an those in the caves and shelters of Norway.
Part of the explanation for the differences between paintings and engravings is to be found in the rituals associated with the location of the panels, and possibly with the surfaces themselves. The painted figures in caves (inside) and shelters (inside-outside) are all on vertical surfaces, while the engraved figures are always on the outside, on a variety of surfaces but seldom on a totally vertical surface. The engravings, with the absolute largest number of classes and types of figures, are embedded into the rock in the open, and were, judging from variety, sheer numbers and diversity of surfaces, associated with a larger diversity of rituals and stories than the paintings.
The surfaces on which modern painters normally work are flat with a vertical or horizontal dimension, while the makers of rock engravings worked on surfaces of which no two are identical. These surfaces vary in size, topography, gradient and orientation. Added to this, the light would have been constantly changing. A large surface has room for more figures than small surfaces. Uneven and undulating surfaces with cracks or fissures can be utilised differently to flat, even and unbroken surfaces. Steep surfaces can be used to convey different messages to horizontal surfaces, and so on. But, we have also to keep in mind that different surfaces could be used in a similar way and could carry similar meanings.
Modern painters have learnt to convey a sense of depth of field by using shading, foreshortening, perspective, and so on. The rock artists at Alta and Zalavruga, and those from all parts of northern Europe, do not use these techniques in their images and compositions. Yet the engravings themselves are three-dimensional. Also, the integration of features in the rock surfaces provides a similar sense of depth and of three-dimensionality as when one is looking at places in a landscape. The integration of surface features might indeed make the total representation a three-dimensional one. Further dimensions were also represented, for example the worlds under the rock and in the sky, as I will argue below. So, in the minds of the original viewers, the meanings associated with the figures and the compositions probably included multiple dimensions.
Evidence to show that there are structural similarities in the organisation of figures and compositions can be found in the larger, older panels in Alta, particularly those located on slanting surfaces (Helskog 1999, 2004). These compositions, with the bear as the central motif, used different parts of the rock surface to show the bear moving though a cosmological landscape divided into an upper, middle and lower world (Helskog 1999). Four compositions have been found with variations on a process in which the bear moves through time and space on the rock surfaces: the compositions capture an entire seasonal cycle. One interesting aspect is the fact that, on three of these four surfaces, the height is as much as 250 cm from the top to the bottom of the composition. The contact with the upper world, the world of the major spirits, is at the top of the panel; the entrance to the lower world, the world of the dead, is at the bottom; and in between one finds the middle world, the world of the living. The focus of the scenes, if judged in terms of size and numbers of figures, is on the middle world where humans, animals, insects and plants live. Not only does the bear seem to wander between these three cosmic worlds, but, in its wanderings, it moves through the entire annual cycle. It is as if the place of the bear in the cosmos represented the changes between the seasons — a belief that we know was held among the Nenets (Ovsyannikov & Terebikhin 1994) and the Sami in recent historic time (Nordlander-Unsgaard 1987).
There may have been some variation in where the other worlds were believed to be located, or at least in where the entrances between them were found. The ethnographic records in the European north and Siberia indicate that the other worlds were seen as being l