A Russian naval ship appears to be embedded in a stone mountain in Murmansk, Russia.

A Russian naval ship appears to be embedded in a stone mountain in Murmansk, Russia.

The photo in question. Original photographer unknown .

A strange photograph circulating on the Internet shows a battleship jutting out of a rocky cliff face, its flag flying and usually bearing the cryptic legend “Murmansk, Russia.” It looks photoshopped, and many of the more critical reviews have probably attributed it to that. I was intrigued and decided to do some research.

The marking on the bow indicates that it was a Soviet ship and the flag is definitely red but too pixelated to see clearly. Logically, there is no way this ship could have crashed into solid rock without serious damage. There had to be more to the story…

It turns out that this is not the bow of an actual ship sticking out of the rock face, but rather a memorial. It commemorates a World War II battle known as the Liinakhamari Landing and is dedicated to the Soviet sailors who lost their lives during the siege. The memorial was unveiled on the 30th anniversary of the battle, on 12 October 1974. The entire area is now an open-air museum with many World War II-era structures, fortifications and machinery that can be found as they remained from the war.

The location is technically accurate but somewhat misleading. The Liinakhamari is located in the Russian region of Murmansk Oblast, but almost a hundred miles away or two hours drive from the city of Murmansk. There was also an abandoned ship called The Murmansk, with no connection to this memorial (the first thing that popped up when I searched for abandoned ships in Murmansk was the rusting ruins of The Murmansk). The Murmansk was an old Soviet cruise ship that lay partially submerged off the coast of Sørvær, Norway for almost twenty years, but was completely scrapped in 2013.

The landing at Liinakhamari

At around 10:50 p.m. on the night of 12 October 1944, a force of 600 men landed at the port of Liinakhamari and attacked the Nazi fort occupying the bay. 54 Soviet soldiers were killed in the battle and are buried in a mass grave at the site. Most of the Soviet casualties were from the 125th Marine Regiment; the Russian marines, or to use their proper name, Russian naval infantry, were nicknamed “The Black Plague” because of their black berets.

Liinakhamari, also called Linhammar, is located at the northern edge of the Lapland area, right on the current border between Russia and Norway. It was originally a port town owned by the Grand Duchy of Finland until the Bolshevik Revolution. The Soviets claimed all of Finland as part of the Soviet Union, leading to the Finnish Civil War. The war concluded in 1920 when the Soviets agreed to honour the former borders and Finland maintained independence. Liinakhamari was handed over to Finland. Finland owned the port until the Russo-Finnish War of 1939, when the Soviets took control of the port. However, in 1940, with the Treaty of Moscow, it was given back to Finland once again. Peace was short-lived; in 1941 the Continuation War began and Nazi Germany took control of Liinakhamari until 1944, when the Soviets took it from them (the battle the monument honours). After World War II, the region remained part of Russia.

In other words, this area has changed hands many times and has seen more than its fair share of wars. Today, much of the area is abandoned, with nothing but the occasional tourist and the ghosts of the bloody past still roaming the grounds.

To read more about the Soviet-Nazi battles in Lapland, usacac.army.mil has a detailed online book that also includes much more about the Liinakhamari landing. For more photos of the open-air museum, planetoddity.com has some good ones. If you’re interested in Murmansk (the abandoned ship) and don’t mind using Google Translate (or speaking Russian), masterok.livejournal.com is the place to go.

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