Varzuga

Varzuga stands on its namesake river above the White Sea coast, among the oldest recorded permanent Russian settlements on the Kola Peninsula. A document of 1466 describes a local man giving lands along the river and coastal hunting grounds to the Solovetsky Monastery. The village became the centre of the Varzuga volost, while its people fished the river's salmon and worked along the Tersky coast.

By 1563 Varzuga had 124 households. Fishing rights drew the interest of monasteries and the patriarch's household: in 1643 peasants from forty-eight farms delivered salmon as rent to Moscow. In the mid-seventeenth century some inhabitants moved to the coast and founded new villages, including Kuzomen and Tetrino. Varzuga remained an inland centre for the river and its surrounding fisheries.