The Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker is located on the cape of the western shore of Riekkalansaari Island, two kilometers from the city of Sortavala. It is the heir of one of the oldest Orthodox churches in the Ladoga region and the main church of the Karelian Nikolai-Serdovolsky parish. The exact date of the parish's founding on the shores of Lake Lyappyarvi is unknown, but the census book of the Vodskaya Pyatina of Veliky Novgorod from the year 1500 mentions "the church of Nicholas the Great on the parish." The name of Riekkalansaari Island comes from the Karelian word "kreykala," which means "Greek," that is, "Orthodox."

After the consecration of the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in 1799, the Nicholas Church became a cemetery church, and services were held only twice a year on church holidays. In 1805, the church bell tower was repaired. The reconstruction of the church took place in 1890-1891 with the funds of Elizabeth Hallonblad, born Siitoin. Under the guidance of architect Johan Oskar Leander, the church was dismantled and rebuilt almost in its original form. The church and bell tower received new foundations, the exterior remained almost unchanged, wooden cladding was done on the walls, the bell tower's ringing tier was glazed, and the sizes and placement of some windows were altered. The church remained unheated. Instead of the old iconostasis, a new one was installed from the dismantled wooden Church of Peter and Paul in the city, which had been built in 1877, with the altar icon "Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me" created by Russian artist V. P. Vereshchagin. A 1932 guidebook to Sortavala mentions that it may have been painted by an Italian master. The royal gates from the old 18th-century iconostasis are now located in the Finnish Museum of the Orthodox Church in Kuopio, established in 1957. The renovated church was consecrated on July 2, 1892, by Bishop Anthony Vadkovsky of Vyborg.

Since 1903, the church became a dependency of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Valaam Monastery. According to the clerical records from 1904, it was attached to the Church of Peter and Paul in Serdobol.

During the Soviet era, the church lost its dome and crosses, and it was used as a storage facility for a fish factory. For some time it was abandoned, and in the 1970s it was converted into a club and library, with stoves installed and an additional porch added.

In the photo album "Sortavala," published in 1992, V. V. Ryvkin describes the building: the church is hewn from logs "in a paw" and clad with planks. Its main volume with the refectory is adjoined from the east by a five-sided altar, and from the west, a bell tower, an octagon on a square base with a high hexagonal tent. Despite the late date of construction, the church's composition retains connections to architectural traditions of earlier times. Before the reconstruction, the church was adorned with tall windows, arranged in pairs on the northern and southern facades of the main volume. The decor of the church features carved columns at the corners of the upper part of the bell tower, decorated with "pumpkins." Interior decorative elements have not survived. Currently, the building houses the library of the village of Krasnaya Gorka.

In 1992, the building was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church, and in 1993, the church was attached to the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Valaam Monastery as a dependency. Over the next few years, the church was restored: the bell tower and church domes were rebuilt, and crosses were installed. After the consecration of the church in honor of St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker, worship services resumed.