Alta is home to some fantastic rock art. No not rock music, though perhaps it has some good rock bands too, but rock carvings and paintings made between 7200 and 2200 years ago. Unfortunately, currently most of the rock carvings are covered by a thick layer of snow so they are not available for viewing. As we couldn’t see the full carvings we decided to visit the adjacent Alta Museum instead. The museum has a fascinating exhibition about the rock carvings, which includes a little chunk of the carved rock that came of the main outdoor slab, showing an elk or a reindeer and a standalone stone carved with an image of a girl, who reminded the finders of the stone, of Pippi Långstrump (Longstocking), which I unfortunately didn’t take a photo of – here‘s someone else’s photo if you are interested. There were lots of photos and 3D scans of the outdoor rock carvings, some of which I believe the Museum digitalised and made available on its website. The carvings feature mainly people, people on boats, people dancing, people hunting, people taking part in rituals, people snowshoeing, people fishing and there’s even one man on skis! The carvings also include many animals: reindeer, elk, moose, fish, birds, seals, and bears. The bears, with their little footprints leading around the carvings were my favourite.

The museum also has interesting exhibitions on the Northern Lights, Sami people, angling (salmon and trout) and the famous Norwegian ski jumper Bjørn Wirkola. I haven’t heard of the last one until today’s visit to the museum, but it seems he was rather successful and after winning 3 world cups in ski jumping and various other tournaments went on to become a professional football player in the team that won the Norwegian football league.

After the museum, we were supposed to go on a short hike recommended by the friendly lady from the tourist office, however I took so long reading all the labels in the museum that by the time we were done it was already dark. We decided to postpone the hike to another day as the whole point of it was there there’s supposed to be a lovely view of Alta and the fjord from the top of the hill to which we were to hike.

Useful Norwegian learnt today:

Røkt laks = smoked salmon

Røkt ørret = smoked trout

Both look almost the same and are equally delicious.

I’ve also discovered a new guilty pleasure. The smultringer, which look like little doughnuts, are very moreish with a hint of spices and aren’t too sweet. Amazing! The English translation for this yummy cake is less than appetising.