nel, Berghelm I (Figures 10.5 Sc 10.6), Alta (6200 BP-5600 BP), was first recorded in 1975. The lowest part was well preserved under peat while the upper two-thirds was strongly eroded. We worked all hours of the day and night to exploit the shifting light of the sun, but did not succeed in recording many engravings on the upper part. In the summer of 1999 I re-examined the upper section — looking with different eyes, and using a large black plastic sheet to manipulate light and shadows — eager to discover what figures were actually there. The result was astonishing, and the distribution of the figures reinforced the impression that entire panels can represent a landscape with stories. The eroded rock surface is, however, undoubtedly still hiding engraved lines to be discovered, but we have recorded most of what there is without stripping additional peat.
Figure 10.6 Bergheim I. Photograph showing the northern section of the surface, looking north-north-west.
The surface of the panel is even, with striation marks from the last glaciation at 90* to the direction of the slope. The top section of the panel is relatively horizontal before sloping (20*-30‘) downwards to another relatively horizontal surface which steepens into a 45* slope. The rounded ‘horizontal’ top, the slope and the relatively horizontal surface are all strongly eroded and the engravings are difficult to see, while on the lowest slope the engravings are well preserved, having once been protected by a cover of peat that the upper surfaces lacked.
The animal figures in the top section are strongly eroded. The group of five animals to the right are other elk or reindeer. The animals to the left all appear to be reindeer. In the slope immediately below, all are reindeer, with one exception. To the left there are two vertically split ‘ovals’. There is what appears to be some form of enclosure marked by long, wide lines similar to those on two other contemporaneous panels. Snow shoes, or prints thereof, are depicted in a semicircle moving from the right to the left, in a way similar to the foot series interpreted as those of a god on south Scandinavian engravings (Almgren 1927: 212-218; Almgren 1962). On the lower right there is a human figure standing on similar snow shoes. The lowest set of snow shoes extends down onto the relatively horizontal middle section of the panel. To the left of the large halibut hooked on a line there are four distinct female elk and a line which continues down to what appears to be an elk or a reindeer on top of the lowest section of the panel. Beneath the naked foot and two human figures holding elk headed poles, the surface changes into a slope of approximately 45°. With the exception of two reindeer on the upper left, the terrestrial animals are mainly female elk. In the central right there are two elk, which appear to be defending their offspring from attacking dogs or wolves. Furthermore, there are two more scenes with human figures holding elk-headed poles, a copulation scene, three fish, two boats and a few geometric patterns and, lowest of all, a pair of bear paws under the stomach of a large elk. Both the similarities and the differences between the figures are large and signal meanings yet to be discovered and explored. The point to be noted here is that the elk are positioned on the lowest part of the panel, while reindeer are not found lower than the upper part of the lowest slope.
This general positioning is repeated at other slanting panels from the same time period. At Ole Pedersen I there is a line of oblong-bodied figures (the uppermost, horizontal figure looks like a humpback whale owing to the two downward-extending flipper-like lines (Helskog 1999: figure 7]) and I suggest that they do depict whales. High on the surface there are a bear and an elk, while all the reindeer are located on the central part of the panel and the elk are mostly on the lower part, together with bears and a whale, and the hips to feet of a large human figure. On the adjacent panel to the north there are bears at the top, reindeer in the 