Abstract <p>The Belomorian mobile belt is defined as a belt of high-grade metamorphic rocks, predominantly consisting of Meso- to Neoarchean tonalite–trondhjemite–granodiorite (TTG) gneisses with numerous sealed blocks of strongly retrogressed eclogites. It is fringed by the Karelian granite–greenstone craton (i), and the hinterland of the Late Paleoproterozoic Lapland–Kola compressed orogen (ii), being its foreland. It is long been assumed that the origin of Belomorian eclogites was related to subduction of the hypothetical Lapland–Kola oceanic crust followed by collision of Lapland–Kola and Karelian plates ca.1.9 Ga. It is shown that there is no evidence for subduction geodynamics of this time. Therefore, the origin of the Belomorian mobile belt was triggered by far-field stress and as a result, a forebulge emerged during development of the Lapland–Kola compressional orogeny; it is related to flexural bending of the Archean lithosphere, which led to its shortening by ~10%, culminating both in significant enhancement of the rate of dislocation creep in its crustal level and compaction-derived fluid activity. The maximum tectonic pressure was expressed in the area of the North Belomorian syntaxis, where the overwhelming majority of eclogite blocks sealed in the Meso- to Neoarchean TTG gneisses occurred.</p>