Rock carvings at Alta
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How it came to be
Far north of the Arctic Circle, at the head of the Alta Fjord in Norway, hunter-gatherers painted and carved the rocks over thousands of years. Reindeer, elk, bears, fish, whales, seabirds and many human figures appear, and it is the largest concentration of hunter-gatherer rock art in northern Europe.
The first carvings were found in the autumn of 1973 at Jiepmaluokta. More than 6,000 are now known at several sites around Alta, over 3,000 of them at Jiepmaluokta alone. The paintings at Transfarelvdalen were found in the 1960s, made with red ochre and animal fat.
The Alta Museum moved to the rock art site in 1991 and won the European Museum of the Year Award in 1993. The rock art was inscribed in 1985 and is Norway's only prehistoric World Heritage site.
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