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Nils Biti sends this photo with this note: “This photo of Bossekop was taken approximately 1880 – near the time the SS Manitoba departed from this port February 4th, 1893 with 78 Sami and 538 reindeer, bound for the Yukon. Bossekop is from the Sami bossogåppi (båsso = the whale blows, gåppi = inlet).” Birthplace of Amanda Xavier 30 years earlier.

Bossekop – near Alta at the bottom of the Altafjord – lay at the end of the old travel route from Sweden and Guovdageaidnu. Reindeer owners from Guovdageaidnu and Kárášjohka had their summer grazing areas on both sides of the fjord. The market was held in November and February as early as 1760. Fjord dwellers, Kven and Swedish traveling merchants traded with coastal Sami for cod, pollock, salted salmon, wool and skins of reindeer, fox, wolf, and bear. The Alta forests were rich in lumber for boat building, and other tools. Trading increased in the 1800s, mostly because of the Russian Pomor trade, and inexpensive Russian rye flour was shipped as far south as Nordland. The Russians were particularly interested in reindeer and fox skins. Altas historie, Jens Petter Nielsen (1990)