Geography of Russia , the Russian border is the world's longest. Along the 20,139-kilometer land frontier, Russia has boundaries with 14 countries: Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland (via the Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, the People's Republic of China and North Korea. Approximately two-thirds of the frontier is bounded by seawater. Virtually all of the lengthy northern coast is well above the Arctic Circle; except for the port of Murmansk—which receives currents that are somewhat warmer than would be expected at that latitude, due to the effects of the Gulf Stream—that coast is locked in ice much of the
North ("night"), since above the Tropic of Cancer, the Sun never shines from the north, except inside the Arctic Circle during the summer midnight sun. The direction north is often associated with colder climates because most of the world's land at high latitudes is located in the Northern Hemisphere. The Arctic Circle passes through the Arctic Ocean, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, the United States (Alaska), Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut), Denmark (Greenland) and Iceland (where it passes through the small offshore island of Grímsey). By convention, the top side of a map is often north. To go north using a