Our day started with a trip to a Norwegian supermarket where Team Basil’s budget took another pounding or should that be a kronering! Over €3 for a loaf of bread!!!

The next stop was the Alta Museum. This is the location of a large collection of pre-historic rock carvings, still in situ, on rocks on the edge of Altafjord, amongst which the museum has been built. They date from between 2000 and 7000 years ago! Regular readers of this blog will have got bored with the words “UNESCO World Heritage Site”, but I haven’t written it for a while and the Alta drawings have been given that designation.

Reindeer

Around the museum has been established a three kilometre trail, amongst which are the best of the drawings. When they were originally discovered the carvings were stained in red by the archeologists to make them stand out from the rock. This proved controversial and so one half of the drawings have had the staining removed. The stained ones are obviously much easier to see, but it’s good to also see some in their original state.

Fishing or hunting wild reindeer which have been driven into the sea from boats.

Boat

When first carved it is thought they would have stood out well, because the rocks at the fjord’s edge are covered in a red layer or iron oxide, so the carvings would have looked bright white against the red. However during the ice age (before the carvings were made) the area was covered with 3km of ice and with it’s removal the land rose in a process known as isostatic recoil (A Level Geography comes in useful at last). So the youngest carvings are still next to the fjord, but most are now 50 metres or more higher than sea level and the red covering of iron oxide has weathered away. This has also aided dating because the higher the drawings the older they are.

The red rocks on which the drawings would have originally been made.

It cost 110 NOK (€12) each to see the rock drawings and it was one of those sites which will stick with us for some time. We have seen other pre-historic drawings at Bimbekta in India and of course in the Dordogne, France, but the Alta drawings are particularly interesting because in addition to animals it shows early human collaborative behaviour in the form of fishing, capturing of herds of wild reindeer and bear hunting.

A bear hunt.

The rest of the day was taken with continuing our journey south. The weather was again grey, but the cloud cover was higher than yesterday. The first section was along our first proper fjord, Langfjorden. By “proper fjord” I mean a sea inlet in a u-shaped valley with mountains on either side. We will see more spectacular versions further south, but this was the first.

Langfjorden

Langfjorden was also the location of some Second World War history. It was here that the Germans’ located their prize battleships Tirpitz and Scharnorst during the second half of the war, to try to use them against convoys to Russia. While here Tirpitz was attacked and damaged by British miniature submarines. Both were eventually sunk on operations in the Arctic Ocean, Sharnhorst in a battle near Nordkapp.

The remainder of the journey was mostly along the shores of fjords. All journeys in Norway are much longer than in most other countries because the roads have to follow the numerous fjords which continuously cut into Norway. In Douglas Adam’s Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the character Slartybartfast specialised in fjords and was responsible for designing Norway, which he described as having “lovely crinkly edges”! Tomorrow we plan to take a couple of short ferry rides to take short cuts across the “crinkly edges”.

I must again mention wildflowers. Because the snow only melted here a month or so ago, we are yet again in the height of wild flower season. A profusion of ox eye daisies, varieties of which we have seen everywhere on this trip starting in Italy, great swathes of lupins, together with tiny artic and alpine flowers.

We finally parked up on the shores of a fjord, next to a stony beach and with great views down the fjord to higher snow covered mountains (69.879023, 21.167074). Another great free location thanks to Norway.

Another lovely free camping spot.

After a long day Sarah and I both had a late afternoon nap. When I awoke after an hour I was disturbed to hear Sarah making a strange noise which I had never heard before. After a few moments confusion I looked out the window to see we have been surrounded by sheep! Not only are they bleating, but they also have lovely little bells around their necks and are tinkling away.