Norway is putting up a steel fence at a remote Arctic border post with Russia after an influx of migrants last year, sparking an outcry from refugees' rights groups and fears that cross- border ties with the former Cold War adversary will be harmed.

The government says a new gate and a fence, about 200 metres (660 feet) long and 3.5 metres high stretching from the Storskog border point, is needed to tighten security at a northern outpost of Europe's passport-free Schengen zone.

For decades, the Nordics have enjoyed the image of being a reliable haven for asylum seekers.

But the erection of the fence, at a spot where 5,500 migrants mainly from Syria crossed into Norway last year, reflects a wider shift in public attitudes against refugees.

This is seen too in Sweden, Norway's neighbour, which was once touted as a "humanitarian superpower", but is setting up border controls this year and has toughened asylum rules.

Refugee groups and some opposition politicians say Norway's fence will deter people fleeing persecution and is an unwelcome echo of the Cold War in a region where relations have generally flourished since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

The fence will be erected in the coming weeks, before winter frosts set in, to make it harder to slip into Norway via a forest. Workers have so far done some preparatory work, clearing away old wooden barriers put up to control reindeer herds.

Exhausted and lacking money, many migrants have used bicycles to cross the border from Russia to Norway, one of the world's richest nations.

Russian laws bar anyone from going on foot to the frontier and it is illegal under Norwegian law to willingly give a lift to people without proper identity papers, prompting some refugees to cover the final stretch by bicycle.

"(W)e came with bicycles for about 17 kilometres, we passed and finally we have arrived here in the border. We came here to take our exit - our exit stamp and go to Norway," a migrant from Afghanistan, Osman Alemi, said when entering through the border last November.

"There is no other option for us there. We have to go to Norway. I don't know any other way, there isn't one. In Moscow also they do not provide us with documents, they also say 'go away from here'. They do not give us documents and do not give us work. There is nothing good left there (Afghanistan) for us as well, you know it yourself, there is no other option. There are many Taliban there, they mess with us every day," another Afghani migrant, Qais Faridoun, said.

Migrants stayed in hotels and dormitories in Nikel, the nearest big settlement to the border post, to escape cold temperatures.

Both Moscow and Oslo have since cracked down on the Arctic route, a tiny part of Europe's worst migrant crisis since World War Two that a few refugees found less risky than crossing the Mediterranean by boat.

Norwegians and Russians in the region can cross visa-free for short trips. About 250,000 people crossed the border last year, a decline from recent years but compared with just 5,000 a year when it was a front line between NATO and the Soviet Union.

Opponents say the planned fence is an unwelcome echo of the Iron Curtain that once divided NATO and the Soviet Union.

So far this year, no one has sought asylum via over the frontier, Norway's Directorate of Immigration told Reuters.