Day 31: Bognelv to Alta (70 kms)

A number of tunnels today, some closed to cyclists necessitating, in one case, a 10 km detour, others that just had to be braved. Towards the end of one 3.5 km tunnel on the E6 highway -- quite long enough in the dark for me, thanks, I'm not a mushroom -- I found the answer to my question, moose or reindeer? For cantering around in the gloom, I suspect trying to avoid a threatening electrical storm, was unmistakably a reindeer. Quite small, about the size of a Shetland pony. That means the beast I saw by the bridge on Andoya earlier was definitely a moose (or elg, as the Norwegians insist). Obviously the last thing on my mind what with the thundering traffic behind me, the skittering animal in front, and the general point that I was underground, was grabbing my phone, so no picture. The animal ran off in front of me, reached the entrance, and hid behind the SOS booth there. Very sensible of it. A few kilometres further on, however, while turning onto a bypass track for another tunnel, I encountered four reindeer, grazing contentedly. I pulled on Claud's brakes and here they are:

I cycled a short day, because I wanted to stop at Jiepmaluokta, five kms short of the Arctic town of Alta to visit the World Heritage Site where, in 1973, the first of literally thousands of Stone Age rock carvings were discovered, dating from 4500 BC to 500 BC. This awe-inspiring rock art tells the story of a hunter-gatherer society that caught reindeer for meat, hunted, fished, went to sea in boats, and practised pagan/shamanistic rituals. When the carvings were first discovered, the 1970s archaeologists picked them out in red to better understand them. Nowadays this is seen as "inauthentic" and the red paint is being painstakingly removed. I'm glad that quite a lot of this work remains to be done, as on the gloomy thundery day I was there it was almost impossible to see the unpainted ones.

The earliest known depiction of the use of a fence to capture reindeer -- from about 4000 BC

More of the Stone Age rock art at Alta

Indoors, the Museum on the site was showcasing an exhibition of Norwegian food down the ages. I decided to skip that and headed to Alta's large "Bunnpris" supermarket, where, I discovered, I could fill a huge salad bowl with all the protein a cyclist could desire for about £15 (that's cheap, by Norwegian standards), and spend over an hour eating it in their indoor tables area, while also writing my blog, filling my water bottles, drinking their free coffee and washing in their loo. Very good value, I think, and saved once again from having to book into a paid-for campsite for the night.