By the end of his reign, Tsar Nicholas II opened the gates to Arctic. A non-freezing – unlike in southern Odessa – port was arranged on the northern coast of the Kola Peninsula. The Pomors they called these places Murman: the Murmans – like the Normans, i.e., Norwegians, lived in the neighborhood. At the height of World War I, they built a railway from Petrozavodsk. And on October 4, 1916 according to the Gregorian calendar on the final station Bishop Nathanael of Arkhangelsk and Kholmogory, with a large concourse of all authorities, laid on the temple in the name of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, the patron saint of sailors and the current tsar. Here, the city will be founded – that’s what other high-ranking guests said. And it was – as opposed to the temple. For six months, until the tsar was overthrown, it was called Romanov-on-Murman, and then simply Murmansk. The Kirov Palace of Culture is currently built in place of the temple. And the port still does not freeze.
