-being provision in Murmansk oblast. The COVID-19 crisis changed this as new structures in the form of united regional and municipal volunteer centres quickly appeared across the region, and the extent of volunteerism increased. Volunteer structures in Troms and Finnmark were already well established on the regional and local levels and could easily be mobilized when the pandemic hit. Most of the activity took place within well-established NGOs in close cooperation with the municipality, and often under the umbrella of the volunteer centres. Our study shows that volunteerism is one of the most efficient tools for crisis response on both sides of the Norwegian-Russian border and shows that volunteer work adds an indispensable value to reduce the workload of public health and social care institutions in promoting health and well-being for vulnerable groups. Voluntary structures on the Norwegian side appear to be resilient and flexible to meet the needs of the target group, and volunteerism in Murmansk oblast during the COVID-19 crisis shows exceptional strength to grow, formalize, and mobilise within a very short period. We focused on volunteer work in two national settings, but we also kept in mind that the Norwegian- Russian border region hosted a variety of cross-border cooperations in this field prior to the COVID-19 outbreak [12]. The pandemic put people-to-people contacts between volunteer organizations on hold, and the following tense global situation from February 2022 stopped further initiatives. We hope that the future will bring new possibilities to exchange experiences on voluntary work between volunteers, researchers, and authorities across the border. Declaration of conflicting interests The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest. © Ныгор В., Рябова Л. А., 2022 129