Norway & Svalbard Kirkenes
The end of the Norwegian coastal route, a few kilometres from Russia and Finland: king crab, a year-round snow hotel, border history and the bird cliffs of Varanger.
Russian Arctic: things to see
The principal places on Russia’s Arctic Ocean coast, described for reference. Access notes reflect the situation before and since 2022.
1. Murmansk
Founded in 1916 on the Kola Bay, where a branch of the Gulf Stream keeps the water ice-free all winter, Murmansk is the home port of Russia’s nuclear icebreaker fleet and a large fishing and naval centre. Above the city stands ‘Alyosha’, a 35-metre concrete soldier commemorating the defence of the Arctic in the Second World War. The sun does not rise for about six weeks in midwinter.
2. The icebreaker Lenin
Launched in 1957, the Lenin was the world’s first nuclear-powered surface ship and worked the Northern Sea Route for three decades. Since 2009 it has been moored in Murmansk as a museum, with its wood-panelled wardroom and a viewing window on to the reactor compartment.
3. Teriberka
A weather-beaten fishing village on the open Barents Sea, about 120 km from Murmansk, that became widely known through the 2014 film Leviathan. Visitors came for its rocky shore, wrecked wooden boats, winter aurora and summer whale-watching.
4. Franz Josef Land
An archipelago of some 190 ice-capped islands between 80° and 82° north, part of the Russian Arctic National Park. It has seabird cliffs such as Rubini Rock, walrus and polar bears, mysterious stone spheres on Champ Island and the relics of early polar expeditions. It could be visited only on icebreaker voyages to the North Pole and a few expedition cruises, with permits.
5. Novaya Zemlya
Two long, mountainous islands dividing the Barents Sea from the Kara Sea. The Soviet Union carried out more than a hundred nuclear tests here, including the largest explosion ever detonated, in 1961. Most of the territory is a closed military zone; the northern tip, with its glaciers, lies within the national park.
6. Wrangel Island
A World Heritage Site in the Chukchi Sea, 140 km off north-east Siberia. It escaped glaciation in the last ice age and has exceptional biodiversity for its latitude: hundreds of polar bear maternity dens, huge walrus haul-outs, snow geese, musk oxen and the place where the last woolly mammoths survived until about 4,000 years ago. Visits were limited to a few expedition ships a year.
7. Solovetsky Islands
In the White Sea, just below the Arctic Circle, a fortified monastery founded in the fifteenth century rises behind walls of giant boulders. It became one of the first camps of the Soviet Gulag in 1923 and is now a working monastery again and a World Heritage Site, reached by boat or small plane from the mainland in summer.
Destinations
Combine it with
Norway & Svalbard 
The Pole & Russia North Pole
90° north: a point on drifting sea ice above four kilometres of ocean, reached only by icebreaker or by ski-plane and helicopter — the most exclusive journey in the Arctic.
Norway & Svalbard Svalbard
Norway’s high-Arctic archipelago, halfway between the mainland and the North Pole: glaciers, polar bears, walrus and the world’s northernmost town.
Plan your trip
See the Barents borderland from Norway
Compare real-time prices and availability on GetYourGuide. Most tours can be cancelled free of charge up to 24 hours ahead.