Kem' Things to Do

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This small wooden church was recently built next to the pier and it is open for visitors during the day. Take a look inside, it is quite modern, but still worth seeing and photography is no problem at all !
There are older churches as well in Kem, but much too far away from the pier, to walk there while your bus is waiting for the rest of your group !

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There are lots of lovely wooden houses in the village of Kem and you will see some of them also around the place, where your buses are leaving from. Even the new houses are built completely of wood in this part of Russia.

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Dont expect a beautiful pier for the boats leaving to the Solovietsky islands, in fact it seems that it is mainly used to load wood and other goods and you also have to be careful, where to step. Several boats are leaving there in order to take you to Solovietsky Islands, the ride takes about 2 hours one way. We had a chartered boat, that is certainly the best solution.

As I have mentioned at many pages, wooden architecture is something unique that you will find only in the Russian North-West. You can also see a lot of wooden stuff in Finland and Sweden, but it will be completely different. You can find wooden churches in all parts of the north-west region of Russia, and Kem is not an exlusion. They have a beautiful church dedicated to Assumption of Virgin Mary, which was re-opened in 1989 after decades of neglection (bear in mind that church was almost prohibited in the Soviet years). This church is a rebuilding of an older construction that was destroyed in fire (rebuilt in 1714 - still quite old).

Sad to say, churches in the North are slowly disappearing. The state does not have money to take care of them, most of them are located in remote villages which are of no economic importance any more, and there are no even proper roads to them. Old wooden churches are getting burnt or destroyed by winds and rains, one after another.

Many Russian enthusiasts (scientists, historians, photographers) are trying to save at least description and images of those valualble pieces of Russian culture. Their efforts are invaluable: it will help to convey pieces of our history to the future generations, at least in pictures.

For more info in English on the Russian north architecture, you can visit a site by William Craft Brumfield, who dedicated his life and activity to studying Russian wooden architecture and documental photography of it. His site is http://www.cultinfo.ru/brumfield/index_e.htm.

Karelia is a well-known tourism route, where people canoeing down the northern rivers that flow northbound, and some routes lead to the White sea via the Kem river.

I never tryed it myself, but those who did say it is real fun. There are so many mushrooms and berries, and fish, you can live on just on that. But northern rivers are full of rapids and waterfalls, which make the trip adventurous and risky.

In the picture you see just a fisherman boat, it is the place where the river Kem falls into the White sea.

Rabocheostrovsky is a settlement near Kem (I would say a district in Kem) situated on an artificially made island. The island emerged on the wooden cuttings and filings that comes from timber production and that was trown in the sea water. The island appeared more than 100 years ago, and is constantly enhancing.

The name of the settlement means "Island of Workers". When travelling there by bus from Kem (takes 10-15 minutes), you can see the wooden base of the island in the sea. The pier where boats to Solovki stop is in Rabocheostrovsky, but there its wooden structure is not so evident: it is already hard rocks.