Pastoral work of Orthodox priests among the Kola Sami in the first half of the XIX century

The article addresses the little-studied topic of the pastoral work of the Orthodox parish clergy of the Kola Deanery of the Arkhangelsk and Kholmogory dioceses among the Eastern Sami in the first half of the XIX century. Drawing on the documents from the collections of the State Archive of the Murmansk Region and the National Archives of the Republic of Karelia, the article identifies the distribution of the Sami pogosts (churchyards) of Russian Lapland within local parishes and the number of clergy who served as pastors for the “Laplanders”. The archival materials are used to analyze the main traditional areas of pastoral activity of parish priests within the Sami pogosts of Russian Lapland, such as regular church worship, performing occasional church services requested by congregation members, and preaching. Various factors have been identified that made it difficult for priests to fulfill their pastoral duties under the difficult conditions of the Kola North. It turns out that the most significant of these were an extremely small number of presbyters stipulated by the staffing table for serving the Sami, the shortage of parish churches and chapels on the territory of the Sami pogosts, and a serious communication barrier between pastors and the Lapps parishioners.