Museum of Alta

There are not a lot of towns up in the north of Norway so you shouldn’t expect a lot of museums to pass your day. Up here nature is number one and you’ll spend almost all your time enjoying the scenery.

One of the few towns is Alta and it does have a museum a bit outside the city. The museum is one of the main attractions of the city and since we are staying here for a night we decide it is truly museum weather today – it has been raining most day and the clouds are still hanging low. So no outdoor activity seems to be in the cards.

We get to the museum a bit late in the day but it is still open so we can go in and have a look at the museum.

The museum is the only museum of town and possibly the municipality of Alta so not surprisingly it is a bit of a mix. There is both some art on display and there is a strange exhibition about the history of snowmobiles – the last one was a temporary exhibition so it will probably be gone for next summer tourist season.

The most interesting part of the museum for us was the section of Sami history. The Sami is the traditional people of the northern part of Scandinavia and the northwestern most part of Russia. The people are known as reindeer herders but some was actually living along the shore surviving on the resources of the ocean. There are different ancient items on display and it is interesting to learn a bit more of the Sami history. The museum here isn’t specialized in Sami history so you can find better museums in Karasjok or Finland and Sweden about the traditional people. But this was a good little introduction to the Sami.