Pechenga is a name with several lives. Before 1920 it was a remote monastery on the Arctic coast, founded in 1533 by Saint Tryphon, a monk who walked north to convert the Sami and built a chapel in the wilderness. After the Russian Revolution, the area passed to Finland, which called it Petsamo and gave the country its only outlet on the Arctic Ocean, until the Second World War, when the Soviet Union took it back in 1944. The monastery had been bombed, and was rebuilt after 1991, and today a handful of monks live there again, in a quiet valley of birch and spruce near the river.
The settlement around it is small, with fewer than three thousand people, and the nearest sizeable town is Zapolyarny, about nineteen kilometres off, with Nikel farther on. These are mining towns, built around the huge deposits of nickel and copper in the surrounding hills, and the smelters have left a hard mark on the land, with burnt hills and bare ground around them. The contrast between the industrial lunar landscape and the green river valleys is striking. Norway lies just across the border, and the country is a militarised frontier zone, so carry your passport and check whether permits are required for areas near the border.
The ride from Murmansk is long and fairly empty. Through tundra and low forest, the road runs west past lakes and low hills, with a decent surface in places and frost damage in others, and trucks carrying ore. The weather is changeable, with wind, fog and sleet in any month. In summer, midnight sun lasts for weeks, and the light is soft and golden in the evenings. Autumn colours are splendid in September, and winter is dark and brutally cold.
Fuel is no problem in Zapolyarny and Nikel, which have petrol stations and shops, but supplies thin out toward the coast, so fill up before you go further. Pechenga itself has a few shops, and the monastery is open to visitors who dress modestly. If you want to eat, local cafés serve simple hot meals.
The area has been disputed, divided and fought over, and it carries traces of war: ruined bunkers, old Finnish buildings, and cemeteries. A few moments by the river, hearing the bells of the monastery, give you a clear sense of how strange this corner of the world is.