The only church in Nikel was built in the early 1990s in the premises of a former shop and was totally destroyed in a fire in November 2010. There were plans to build a more permanent church, but all the building materials for the new construction were stored in the building that burned, and since then the 12 000 inhabitants of Nikel has had no local church to go to.
Randi Fløtten, editor of the local newspaper Sør-Varanger Avis in the neighboring Norwegian town of Kirkenes, initiated a fund-raising for the raising of a new church. NOK 130 000 (€17 000) has now been handed over to the congregation in Nikel, where work on the foundation for the church has started.
Architects from Petrozavodsk have designed the new church, which will be built with logs from Karelia, Sør-Varanger Avis writes.
