Norway has said it will send migrants and refugees back across its Arctic border to Russia the same way they came — on bicycles.

Last year, around 5,500 intrepid migrants and refugees, most of them Syrian, took advantage of a loophole that permits cyclists to pass through the northern Storskog crossing en route to Europe. While Russian and Norwegian laws prohibit people from crossing the border on foot or giving someone without documents a ride, bicycles are permitted to pass relatively freely at both ends.

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But Sylvi Listhaug, the newly appointed Norwegian immigration minister who promised in December to crack down on the flow of refugees into the country, said this week that all those who crossed at Storskog without a transit visa would be sent back to Russia, according to English-language Norwegian news site The Local.

Bikes used by migrants and refugees to cross the border from Russia to the Norwegian crossing station at Storskog piled up in November 2015.

Norway's National Police Directorate has now asked police districts to dig out and refurbish the bicycles that were discarded at the border so that the thousands who left them can ride them back across. Jan Erik Thomassen, a Police Directorate section head, told broadcaster NRK that police are trying to avoid having refugees bike back to Russia, but that requires the cooperation of the Russians. "I can understand that it feels a bit awkward and odd," he said.

More than 1 million migrants and refugees fled to Europe last year, with most coming by boat across the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. But a smaller number opted for a somewhat cheaper and safer — albeit longer — route through the Russian Arctic to Norway. Many of them first obtained Russian visas in Damascus or Beirut, The Wall Street Journal reported. Fearing a tourist visa would raise suspicions at the border, some even enrolled at Russian universities and got a student visa, according to the newspaper.

After flying into Moscow, most took a train to the Arctic city of Murmansk, about 130 miles from the Norwegian border, before making their way to the Storskog crossing.

But their European dream didn't last long. Norway announced last November that it would begin rejecting asylum seekers who had previously resided in Russia. And then a week later, the two countries began sending migrants and refugees who had crossed the border at Storskog back to the side they came from.

Refugees are transferred from the Norwegian border crossing station at Storskog to the refugees arrival centre after crossing the border from Russia on Nov. 11, 2015.

It's unclear exactly what will happen to the migrants and refugees who will be returned to Russia. Svetlana Gannushkina, a Russian immigration activist, told The Guardian that Syrians probably won't be deported but are unlikely to receive legal status. "They'll illegally travel around Russia, as they did before. Many refugees here are in a suspended state with no status," she told the newspaper.

Some 2,000 of the 12,000 Syrians in Russia have been granted one-year temporary asylum, while an additional 2,000 have received another legal status, Russian media quoted the country's Federal Migration Service as saying.

The Norwegian Organization for Asylum (NOAS) criticized the plan to send migrants and refugees back to Russia, fearing Moscow could have them deported to their home countries. "Norway can't return asylum seekers to Russia, which will in turn send them back to Syria. We have principles pertaining to international law that Norway must uphold," Jon Ole Martinsen of NOAS told NRK.