Culture, Taiga, and Tundra: A Seminar on the Russian North
 
Flag of Karelia
Murmansk
Flag of Murmansk
Our host in Murmansk was Murmansk State Pedagogical University. Inna Ryzhkova assisted us with arrangements. At our first meeting we presented a flag to Inna and a vice president. Our group possed with Inna at the end of an hour's presentation about Murmansk and the university. The Murmansk metropolitan area has about 500,000 people - the largest city north of the Arctic Circle. It is located on the Kola Bay and is a major fishing and naval port city.
Murmansk is located in an area that borders the forest tundra and the tundra. It is a pretty city with modern shopping centers. Murmansk is the capital city of the Oblast. The building here is the capitol building with legislative offices and chambers - much like our state capitols buildings. This is a view from our hotel looking toward the city center. While we were in Murmansk, the sun never set because we were north of the Arctic Circle near the Summer Solstice.
Almost all Russian cities continue to honor Lenin with statues, monuments, and street names. Murmansk is proud of its northerly location at the latitude and longitude shown on this marker. While in Murmansk we had excellent classes, both in the classroom and outdoors. This was our Russian language class. We had an excellent teacher.
Dr. Natalia Vasilevskaya gave an excellent lecture on the region. She also taught us on the city streets and accompanied us to the tundra. This is Dr. Vasilevskaya's city street class where we learned about the history of the city and vegetation that grows in the Arctic. One of our interests was the Kola Bay. Here we are on the shore of the bay with a university professor and student teaching us about the ecology of the area.
While in Murmansk, we were taken on three very interesting tours. Our first tour was to the center of the Kola Peninsula to the small village of Lovozera where we learned about the Sammi people. The next tour was to the tundra east of Murmansk. The final tour was to a mining region south of Murmansk where we toured two cities - Apatity and Kirovsk - and climbed a mountain trail where we learned about the transition vegetation from the taiga to the alpine tundra. Photographs of these tours are found at the following thiree links.
Lovozera Tundra Mining Region