Solovki Islands

If you look at the passengers on the ship named ‘Vasily Kosyakov’, which travels along the White Sea between the town of Kem and Bolshoy Solovetsky Island, you can easily understand who they are and why they have headed so far to the north of Russia. So, devout women sit modestly with their hands folded in their laps. They glance at the icons hanging above the safety signs from time to time and pray to themselves. Some are novices, probably travelling there to find work at the monastery or in the village. Pilgrims gather around a priest wearing a black cassock; he convinced his congregation to join a pilgrimage. Foreigners sit and read their travel guides and books; they are attracted to dramatic Russian history and the northern architectural style of the Solovki Islands.

I’m thinking about how to tell the whole story of the island, where so many things have happened, in just one article. How to admire the natural beauty — despite the long and fascinating history of the local monastery and the short but bloody history of SLON (the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp). I think the right way to show the Solovki area to secular tourists (as the locals call those who are not pilgrims) is to teach them to listen, to see, to reflect and… to feel moved at the end. So, I’ll tell you about the places and activities on Bolshoy Solovetsky Island that you just can’t miss.

Blagopoluchiya Bay

In the summer evenings, the sun sets just enough to colour the domes of the Solovetsky Monastery in a warm pink-orange. It is impossible to pass or drive by without stopping and looking at the beauty. The main reasons people come here are to see the stone walls, walk through Nikon’s Gate to the cloister, visit the churches and listen to the church bells ringing. Throughout the afternoon, the entire island’s hustle and bustle is all around the monastery. After the monastery doors have closed, you will want to take another look at Blagopoluchiya Bay. 

On a calm evening, free of the typical winds (which rarely happens), the water in the bay reflects everything like a mirror. And it doesn’t matter if the monastery belfries are sinking in the “golden hour” light (shortly after sunrise or before sunset) or melting in grey fog or in the rain — Blagopoluchiya Bay is beautiful in any weather, at high tide or low tide. You just need to walk around along the shore and the promenade, walk past the old warehouses and the sheds where fishing nets are drying and pass the Maritime Museum. Then walk to the Preobrazhensky Hotel, which once hosted all the guests of the island but is now completely destroyed. Take a look at the longboats, karbasses and motorboats. And then head to the dry dock — where you’ll find a unique hydraulic structure. And right there you can see the most dramatic view of the monastery.

• Orange Fact
  The Solovetsky archipelago is located near the Arctic Circle. It consists of six large and dozens of small islands. The total area is 347 km². The archipelago has more than 1,000 freshwater lakes.

Maritime Museum

As the saying goes: “The White Sea — our dear Father. All its habits are known, and the Pomors live in harmony with the sea, like a family.” The life of the Pomors, an Arctic people inhabiting the shores of the icy White Sea, has always been inseparable from the sea. In the Maritime Museum, which is located in the former shed for storing rowboats on Cape Seldyanoy, you can listen to a fascinating story about the difficult life on the frozen sea. Just try to imagine how your life would look if you were a Pomor’s faithful wife: spending your time preparing the sails for boats, fishing in the sea, waiting five months for your husband to return from the sea, digging beds in the garden, mowing the hay, sewing, weaving, cooking, taking care of the children… I bet the only things you would easily accept from their difficult life are the fur coats and river pearl earrings.

The museum has a lot of interesting objects on display — models of old ships, maps, utensils used on the ships, the Pomors’ historical navigation devices, such as a “vetromet”, which is both a sundial and a compass; a compass called the “Matochka” — a nautical instrument made of mammoth bone; and tools for catching and slaughtering wild animals, etc. It is surprising how the Pomors literally “sewed” their boats, using vitsa — flexible twisted tree roots used as thread. And then with these boats they sailed from Kola all the way to Svalbard to fish for cod, herring and saffron cod. You can only admire and respect how the Pomors have explored the northern seas since the 9th century.

It's painful to listen to the guide’s stories about springtime “…hunting for whitecoats...” (baby harp seals). I feel sorry for those little ones. During a one-hour excursion, you can learn about the traditions and life of the Pomors, Peter the Great’s visit to Solovki, the reconstructed yacht “Saint Peter” and its sea expeditions. After your visit to the Maritime Museum, you will definitely begin to appreciate the White Sea from a different point of view.

Cape of Labyrinths

On the Solovki Islands, they call it “low water”. The shallow waters along the coast are full of life: algae tangled among the stones, birds searching for food — worms, crustaceans and mussels. Sometimes at low tide, local kids come running to the shore barefoot, collecting shells and hoping to find a pearl oyster. On a sunny summer day, the water can warm up to +15 °C. There are lots of large stones along the coast. Ten thousand years ago, a moraine glacier brought them there. They are called glacial erratics. And there is even a labyrinth built among the stones. No one knows who built this labyrinth or when.

The ethnographer Nikolai Vinogradov, a member of the Russian Geographical Society, who came to Solovki as a prisoner of the special camp, was the first to study the megaliths. Even after the camp was closed, he continued his research as the secretary of the Solovetsky Society of Local History. He found and documented as many as 20 such labyrinths! But his scientific research came to a sudden end in 1938, when he was arrested and executed.

The SLON Museum, the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camps Exhibition

Five unremarkable barracks on Zaozernaya Street — that’s all that remains of the bloody regime on Big Solovetsky Island. The first workers and builders of one of the camps of the Gulag (an acronym for the Main Administration of Camps) lived in those houses. The Solovki Special Camp (SLON) existed on the island for only 10 years. But during that time, almost 80,000 prisoners, who were accused of being dangerous state criminals and opponents of the regime, served their time there. One-third of the prisoners died on Solovki. Some were shot, some could not survive torture, hard labour in logging or railway construction, cold weather and disease: typhoid, scurvy, phthisis.

There is an exhibit in the SLON Museum that makes people shudder — archival documents stating the prisoners’ names and also the verdict “to be shot” written next to their names. And there are a lot of those books in the archives. SLON was one of the largest special-purpose camps in the USSR; it consisted of eight camps, but only two were on the islands. Those shocking verdicts are difficult to forget, even as the guide moves on to the next story about the first Gulag theatre, the local history museum in the Blagoveshchenskaya Church, the greenhouse and its club of nature lovers. Newspapers and magazines were published in the village, there was a movie theatre. You can see hundreds of photos, letters, personal belongings of the prisoners, torn clothes, all of which make the atmosphere in the museum very heavy. And… silence. It's difficult even to speak aloud, the words are stuck in your throat.

• Orange Fact
  During the SLON period, almost the whole forest was cut down on Solovki. Most of the trees on Bolshoy Solovetsky Island are now about 70 years old.

Water tourist route

All the lakes on Bolshoy Solovetsky Island are interconnected by man-made canals located at different levels. There are exactly 20 of them across the island. The largest lake system includes 65 lakes and 69 canals. In the 16th century, the monks built a hydraulic system: they deepened and expanded the canals and drained the swamps. And by the beginning of the 20th century, they started sailing along the lakes from Danilovo to the Red Lake. The monks created a lot of things on the Solovki Islands, and nature only benefited from all this.

 

Forests then grew where the swamps had been dried; wild animals and birds settled there, and fish appeared in the lakes. All the lakes on Solovki are fed by natural springs, groundwater and rainwater. Therefore, the water level in the lakes never drops. There are two water routes available for tourists on the lakes of Solovki: the Big Circle is 12 km long and the Small Circle is 6 km long. The tours are possible only by rowboats or electric motorboats. Everything should be eco-friendly on Solovki.

Sekirnaya Mountain

This place now seems quiet and peaceful. At the top of the hill there is Russia’s only church with a functioning lighthouse. There is a wonderful view of the green forests and lakes from the observation deck, where a staircase of 294 steps leads down to the forest. This place is popular among the locals for weddings.

The awful history is forgotten; the blood of killed people has been absorbed into the earth. Just terrible stories and the warden’s peephole in the left wing of the church door are the last remaining reminders of those times. Those were the times when being placed in the men’s punishment cell at the “Sekirka” usually meant death. No one could survive more than three months of torture, suffering and meaningless punishments. For example, the prisoners were forced to carry handfuls of water from one ice hole to another; to toss big heavy stones from one place to another; to count seagulls for no reason. The guards punished prisoners for disobedience as severely as possible: pouring ice water on them while they stood out in the frost, placing them into an ice hole, or locking them in a freezing-cold cell in the strong northern crosswinds wearing only their underwear.



One of the torture methods was called “to the mosquitoes” — naked prisoners were tied to a tree and left overnight in the forest to be bitten half to death by mosquitoes; the guards also forced prisoners to sit on thick poles. Prisoners were beaten. Sometimes they were abused just for fun. There are a few mass graves on Sekirnaya Mountain, where the bodies were simply dumped. But no one knows how many graves have not yet been found.

• Orange Legend
  In 1429, two monks named Herman and Savvatiy settled near Sekirnaya Mountain. Once, after leaving his cell, Savvatiy saw the crying wife of a fisherman. She complained that two young men had flogged her at the top of the mountain with rods. She was punished because women were not allowed to climb the sacred mountain. The young men also told the woman that her husband and all the locals should leave the island, because it was chosen by God as a place only for the monks to live. Frightened by punishment from heaven, everyone left Bolshoy Solovetsky Island. But the monks took this story as a sign of a miracle and declared the two young men angels. And the mountain was called Sekirnaya, literally meaning “to flog”.

Savvatievsky Skete

Within the high fence around the Savvatievsky Skete, there is a two-storey building with monastic cells. They say the only remaining monk, Hegumen Yakov, lives here; he manages the entire household and the monastery workers. He holds services in the temple. But he doesn’t really like laypeople — he lets them into the Church of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God only by personal arrangement. A lot of monks criticize Hegumen Yakov, though; they think the temple should be open to everyone. The bell tower and the temple were restored about eight years ago. The church was built right on top of the ruins. At the end of the 19th century, it was built in honour of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God, which was once brought to the island by the founders of the monastery, Savvaty and Herman. The icon has been lost, though; there is only a copy of it in the temple’s iconostasis.

The sketes on Solovki are different — some are spiritual and others are economic. The spiritual ones are mainly located on Anzer Island — Troitsky and Golgotha. Bolshoy Solovetsky Island mainly has economic sketes — each has a different purpose: growing berries, fishing, making hay. Savvatievsky Skete’s purpose is gardening. You can’t actually see the gardens because of the high fence, so you can only wonder whether it is true. You can also imagine the dugouts where the cabin boys who came to Savvatievo to study lived. During the war years, a training unit of the Northern Fleet was based on Solovki and existed until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Again, you can only imagine how military destroyers docked along the walls of the Solovetsky Monastery. However, the school for cabin boys in Savvatievo did not exist for long; in total, there were three enrolments on Solovki, each with 1,500 underage volunteers.

In 1944, the cabin-boy programme was transferred to Kronstadt. But within those three years, the boys learned such specialities as radio operator, steersman, naval sapper, boatswain and signalman. After completing a full year of studies, everyone dreamed of military service. The selection of applicants for cabin-boy school was very strict. The children of military officers who had died at the front were given priority. The boys had to destroy all traces of the island’s shameful past — prisons and camps — and also build dugouts for themselves and equip the school itself. Many Solovetsky cabin boys became generals; the famous Russian writer Valentin Pikul was among the students.

• Orange Fact
  The monks on Solovki measured distance in versts. You can see striped pillars (verst markers) throughout the island. The Solovetsky verst is equal to the length of the monastery fortress wall — 1,084 metres. This is the distance of a Solovetsky procession.

St. Isaac’s Skete

If you visit the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, you should pay attention to the painting “Silence” by Russian artist Mikhail Nesterov. It depicts two monks fishing at the lake of St. Isaac’s  Skete. It was painted right there in 1901, when the artist visited Solovki and lived in the local monastery’s cell building for several days. The chapel, which you can still see on the canvas, has been destroyed. But the monks still fish on the local lake. St. Isaac's Skete has always been famous for fishing. The lake is full of perch, pike, burbot, ruff, crucian carp, roach, vendace, and whitefish.

All the main hayfields are around Isaakievsky Skete. In late summer, the monks mow the hay for the livestock. You can’t take a walk around the grounds: on one side they are fenced off by a wayside cross and on the lake side by gates. Behind the fence, there is the chapel of Isaac of Dalmatia and five cell buildings. Abbot Eliozar manages the monastery farm. Locals are still offended that he doesn’t let them fish and grill kebabs there. Eliozar, like the abbots before him, humbly continues to restore the Isaakievsky Skete.

How to get there?

Navigation on the White Sea usually runs from early June to September, depending on weather and ice conditions. Boats to Solovki depart from Rabocheostrovsk near Kem. The Prichal tourist complex operates the vessels Vasily Kosyakov and Metel, with daily departures to Solovki at 8:00 and 12:00, or 13:00 on some dates. Return boats usually leave Solovki at 15:30 and 19:30. The one-way fare is 3,000 roubles. Bad weather on the White Sea can delay or cancel sailings, so it is better to keep one or two spare days in the plan.

There are also local flights from Vaskovo Airport near Arkhangelsk to Solovki. Mi-8 flights operate several times a week in the summer season. Flight times and aircraft can change, so tickets should be checked directly with the local airline before the trip.

Where to stay?

The best hotel on the island: Solovki Hotel.
Quite a nice guesthouse: “Shelter”.

Life in the village:

You can rent a bike in the village, but walking is much more interesting. In the village there are minimum basic facilities for life on a northern island — a hospital, which is closed on weekends, though, and has only one doctor on weekdays. There is a pharmacy that is open daily. There is a bank and even an ATM, which looks funny, like an old kiosk, but still gives out cash. You can pay with a card, but only in a couple of stores. Small souvenir shops often have problems with card payments, so it’s better to take cash with you. Some cell phone providers, for example, Beeline, do not work on Solovki at all.

Do I need to book Solovki Museum-Reserve excursions in advance?
Most summer excursions are arranged through the Solovki Museum-Reserve excursion office. Individual visitors usually book them after arriving on the island, because the schedule is confirmed shortly before the tour date. The excursion office is located in the Petersburg Hotel.

Can I visit Sekirnaya Mountain in summer?
Yes. In summer, the Solovki Museum-Reserve runs guided excursions to Sekirnaya Mountain and the Holy Ascension Skete. The visit depends on road and weather conditions, so the tour can be cancelled if access becomes unsafe.

Can I visit Bolshoy Zayatsky Island on my own?
No. Bolshoy Zayatsky Island is part of the protected museum-reserve territory. Visitors can go there only with an official guided group.

Is there mobile coverage on Solovki?
Mobile coverage exists, but the signal and mobile internet can be unstable. The most reliable operators are usually MegaFon and MTS. It is better not to rely on constant internet access during excursions.

Are there many mosquitoes on Solovki?
Yes, mosquitoes can be a problem in summer, especially outside the village and near forests, lakes and wetlands. Take repellent with you.

What should I pack for Solovki in summer?
Take warm clothes even in summer. Weather on the White Sea can change quickly, and wind makes the island feel colder. Waterproof shoes, a raincoat and a spare warm layer are useful.

Is Solovki suitable for a short trip?
It is better to leave one or two spare days. Boats and flights can be delayed or cancelled because of fog, wind or storms on the White Sea.

There is a good coffee shop at the very end of the village. By the way, it’s one of the few places where you can get freshly brewed coffee. Most guest houses and budget hotels offer only instant coffee. There is also a good restaurant at the Solovki Hotel and just a few cafes in the village. However, you can eat local cod at the “Expedition” café and dine at the monastery refectory. The souvenir shops surprisingly offer an excellent choice of gifts. If you are going for a walk in the forest, you should take repellent. There are not many mosquitoes in the village itself, but there are way too many in the forest.