Ferries from Alta hurtigbåtterminal

Alta holds Northern Europe's largest concentration of hunter-gatherer rock art — carvings over 7,000 years old, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985. The express boat terminal below runs 22 active sailings along a coast the road barely reaches.

Where the boats go

• Kongshus — about 35 minutes, 5 sailings.
• Storekorsnes — about 40 minutes, 4 sailings.
• Hammerfest — about 95 minutes, 2 sailings.

Operated by Snelandia. A route to Sørvær is listed and currently carries no departures in our data.

⚠ Ninety-five minutes to Hammerfest, twice

The Alta–Hammerfest express boat is the one people look for and the thinnest thing on this list. Two sailings on a ninety-five-minute crossing is not a service to build a day around, and the road between the two towns is long.

Check it against the bus and the flight before assuming the boat is the sensible option.

The rock art

Thousands of figures — reindeer, elk, bears, boats, people, hunting scenes — pecked into coastal rock over several thousand years as the land rose out of the sea. Because the shoreline moved, the panels are stacked by age up the hillside: the oldest are highest.

The main site at Hjemmeluft has boardwalks and a museum. It is open in winter, though the carvings are under snow.

The town

Alta is Finnmark's largest town, with an airport, a university campus and the Northern Lights Cathedral. It sits at the head of a long fjord and is the road junction for western Finnmark.

The Alta river is one of the great Atlantic salmon rivers, and the fight over damming it in the early 1980s was a defining moment for Sami political rights in Norway.

Season

Polar night runs from late November to late January; the midnight sun from May to late July. The coastal express boats run through both, weather permitting.