Twenty years ago, under the floor of an Orthodox church in Kovda (Murmansk region), the mummified bodies of many babies were found.
This church was built 300 years ago. Without a single nail, a typical monument of Russian wooden architecture. Such temples on the White Sea were, read, in every village. And Nikolskaya is not much different from the others - 14 meters in height, the altar, the church itself, the refectory, the two-tier roof, next to the bell tower, the old fence.
One of the main mysteries of this Orthodox church is mass human burials. The first was found back in the early nineties. Then a group of restorers worked in the church. Having opened the floor under the refectory and dug up the ground, they found dominoes standing on top of each other - more than 30 coffins hollowed out in a tree.
What killed more than 30 children at once? Why were the bodies of babies and children buried not in the secular cemetery, not in the church fence, but under the Nikolskaya Church itself? Some bodies were mummified, some were wrapped in burlap, others in birch bark. For centuries, church services have been held on bones. Why - the locals cannot answer. There are no records or legends left.
During the new restoration, the peace of the dead was again disturbed. The carpenters also stumbled upon new burials located even deeper under the temple. Most likely, these are the remains of adolescents or even adults. How many of them are unknown. Residents speculate. To establish the truth, anthropological scientists took several coffins-dominoes to the Institute of St. Petersburg.
Today the Nikolskaya Church in Kovda has been completely restored. From time to time, a check comes from the Committee for Culture and Arts, the Center for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Heritage. No, no, yes, and their keeper Alexander Zyatikov will ask if the institute will return the remains of babies to Kovda.
Then, in the 90s, the money was found, with someone's consent, the mummies were taken out. After all, it is not possible that none of the regional officials knew about this. But who will now take the initiative to return the inhabitants of the old Pomor village who died in their childhood? So that they rest not in the storage facilities of a scientific institute, but in their native land.