In line with the recently signed India-EU Free Trade Agreement as well as the India-EFTA Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA) signed with Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visit in Gothenburg and its subsequent participation in an Indo-Nordic summit in Oslo focused, on the surface, on familiar themes: innovation, the green transition, AI and advanced manufacturing.
However, the journey could also catalyze the emergence of a more consequential story. The industrial and technological areas discussed in Gothenburg do not constitute simple business opportunities; they are also precisely the skills that any serious player in the Arctic needs. Taken alongside India’s existing Himadri Research Station in Svalbard and its growing interest in Arctic maritime routes, Modi’s Nordic tour could therefore also be interpreted as the first step in a deliberate strategy to strengthen India’s credibility in the High North through partnerships with the Nordic states: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
Look at what was actually agreed in Gothenburg. Bilateral relations between India and Sweden have been officially transformed into a strategic partnership, structured around four substantial pillars: a dialogue on security and defense, a next generation economic partnership, emerging technologies (including cooperation on AI, 6G, quantum computing and space) and the green transition. Importantly, the two sides also committed to doubling bilateral trade and investment within five years by organizing a bilateral summit dedicated to trade and investment. foreseen in India for 2027.
The momentum continued in Oslo, Norway, where Indo-Nordic relations as a whole were formally pupil to a “trusted strategic partnership in green technology and innovation”, a framework that reflects both commercial and geopolitical ambitions. Separately, India and Norway upgraded their bilateral ties in a “green strategic partnership” supported by 12 agreements covering clean energy, blue economy, green shipping and scientific research. Oslo has also officially joined the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative.
The spatial dimension is particularly revealing. During the visit, Sweden officially joined Indian Shukrayaan mission to Venus. The Swedish Institute for Space Physics has agreed to develop a specialized instrument, the Venus Neutral Analyzer, which will fly aboard the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Venus orbiter. Norway added its own dimension to this space architecture with the signing by the Norwegian Space Agency and ISRO of a framework agreement on cooperation in the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes.
Taken in isolation, these scientific collaborations are important. However, when placed in the context of the Arctic’s emergence as a global space hub, they signal something far more fundamental, from a strategic perspective. Suede, House at Europe’s only orbital satellite launch complex, and Norway has chosen to deepen its space partnerships with India at precisely the moment when India is asserting its ambitions in the Arctic. From a geopolitical perspective, this is important because the space sector is one of the areas in which India has traditionally had influence. long and deep working relationship with Russia. Its new partnerships with Sweden and Norway could therefore indicate a deliberate decision by New Delhi, if not to reduce, at least to diversify its pool of space partners.
Sweden’s Arctic wealth adds additional strategic weight to the partnership. Northern Sweden is House to Europe’s largest deposit of rare earth elements, a discovery that has significantly elevated Sweden’s geopolitical position at a time when China’s dominance of rare earth supply chains is widely seen as a strategic vulnerability for the West. India, for its part, launched its own National Mission on Critical Minerals, and Modi explicitly guest Swedish companies will participate during his visit to Gothenburg. The convergence of India’s mineral processing ambitions with Sweden’s raw material endowment and technological know-how in sustainable mining creates a potential basis for mutual leverage that neither side has yet made explicit, but which could become an important pillar of the relationship.
The obstacle to all these possibilities, however, remains significant: Russia.
India is, or at least until recently was, the country of Russia. second supplier of restricted technologies. This led the United States to sanction 19 Indian companies for links to the Russian war economy towards the end of 2024. Leaving aside the historical context links between India and Russia, New Delhi also promised increase bilateral trade with Moscow to $100 billion by 2030.
For the Nordic states, these are fundamental concerns that underlie a degree of strategic anxiety that Indian policymakers should not underestimate. Their concern is not that India is deliberately redirecting Nordic technology to Moscow. Rather, it is that dual-use know-how tends to migrate through opaque supply chains, and India’s sanctions provide little solace.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store publicly expressed this concern in Oslo: developer a group of Indian journalists who, while Norway respects India’s need to source energy from Russia, hope New Delhi can use its channels with Moscow to help bring about a ceasefire in Ukraine. This comment is diplomatically significant in that it simultaneously acknowledges India’s constraints and signals the expectation that these ties will be used constructively. This constitutes a form of conditional tolerance that New Delhi should read carefully.
This anxiety becomes even clearer when we consider the specific areas currently on the agenda. The joint action plan between India and Sweden covers semiconductors, defense innovation and advanced manufacturing – all of which are, to varying degrees, considered dual-use goods. India also has guest Swedish companies will invest in its defense production corridors. Similarly, the Indo-Nordic joint statement states: “increased momentum in defense cooperation” and highlighted the importance of defense industrial collaboration while highlighting the 100% FDI window offered to Nordic defense companies in Indian defense industrial corridors.
Put bluntly, Indian officials would be making a serious miscalculation if they assumed that their Nordic counterparts are not aware of what this entails; that they are being asked to share sensitive know-how in the areas of AI, space and advanced manufacturing amid India’s growing entanglement with Russia. These are not areas in which Nordic states share capabilities lightly, and New Delhi must expect that any substantial transfer will be contingent on credible guarantees.
If India is serious about the Arctic and its emerging partnership with the Nordic states, both individually and as a group, New Delhi should be ready to meet its Nordic partners on their terms. This means expressing security concerns about Russia frankly, instead of treating them as an overreaction, and accepting that the partnership architecture may require explicit safeguards around technology transfer. The rewards would be worth it. The Nordic Partnership provides India with legitimacy, institutional access and protection against the vulnerabilities that its relationship with Russia continues to create. The Indo-Nordic joint statement actually offers a glimpse of what such legitimacy looks like in practice. The five Nordic heads of government confirmed their support for India’s permanent membership in a reformed and expanded United Nations Security Council.
The good news is that the recently signed agreements with Sweden and Norway, especially if replicated with other Nordic states, could serve as a framework for this type of structured insurance. The Joint Innovation Partnership 2.0 and the India-Sweden Joint Science and Technology Center could be designed from the start with technology transfer protocols built into their governance structures, rather than being added as an afterthought. Similarly, India and Sweden agreed to “regular exchanges between the National Security Council Secretariat of India and the Office of the National Security Advisor of Sweden on matters of mutual interest”. This can be used to narrow the gap between the two sides’ respective threat perceptions and strategic concerns regarding Russia and a range of other issues.
On the Arctic in particular, the Indo-Nordic joint declaration recognized the growing ties between the Arctic and Indo-Pacific regions and welcomed India’s continued and constructive engagement in the Arctic Council’s working groups and expert bodies. This is cautious, progressive language that falls short of the binding Arctic mechanism that New Delhi created. hoping for, but it at least institutionalizes the conversation
Modi’s northward shift could outline a real blueprint for India’s evolving Arctic strategy; one was based on the principle of diplomatic diversification whereby New Delhi works with both the Nordic countries and Russia in the Arctic without one relationship cannibalizing the other. For this to happen, India and the Nordic states must do something they do not find easy: accept managed ambiguity. The Nordic countries must recognize that relations between India and Russia, as uncomfortable as they are, are not going away, and that excluding India from Arctic cooperation for these reasons only pushes New Delhi further into Moscow’s orbit. India, for its part, should demonstrate a credible commitment to technological safeguards, even if this could limit the scope of the partnership. Store audience call asking Modi to leverage India’s ties with Russia for peace in Ukraine is, in its way, an invitation to this kind of managed ambiguity: the recognition that India’s proximity to Moscow is a reality, coupled with the expectation that it will be oriented toward common goals.
The architecture for such an enterprise is now in place thanks, in large part, to the bilateral and minilateral strategic partnerships signed. The question to watch is whether the current political goodwill on both sides will prove sufficiently durable in the long term and in the face of future geopolitical shocks.