Arkhangelsk Dutch that sailed to the White Sea area. In 1584 Ivan ordered the founding of New Kholmogory (which would later be renamed after the nearby Archangel Michael Monastery). At the time access to the Baltic Sea was still mostly controlled by Sweden, so while Arkhangelsk was icebound in winter, it remained Moscow's almost sole link to the sea-trade. Local inhabitants, called Pomors, were the first to explore trade routes to Northern Siberia as far as the trans-Urals city of Mangazeya and beyond. In December 1613, during the Time of Troubles, Arkhangelsk was besieged by Polish-Lithuanian marauders commanded by Stanislaw Jasinski
Trams in Arkhangelsk Trams in Arkhangelsk A tramway system operated in the Russian city of Arkhangelsk from 1916 to 2004, when the last line closed down. During that period it was the most northerly such system in the world: before 1916 that distinction had been held by the city trams in Kiruna, Sweden; since 2004 the honour has belonged to the Trondheim Tramway in Norway. Work on the first tramway line started in 1914 and it was opened on 26 June 1916. Until 1956 Arkhangelsk had two separate tramway networks – one running on the mainland and the other on the island of