Objects

There are 14 boats in the collection at Alta Museum. Riverboats, rowing boats and the Nordland boats Nordlyset and Orion. Our greatest pride is M/K Vally, which the museum bought in 1982. Vally is a cutter-type fishing boat, which celebrated its 100^th birthday in 2017. The boat has been in the ownership of Alta inhabitants since it was built at Hemnesberget in 1917. The boat remains seaworthy and is currently moored at Urnesbukta on Amtmannsnes in Alta.

This wooden plank/cutting board was added to Alta Museum’s collection in 1989. However, in order to understand the value of the plank and its significance, we need to view it in the context in which it was used and the etched letters ‘MK Vally’.

What can a prince’s collection of microorganisms tell us about global warming in the Arctic?

What can a čiktingeahpa or net needle tell us about Sea Sami culture? Sea Sami narratives ended up in the blind spot of Norwegian history for a long time. However, important artefacts and people’s memories and experiences mean that Sea Sami narratives are being told again. Čiktingeahpa, or the net needle, is one such artefact. This one, an important tool for survival along the Northern Norwegian coast, was created by hand in Altafjorden in 1905 and is made from wood.

Nothing is so boundless as the sea. This is how the Novel Garmann and Worse written by the famous Norwegian author Alexander Kielland begins. What is it about sperm whales and authors?

During World War II, symbols and images of Norwegian nature became a way of circumventing the Nazi regime’s censorship.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Norway became a popular destination for British tourists. Among these were mountaineers such as William Cecil Slingsby (1849–1929), who soon established multiple connections to the country.

How could the Nordic region become part of chocolate advertising in France?

Weaving connections through time and across borders.

What can the drinking horn tell us about Norwegian nation building?

What does a Northern Norwegian farm tell us about Kven settlements and Kven traditions?

How could one ‘capture’ the Northern Lights in times before it became possible to photograph or film this phenomenon?

What can Ross’s Gulls collected by Nansen far out in the Arctic Ocean in 1894 tell us about the use of such objects then and now?

What can a French administrative classification of a Northern Norwegian collection tell us about how the Nordic region was understood from a foreign perspective?

Most people don’t know this, but Nansen also mapped geological features and collected fossils on his polar expedition with Fram. While on Franz Josef Land, he took samples of fossils that have subsequently been important in understanding the geology of the archipelago and the formation of the Barents Shelf. 

How was it possible to collect bird songs in the Nordic regions before the invention of audio recording?