Norway - Part 9

Alta to Home

The last official day of our tour began with a morning visit to the Alta Museum where ancient rock carvings made by Sami people as much as 7,000 years ago can be seen. It was raining, chilly, and sometimes windy as we hiked on wooden walkways to the site of the carvings.

The carvings were made on gray, flat, smooth-surfaced sandstone scoured by past glaciers. The stone surfaces reminded me of blackboards, and blank blackboards invite doodling. Perhaps ancient Sami carvers were similarly tempted to doodle.

Red coloring has been added by the museum to make carvings easily visible to visitors. The original carvings were not colored. You can see an uncolored carving in the next picture. Look closely just above the symbol commanding no shoes off the walkway and to the right of the crack in the rock. Can you see the uncolored shape of an animal? Click on the image to enlarge it.

Our guide thought the next carving showed elk and reindeer enclosed by a fence.

Archeologists have been carefully studying and dating the carvings for years. Wall displays within the museum show some results of their work. The first panel below shows the way animals, people, and boats were depicted over thousands of years. Click on the image to enlarge it.

The next panel shows how elk (moose) and reindeer were depicted. Click on the image to enlarge it.

There were many carvings of boats with elk figureheads and the museum displayed how a real boat would have looked.

I thought the wooden walkways around the rock carvings were beautiful. Click on the next two panoramic images to enlarge them.

Imagine how glorious the next two images would have been a few weeks earlier on a sunny day when the birch trees were clothed in yellow fall leaves.

Our trip was now winding down. After the Alta Museum we drove to the sleepy Alta Airport, the least busy airport I've ever seen. It seemed they had to wake up some reluctant security personnel to screen our bags. All the snack bars were closed, and there were no planes parked at gates. Nevertheless, our plane eventually arrived on time. We boarded the two-engine propeller plane and began our journey home with a short, surprisingly smooth 30-minute flight south to Tromso.

The next step was a 2-hour flight from Tromso to Oslo. After an invigorating long walk from the Oslo Airport to our hotel we had our last dinner with the tour group and gladly went to bed.

I like window seats on long flights because sometimes spectacular views appear instead of uniform clouds. On our flights home to Virginia three beautiful sights occurred. First, was a glory seen against background clouds on the way to Iceland.

Second, over Iceland, the clouds parted long enough to unveil five glaciers in Vatnajokull, Iceland's largest ice cap.

Finally, while flying over southern Greenland I could see massive glaciers, glaciers ending in water where icebergs had broken off, and sea ice.

Weather on this Norway trip was a complete reversal from weather on last year's trip to Spain and Portugal. Last year every day was warm and sunny except for one single evening rain shower. In Norway every day was cold and rainy except for one single midday stretch of sunshine in Finnmark.

We had a wonderful trip to Norway, but I was very happy to be home in Virginia again. The contrast in weather conditions was immediately apparent. Norway was drizzly, dark and overcast with temperatures in the 40's. Norwegian trees had lost most of their leaves. Near home in Williamsburg the trees were full of green leaves, the sun was shining, and the temperature was in the 80's! It was time to shed clothing and feel warm sun on bare skin. Although Virginia is warmer, Norway has auroras! I was thrilled to see two dramatic auroral displays whose fantastic beauty made our entire trip worthwhile.