The Pechenga Monastery, founded in 1533 at…

The Pechenga Monastery, founded in 1533 at the influx of the Pechenga River into the Barents Sea, 135 km west of modern Murmansk, by St. Tryphon, a monk from Novgorod, will for many centuries be the northernmost monastery in the world.

Inspired by the model of the Solovki, Tryphon had wished to convert the local Skolts to Christianity and to demonstrate how faith could flourish in the most inhospitable lands.

His example had been eagerly followed by other Russian monks.

The Pechenga Monastery had by 1572 counted about fifty brethren and two hundred lay followers.

The wooden monastery is raided and burnt down by the Swedes six years after St. Tryphon's death.

It is said that the raid claimed the lives of fifty-one monks and sixty-five lay brothers, bringing the history of Tryphon's establishment to an end.

This revenge raid has been carried out by a Finnish peasant chief Pekka Antinpoika Vesainen on December 25, 1589, and is part of the Russo-Swedish War of 1590 - 1595.