Point LILLE-REIPAS Raipas Alta, Finnmark, Norway

The point LILLE-REIPAS Raipas Alta, Finnmark, Norway. The location is marked by a modern geodetic sign and a memorial plaque. The point is situated on a mountain 286 meters above sea level, in rocky terrain. From here, there is a magnificent panorama of Alta (the city near which it is located), the fjord, and the surrounding mountain peaks.

The point is located 2 km from the road, with an elevation difference of about 100 m from the road; the ascent takes about one hour. According to Norwegian law, there are no restrictions on visiting this area.

The Struve Arc, once known as the "Russian" and later the "Russo-Scandinavian Meridian Arc," is one of UNESCO's World Heritage monuments. The arc consists of 265 triangulation points, along which measurements were conducted from 1816 to 1852, allowing the precise determination of the Earth's size and shape.

The reference points of this triangulation network were marked in various ways on the terrain: hollows carved into rocks, iron crosses, stone pyramids, or specially installed obelisks. Often they were marked with sandstone bricks laid at the bottom of a pit; sometimes it was a granite cube with a cavity filled with lead, placed in a pit with cobblestones.

During the project to include the Struve Arc in the UNESCO list, which lasted 8 years, special search and geodetic work was undertaken in each country to locate the original points. All information from all the countries of the Struve Arc was collected, structured, and standardized.

Not all of the original points were found during the special search and geodetic work carried out in recent years with active cooperation from scientists of the interested countries, and many of them were found to be heavily damaged. Therefore, only the best-preserved points—34 in total—were included in the World Heritage site.

Sources:

https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lille-Raipas

http://www.gototrip.com/publications/geodezicheskaya-duga-struve