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Contrary to the view held by many actors, this paper, by using a quantitative and longitudinal analysis in a comparative perspective, show that demographic development in Northern Norway and Northern Sweden is much more similar than many think. Over the last 60 years, there has been a small negative trend in the relative percentage of the national population that lives in the two regions, with "knowledge cities", and especially the two university cities Tromsø and Umeå, as the exception. Despite Broxian social theories of regional development in Northern Norway and the implementation of a generous set of regional policies, there seems to be no cause to claim that Northern Norway has followed a unique path of development compared to Northern Sweden, neither in general nor in smaller and more rural communities.