Despite the long haul to get here, first impressions of ALTA are not encouraging. With a population of just 16,000, the town spreads unenticingly along the E6 for several kilometres, at its ugliest in Alta Sentrum, now befuddled by a platoon of concrete blocks. Alta was at least interesting once, and for decades was not Norwegian at all, but Finnish and Sámi, and host to an ancient Sámi fair. World War II polished off the fair and destroyed all the old wooden buildings that once clustered together in Alta's Bossekop, where Dutch whalers settled in the seventeenth century.

For all that, Alta does have one remarkable feature, the most extensive area of prehistoric rock carvings in northern Europe, the Helleristningene i Hjemmeluft, which has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. The carvings are located beside the E6 as you approach Alta from the southwest, some 2.5km before the Bossekop district, and form part of Alta Museum (May daily 9am–6pm; early June and late Aug daily 8am–8pm; mid-June to mid-Aug daily 8am–11pm; Sept daily 9am–6pm; Oct– April Mon– Fri 9am–3pm, Sat & Sun 11am–4pm; 80kr May– Sept, otherwise 40kr; www.alta.museum.no). The museum itself provides a wealth of background information on the carvings and on prehistoric Finnmark in general, as well as a potted history of the Alta area, with exhibitions on the salmon-fishing industry, copper mining and so forth. Outside, the rock carvings extend down the hill from the museum building to the fjordside. A clear and easy-to-follow footpath and boardwalk circumnavigate the site, taking in all the carvings in about an hour. On the trail, there are thirteen vantage points offering close-up views of the carvings, recognizable though highly stylized representations of boats, animals and people picked out in red pigment (the colours have been retouched by researchers). They make up an extraordinarily complex tableau, whose minor variations – there are four identifiable bands – in subject matter and design indicate successive historical periods. The carvings were executed between 6000 and 2500 years ago, and are indisputably impressive: clear, stylish and touching in their simplicity, offering an insight into a prehistoric culture that was essentially settled and largely reliant on the hunting of land animals.