This group of petroglyphs in the Alta Fjord, near the Arctic Circle, bears the traces of a settlement dating from c. 4200 to 500 B.C. The thousands of paintings and engravings add to our understanding of the environment and human activities on the fringes of the Far North in prehistoric times.
The Rock art of Alta are located in and around Alta Municipality in Finnmark county in northern Norway. Since the first carvings were discovered in 1973, more than 6,000 carvings have been found on several sites around Alta. The largest locality, at Jiepmaluokta about five kilometers (3.1 mi) from Alta, contains thousands of individual carvings and has been turned into an open-air museum. The site, along with the sites Storsteines, Kåfjord, Amtmannsnes, and Transfarelv, was placed on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites on 3 December 1985. It is Norway's only prehistoric World Heritage Site.
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