ON20 Kautokeine-Alta

20th ride from Oekene to the North Cape: from Kautokeino to Alta. Wavy roads on a plateau and at the end a long descent into a canyon along a river, 132 kilometers and 835 meters of elevation.

You follow the N°93 towards Alta for almost the entire day. Although you drive alongside many rivers and lakes, the road is quite undulating. On the left and right of the road are mountains 500 to 600m high, which also have snow on them in summer.

The city Alta is a municipality in the Norwegian province Finnmark. The municipality has 20,446 inhabitants. Summer temperatures are comparable to the southern parts of Norway. The climate is very dry, with an average of only 400 mm of rain per year. Alta has acquired the nickname "Nordlysbyen Alta" or "Northern Lights City Alta" due to the fact that the chance of observing Aurora Borealis - the Northern Lights - here is relatively high. This is because there is generally less cloud cover above the area around Alta than over other places in Norway.

The area is located around the Altafjord and has large forest areas. The higher parts of the Finnmarksvidda are also part of the municipality. The river Alta flows through one of the largest canyons in Europe and empties into the Altafjord at Alta, a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean.

Alta is particularly known for the rock art of Alta (actually from Jiepmaluokta) that has been found in the rocks. The oldest images are over 7000 years old, the youngest are from the beginning of our era. The rock paintings are on the World Heritage List. During the Second World War, the German battleship Tirpitz used the Kåfjord, an inlet of the Altafjord, as a harbor. The ship was repeatedly bombed by the Allies, which forced it to leave Kåfjord in 1944. Alta was almost completely destroyed by the Wehrmacht in the autumn of 1944, during Operation Nordlicht. Only a few buildings remained standing next to the Altakirche.