''Hjemmeluftbukta'' (

Northern Sámi Northern or North Sámi ( ; se, davvisámegiella ; fi, pohjoissaame ; no, nordsamisk; sv, nordsamiska; disapproved exonym Lappish or Lapp) is the most widely spoken of all Sámi languages. The area where Northern Sámi is spoken covers the ...

: ''Jiepmaluokta'') is a bay in

Alta Municipality ( se, Áltá ; fkv, Alattio; fi, Alattio) is the most populated municipality in Finnmark in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Alta. Some of the main villages in the municipality in ...

Finnmark Finnmark (; se, Finnmárku ; fkv, Finmarku; fi, Ruija ; russian: Финнмарк) was a county in the northern part of Norway, and it is scheduled to become a county again in 2024. On 1 January 2020, Finnmark was merged with the neighbouri ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. It is the main site for the

rock carvings at Alta The Rock art of Alta (''Helleristningene i Alta'') are located in and around the municipality of Alta, Norway, Alta in the county of Finnmark in northern Norway. Since the first carvings were discovered in 1973, more than 6000 carvings have been ...

with about 3,000 individual carvings (

petroglyphs A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

). The bay lies on the southwestern edge of the town of Alta. The bay lies off of the main

Altafjorden Altafjord ( en, Alta Fjord;Koop, Gerhard, & Klaus-Peter Schmolke. 2000. ''Heavy Cruisers of the Admiral Hipper Class: Warships of the Kriegsmarine''. Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing, p. 55. no, Altafjorden; fkv, Alattionvuono) is a fjord in A ...

, at the entrance to the Kåfjorden.

Etymology

''Hjemmeluftbukta'' is an often used example for how the Norwegianization of the indigenous

Sámi language The Sámi ( ; also spelled Sami or Saami) are a Finno-Ugric-speaking people inhabiting the region of Sápmi (formerly known as Lapland), which today encompasses large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and of the Murmansk Oblast, Rus ...

names in

Northern Norway Northern Norway ( nb, Nord-Norge, , nn, Nord-Noreg; se, Davvi-Norga) is a geographical Regions of Norway, region of Norway, consisting of the two northernmost counties Nordland and Troms og Finnmark, in total about 35% of the Norwegian mainlan ...

have often created meaningless names. In the

Northern Sámi language Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ra ...

the name ''Jiepmaluokta'' is "bay of seals" while the Norwegian name ''Hjemmeluftbukta'' is an adaption of the Sámi name and is translated to "home air bay". The ending ''-luft'' (air) comes from the

accusative The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...

and

genitive In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...

form of the Sámi noun ''luokta'' (bay) or "luovtta" which is pronounced "luofta". The Norwegian version's ''hjemme-'' (home) may indicate that at an earlier stage the toponym was Jiemmaluokta - the difference being that ''jiepma'' is rendered in

, making the name mean "seal's bay". There is also another place in

County called Jiemmaluokta. In Norwegian, that place is called Saraby and lies in

Kvalsund Municipality Kvalsund ( sme, Fálesnuorri and fkv, Valasnuora) is a former municipality in the old Finnmark county in Norway. The municipality is now part of Hammerfest Municipality in Troms og Finnmark county. The municipality existed from 1869 until its ...

References

{{authority control Alta, Norway Sámi Sámi-language terms