Carved in tone

Scandinavian Review, Summer 2003 by Littlefield, Mark

The rock carvings along Norway's Aha Fjord date back more than 6,000 years and are the most extensive of their kind in Scandinavia.

IT MUST BE A REAL THRILL TO STUMBLE ACROSS something man-made that no one has known existed for several millennia. This is what happened to Age Nilsen in the spring of 1972 when preparing to blast away a boulder along the inner shores of the Alta Fjord in northern Norway. He was trying to determine where to place the explosive charge when he noticed some strange markings on the surface of the rock. Experts were called in and it wasn't long before the news spread that some major archeological evidence had been discovered, luring many curious locals to the scene. Soon afterwards, a couple of young boys made additional similar finds. And then others began to find more and more of them. Today, about 3,000 petroglyphs, arranged in some 100 panels and more or less concentrated in five distinct areas along a 35-kilometer (about 22-mile) stretch of the fjord have been discovered. They cover about 126 acres (51 hectares).

The Alta Fjord is a finger of the North Atlantic penetrating Norway's northernmost country, Finnmark, at the town of Alta. About twice the size of the state of Vermont, Finnmark is where Norway, an extremely thin country at its midsection, widens out again to stretch inland toward Finland and northwest to Russia. Its northernmost point, North Cape, is the top of the entire European continent. In the summer it attracts tourists not only from the southern part of Norway but from all over Europe and the world.

The earliest human settlement in Scandinavia occurred from about 9,000 to 8,000 B.C. By that time the coast of Finnmark was free of ice from the last ice age and presumably rich in game-mammals, birds and fish. Thus, those who settled along the Alta Fjord were hunters and fishermen and they lived in tents and turf houses. The area where carvings have been found seems to have been a meeting place for people from the interior and from along the coast. Alta's rock carvings date from about 4,200 B.C. to 500 B.C. The oldest, then, are from the middle Stone Age and the latter from the end of the Bronze Age. (It should be noted that prehistoric ages in Scandinavia are considerably later than in southern regions. The Iron Age began about 500 B.C. and lasted until the Viking Age, about A.D. 800.)

Alta's rock carvings frequently depict real animals, people or objects. Characteristic of the site are the number and variety of the petrogiyphs. Of the animals, there are reindeer, moose, bears, birds and fish. Other scenes show people, spears, nets and boats. There are also mysterious geometric patterns and figures that are difficult to identify. Most of the carvings are rather small, 8 to 16 inches (20 to 40 cms.) They also vary between naturalistic to stylized and some are considered of high artistic merit, even by today's standards.

The carvings were always made just above the shoreline, presumably because the shore represented the spiritual meeting place of land, sea and sky. The fact that some carvings appear to be at some distance from the water can be explained by land rise. As the land rose new carvings were made below earlier ones. Tools were primitive-hammers made of stone or horn, and chisels made of hard rock such as quartzite or flintlike chert.

Besides their intrinsic value the rock carvings have provided information about the lives and activities of the early Alta inhabitants. Clues have been provided as to social organization, use of resources, herding methods, possible bear worship and literal versus symbolic meanings. The carvings were presumably made for special ceremonial occasions and most likely carved by specially chosen people, perhaps those with a close relationship with the supernatural.

Like all prehistoric sites in Norway, the rock carvings at Alta are listed for preservation under the provisions of the Cultural Heritage Act of 1978. The land belongs to the state and the carvings are the responsibility of the Ministry of the Environment. Alta's petroglyphs have also been placed on UNESCO's World Heritage List, singling out the most outstanding cultural and natural treasures in the world and currently including some 400 sites distributed over five continents. The Alta rock carvings are the fourth such listing in Norway. The others are the stave church at Urnes, the mining town of Roros and the Bryggen wharf area in Bergen.

It should be pointed out that the famous prehistoric rock carvings at Tanumshede in Sweden, also on UNESCO's World Heritage List, are noted for their quality and quantity as well as their proximity to a burial cairn. However, Tanumshede is not as old as Alta and provides a different picture of society at the time its carvings were made. They are from the Bronze Age and are made by agriculturalists. Alta's "rocks of ages" can rightly claim to be the largest field of petroglyphs in northern Europe created by hunters and fishermen.

The Alta Museum, largely devoted to the petroglyphs and prehistory in Finnmark, is the most visited museum in northern Norway during the summer months, drawing 1,000 visitors a day. In 1993 it received the European Museum of the Year Award.