Rock-carvings in Bohuslen
The Ships of the rock-carvings
The first literary mention of the Scandinavians’ boats occurs in Tacitus, who speaks of the fleets and rowing-boats without sails of the Suiones (see above, [p. 110]). But long before that time we find ships commonly represented on the rock-carvings which are especially frequent in Bohuslen and in the districts east of Christiania Fjord. If these were naturalistic representations they would give us valuable information about the form and size of the ships of those remote times. But the distinct and characteristic features which are common to all these pictures of ships, from Bohuslen to as far north as Beitstaden, show them to be conventional figures, and we cannot therefore draw any certain conclusions from them with regard to the appearance of the ships.
Dr. Andr. M. Hansen [1908], with his usual imaginativeness, has pointed out the resemblance between the rock-carvings and the vase-paintings of the Dipylon period in Attica, and thinks there is a direct connection between them. It appears highly probable that the style of the rock-carvings is not a wholly native northern art, but is due more or less to influence from the countries of the Mediterranean or the East, in the same way as we have seen that the burial customs (dolmens, chambered barrows, etc.) came from these. Dr. Hansen has, however, exaggerated the resemblance between the Dipylon art and the rock-carvings; many of the resemblances are clearly due to the fact that the same subjects are represented (e.g., spear-throwing, fighting with raised weapons, rowers, horsemen, chariots, etc.); it may also be mentioned that such signs as the wheel or the solar symbol (the eye) are common to wide regions of culture. On the other hand, there are differences in other important features; thus, the mode of representing human beings is not the same, as asserted by Hansen; the characteristic “Egyptian” style of the men depicted in the Dipylon art, with broad, rectangular shoulders and narrow waists, is just what one does not find in the rock-carvings, where on the contrary men are depicted in the more naturalistic style which one recognises among many other peoples in a savage state of culture. Hansen also lays stress upon resemblances to figures from Italy. But what most interests us here is the number of representations of ships in the rock-carvings, which for the most part show a remarkable uniformity as regards their essential features, while they differ from all pictures of ships, not only in the art of the Dipylon and of the Mediterranean generally, but also in that of Egypt and Assyria-Babylonia. The boats or ships depicted in the rock-carvings are so strange-looking that doubts have been expressed whether they are boats or ships at all, or whether it is not something else that is intended, sledges, for instance. There is no indication of the oars, which are so characteristic of all delineations of ships in Greece, Italy, Egypt and Assyria; nor is there any certain indication of sails or rudders, which are also characteristic of southern art. Moreover, the lowest line, which should answer to the keel, is often separated at both ends from the upper line, which should be the top strake. On the other hand the numerous figures in the “boats” can with difficulty be regarded as anything but men, and most probably rowers, sometimes as many as fifty in number, besides the unmistakable figures of men standing, some of them armed; and it must be added that if these pictures represented nothing but sledges, it is inconceivable that there should never be any indication of draught animals. But one remarkable point about these numerous carvings is the typical form both of the prow and of the stern-post. With comparatively few exceptions the prow has two turned-up beaks, which are difficult to understand. It has been attempted to explain one of these as an imitation of the rams of Greek and Phœnician warships; but in that case it ought to be directed forward and not bent up. The shape of the stern-post is also curious: for what one must regard as the keel of the ship has in all these representations a blunt after end, curiously like a sledge-runner; while the upper line of the ship, which should correspond to the top strake, is bent upward and frequently somewhat forward, in a more or less even curve, sometimes ending in a two- or three-leaved ornament, somewhat like the stern-post of Egyptian ships (see [p. 23]). This mode of delineation became so uniformly fixed that besides occurring in almost all the rock-carvings it appears again in an even more carefully executed form in the knives of the later Bronze Age. Such a type of ship, with a keel ending bluntly aft, is not known in ancient times in Europe, either in the Mediterranean or in the North.[222] Egyptian, Assyro-Phœnician, Greek and Roman representations of ships (see [pp. 7], [23], [35], [48], [241], [242]), all show a keel which bends up to form a continuously curved stern-post; and both the Nydam boat from Sleswick ([p. 110]) and the Norwegian Viking ships that have been discovered agree in having a similar turned-up stern-post, which forms a continuous curve from the keel itself ([pp. 246], [247]); it is the same with delineations of the later Iron Age ([p. 243]). Even Tacitus expressly says that the ships of the Suiones were alike fore and aft. The only similar stern-posts to be found are possibly the abruptly ending ones of the ship and boats on the grave-stone from Novilara in Italy; but here the prows are quite unlike those of the rock-carvings.
Rock-carving at Björnstad in Skjeberg, Smålenene. The length of the ship
is nearly fifteen feet (from a photograph by Professor G. Gustafson)
Bronze knife with representation of a ship, of the later Bronze Age. Denmark