Kildin is a small Russian island in the Barents Sea, off the Russian shore and about 120 km from Norway. Administratively, Kildin belongs to the Murmansk Oblast of the Russian Federation. Kildin Island is a plateau, up to 900 feet in elevation; it drops sharply to the sea on the north. Great granite masses rise from the sea and are carved into broad terraces. In the interior there is a relict lake, Lake Mogil'noe, which is separated from Kildin Strait by an isthmus through which seawater filters that replenishes the lake. The brackish lake holds a unique species of cod that has adapted to it. The island is long by and wide at the widest part. Kildin Strait, which separates it from the mainland, is long and varies in width from to about. The water is deep so anchorage is only possible near the shore. The only safe anchorage is in Monastery Bay, at the South East end of the island. The bay gets its name from a fortified monastery that used to stand there but that the British destroyed in 1809 and of which no trace remains. According to the Norwegian Organization for the Protection of the Environment, there is a deposit of expended reactors from Soviet nuclear submarines on the island.
Lighthouses
There are three lighthouses on the island.
Kildinskiy Zapadnny is built near the southwest corner of the island and marks the western entrance to the strait between the island and the mainland.
Kildinskiy Severnny is built on the north side of the island, about 25 km east of the entrance to Kola Bay.
Kildinskiy Vostochny is on the southeastern side of the island, near the settlement of Vostochny Kildin.
Notable incidents
2003, 21 August: The Russian submarine K-159 sank off Kildin Island while she was being towed to a scrap yard. She sank about northwest of the island, near the entrance to Kola Bay. The sinking, which claimed the lives of nine of her ten crew, occurred during a gale.
1992, 11 February: In the submarine incident off Kildin Island, USS Baton Rouge, a Los Angeles classnuclear attack submarine, collided with the Russian Sierra-class submarine K-276 Kostroma some from the line that connects Tsypnavolok Cape and Kildin Island. The US Navy stated that the collision occurred more than from the shore, which is international waters. However, Russia uses a different set of rules for defining the boundary between territorial and international waters, and maintains that the collision took place within Russian territorial waters. Fortunately, the accident caused no injuries or deaths on either vessel.
1943, 24 July: The British merchant vessel SS Llandaff was part of a three-vessel convoy bringing timber from the White Sea to Kola Inlet on behalf of the Russians. The vessels were some northeast of the island when a flight of four Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters attacked Llandaff, hitting her aft and starting a fire. helped to get the fire under control. Llandaff eventually entered harbour; there were no casualties.
1943, 2 January: While part of Convoy JW51B from Loch Ewe for Murmansk with military cargo, the American freighter Ballot ran aground on the island in fog and was a total loss. Her crew abandoned her on 13 January. In 2018 the Russian Northern Fleet’s Search and Rescue unit's Ivan Shvets diving boat and the Elbrus multi-purpose logistics support vessel retrieved from 60m deep water one of the M3 Lee tanks that was part of Ballots cargo.
1941, 4 August: Three German destroyers overwhelmed and sank the Soviet patrol boat Tuman about northwest of Kildin. The incident became famous, a capsule of seawater from this point was embedded in the giant statueDefenders of the Soviet Arctic during the Great Patriotic War, and to this day Russian naval vessels passing by this point dip their flags and sound a long blast on their horns in memory.
1917, 22 October: The German submarine U-46 fired a torpedo that sank Zillah, which was en route from Archangel, Russia, to Lerwick, Shetland Islands, with a cargo of timber. The attack occurred without warning northeast of Kildin Islandl; the entire crew of 18 men lost their lives.
1809, 6 June: During the Anglo-Russian War, boats from HMS Nyaden attacked a fort on the island, capturing it and 22 or 23 vessels that were sheltering under its protection. The landing party took away some of the guns of the fort or threw them in the river.
1599, 19–26 May: The Danish King Christian IV visited Kildin on his first expedition as a King ofDenmark–Norway. The expedition, which set off from Kronborg, Elsinore, on 19 April, is in detail described in the diaries of Sivert Grubbe.
1594, 23–29 June: The Dutch explorer, Willem Barentsz visited Kildin Island on his first voyage while on his way to Novaya Zemlya.
