  Pancake vortices in stacks of thin superconducting films or layers are
considered. It is stressed that in the absence of Josephson coupling
topological restrictions upon possible configurations of vortices are removed
and various examples of structures forbidden in bulk superconductors are given.
In particular, it is shown that vortices may skip surface layers in samples of
less than a certain size R_c which might be macroscopic. The Josephson coupling
suppresses R_c estimates.
