d have fitted a composition of this size and form, especially if the form of the surface was significant. The location was on a small north promontory on the shore landscape, unlike that of any other section (Sawatejev 1970: figure 16). Three large elk and some boats are depicted towards the top of the west slope, and a ‘wedge’ of reindeer cuts off the outermost part of the promontory (Figure 10.9). The water would have bounded the western, northern and eastern surfaces. There are no engravings immediately to the south, while to the north1 northeast, downslope, there are smaller-sized figures such as human figures on skis, elk, boats and a few beluga (white whales). The large figures, considered by some researchers to be the oldest (Stoljar 1977), include large elk, elk-headed prow boats, all female. These large figures occur behind, almost within, the wedge formation of reindeer. They all move from the left (north) to the right — along the shoreline. Fifty metres further to the south-southeast, at the site New Zalavruga, is the well-known hunting scene in which three skiers hunt three elk (Sawatejev 1984) and in which the ski tracks and the tracks from the elk move downhill in accordance with the topography of the rock surface. As stated earlier, the positioning of the elk requires a thorough examination in all panels before any specific conclusions can be drawn for these Karelian sites, but, as at Alta, it is evident that the ancient Karelian population also used elk and the surface as a part of the story being told.
On a sloping rock surface, when illustrating a story in which the sky, earth, water and below (underworld) played a part, one would expect the sky to be positioned uppermost, below to be lowermost, and the world in which people live to be depicted in the middle. In the Alta panels, this seems to be the case. Yet, some of the figures — birds, reindeer, boats and fish — also signal different environments, but this may also be related to the different worlds. The spatial relationships between the figures not only reflect the spatial relationships in the physical world but also their interwoven associations to the different worlds as the people understood them: to a universe alive with souls, spirits and other non-human beings that moved about doing what supernatural beings do. In essence, we should not expect that figures will be located according to our understanding of nature but, rather, according to a nature that was understood as the place where worlds met and where people, animals and supernatural beings acted and interacted.
Figure 10.9 Old Zalavruga, at the river Vyg, Karelia, Russia (Sawatejev 1970: figure 14).
The ‘plow-shaped’ concentration of elk and reindeer acts as a ’boundary between the panel and the rock surface to the south.
In other directions, the panel is bounded by a river.
It is perhaps such an understanding that the positioning of the engravings reflects. A pattern emerges where the majority of elk on the oldest panels at Alta appear to be located towards the lower section of slanting panels, reindeer in the central and upper sections, and the bear in all sections. I do not claim that any class of animal is excluded from any section but instead that there appears to be a pattern of emphasis. It must be noted that, on the more horizontal surfaces, similar patterns have not yet emerged. This is a distribution that needs to be examined more closely at other panels and at other sites. The positioning of the animals at Zalavruga, where the majority of the surfaces are relatively horizontal, does not show a similar spatial relationship. On the other hand, there is no doubt that all the surfaces were used to create compositions, and it is therefore obvious that a focus on the panel can give different and more information than a focus on individual figures.
Prehistoric sculptures shaped like the head of elk and bear are found all over northernmost Europe (Carpclan 1977). The largest elk head found, in northern Finland, is made of pine (Era-Esko 1958) and dates to the late 8th millennium BP. Ye