The Arctic Murmansk Oblast

April 2019

“In two years I have driven here 200 times, and it’s always special. The skies, the roads”. I was on the way from the Barents Sea to Murmansk with my driver Slava. Originally from Chelyabinsk, Slava started working as a taxi driver in Murmansk in 2017. Tourism is booming here, mostly due to Chinese tour groups chasing the Northern Lights, and he now owns a taxi business with eight drivers. I agreed with Slava that the drive was spectacular, and he stopped occasionally to let me take pictures of the tundra, the sunset and a fox along the road.

This is the Murmansk Oblast, a part of Russia above the Arctic Circle bordering the White Sea, the Barents Sea, Norway and Finland. The sun doesn’t set in mid-summer and doesn’t in rise mid-winter. It has a taiga and tundra landscape, and a lot of resources in the ground. Towns are often named after what is mined here: Nickel, Amazonite and Apatity. I first came here in August 2018, when I hiked near Kandalaksha and explored the capital Murmansk. It was spring in Moscow when I took the train back to Murmansk in April 2019. But as I arrived there was still snow everywhere. I returned because of a voluntary project, and took time to travel here as well.

Teriberka

The fishing town of Teriberka lies between a barren tundra landscape and the Barents Sea. It’s known as the place where the award winning film “Leviathan” was shot. It feels remote and empty. Many of the buildings are abandoned, its sandy beach is clear apart from one shipwreck, and there is a ship graveyard next to the main road. Still there are a bunch of guest houses here. I stayed in the tiny hostel “Moroshka” myself, where I was welcomed by the helpful manager Zhenya and a cute, calm dog called Alma.

I already knew that certain parts of the tundra were off limits, so I asked Zhenya where I was allowed to walk. The next morning I explored the surroundings, walking through a landscape of snow and rocks. I found some viewpoints overlooking the rough coastline, and eventually reached some spectacular cliffs. During my walk I met no-one but a group of tourists on snowmobile-drawn sleds, and what appeared to be a scarecrow in a diving suit holding a pitchfork. I can’t imagine why someone would place a scarecrow in the middle of the tundra, apart from scaring the shit out of tourists (in that case it worked).

Kola Superdeep

I was staying in Nickel, a mining town close to the Norwegian border. My guide for the day, Vadim, drove me to the Kola Superdeep. Reaching 12,262 meters below ground level it is the deepest hole in the world. Scientists drilled here from the seventies until the nineties. The project stopped because the temperatures so far underground reached 180 degrees Celsius - too hot to drill in. Nowadays the facility around the borehole is abandoned. It’s located in a hilly and barren landscape, covered by a deep layer of snow this time of year. Vadim pulled over and opened the trailer behind our car. We would continue by snowmobile.

Vadim raced through the snow, climbing hills and avoiding rocks. I sat at the back, firmly holding the grips. After a while he stopped and offered me to drive, probably not knowing he was accompanied by a Dutchie who didn’t understand the hilly tundra or how to drive a snowmobile. I got the hang of it, driving through the dunes while Vadim shouted directions from the backseat. But when he told me to go up a very steep hill, I asked him to take over again. We reached what looked like a factory: the Kola Superdeep.

We were the only people here. Vadim grabbed a crowbar, and knocked on the metal before we entered: there could be dogs in the rooms. We walked through a corridor, climbed a staircase and entered the labs. There was still furniture, equipment and paperwork in the rooms. Vadim picked up prints, they appeared to be measurements of a seismograph. We returned downstairs to see the hall where they made the drills. Outside of the building was the well itself, covered by metal and snow. The structure around the hole collapsed unfortunately. Still, the state of the labs and the remote location of this abandoned facility made it a memorable visit.

Kirovsk

Built above the Arctic Circle and surrounded by mountains, Kirovsk is a cold place. Kirovsk ski resort “Big Wood” was still busy in April. The city was founded in the twenties after minerals were discovered in the soil, and the mining industry is big here. The theatre, built in the Soviet Era, is named after one of these minerals called “apatity”.

One of my favourite spots in Russia is in Kirovsk, namely a museum made of snow and ice called the “snow village” (Снежная Деревня). It’s a labyrinth built annually from fresh snow. Artists from the North make sculptures out of ice blocks and carve decorations into the frozen walls. I was pleasantly surprised the museum was still open in April. Even the bar, completely made of ice, was still there. The corridors were illuminated in different colours, the walls carved with themes from science or fairy tales.

Near the snow village is a trail towards a valley, which I followed for an hour. In front of me where the Khibiny Mountains, with no road or building in sight. This is the beauty of the Murmansk Oblast: its wild nature is always nearby.

Practical info on traveling here

Transport: I traveled by train from Moscow to Murmansk, via Saint Petersburg. I booked the train tickets by credit card through the English version of the Russian railways website eng.rzd.ru. I flew back from Murmansk to Moscow with Aeroflot. The bus between Murmansk and Teriberka only goes every two days, so I had to take a taxi myself. To travel from Murmansk to Kirovsk, first take a train to Apatity. It’s 20 another kilometers by bus or taxi to Kirovsk. People I knew through my voluntary project put me in touch with Vadim, the guide who took me to Nickel and the Kola Superdeep. He doesn’t have a website, and unfortunately I didn’t get permission to put his phone number on my website

Exploring the towns: Buses go around Murmansk and Kirovsk and local bus-lines can be found through the Yandex transport app. I used maps.me for navigation and booked taxis with Yandex taxi. These apps are free and work in English, though addresses in Kirovsk are mostly shown in Cyrillic. The snow village is seven kilometers outside of Kirovsk, marked on maps.me as “Снежная Деревня”.