Fig. 904.—Rock-tracing of reindeer, &c.; possibly representing a journey to the far North by the man wearing snow-shoes. Height, 6½ feet; width, 15 feet.—Backa, Brastad parish, Bohuslän.
Fig. 905.—Rock-tracing, apparently representing men returning from some expedition in which the women have been made prisoners; numerous bowl-shaped hollows, varying in size from one to two inches in depth and diameter, have been made in the rock. Height, 10¾ feet; width, 8¼ feet.
They are very primitive, and in several cases plainly show that modesty was not one of the characteristic traits of the people.[[122]] The first impression gathered on seeing them is that they belonged to a people of low civilisation, who must have been engaged in perpetual warfare, and who by this means commemorated the deeds of their warriors, and it is quite clear that the people who made them were not only warlike but seafaring.
Fig. 906.—Human figure 1 foot 6 inches in height, holding an axe with a handle 1 foot 8 inches long, and a head nearly 1 foot 2 inches.—Simrislund, Scania.
A very interesting district, rich in rock-tracing, exists on the south-eastern coast of Sweden, in the neighbourhood of the little town of Cimbrishamn, where the rocky coast falls very gently towards the sea, losing itself in a somewhat sandy beach covered with boulders. The most curious tracings are to be found on the farms of Järrestad and Simris. The ships represented present the same characteristics as those of Bohuslän; in some places they are 26 or 27 inches long, and generally have 14 ribs. There are also wheels with crosses inside, with a diameter of 5 to 6 inches, and in many instances only axes are seen on the illustrations, which apparently is not the case with any of the Bohuslän tracings.
At Järrestad there exists on a rock slanting towards the sea a tracing 54 feet in length and 40 feet in height, which contains, besides the characteristic figures of the rock-tracings of Bohuslän, a ship with a mast. Another superb tracing is found on a large rock at Simrislund, in which the figures are placed in several groups, and consist of 10 vessels, 33 war axes, two men with weapons, one horse, four circles without crosses, a mass of round excavations or cups, some of which are quite large and deep; and finally a couple of figures impossible to determine. One of the circles encloses a ship, and passes along the belly of a horse, which is placed upside down in relation to the ship. One tracing represents wheel-tracings and several ships, one of which is 26 inches long, almost on a line with fifteen or sixteen small hollows. Quite close to these web tracings is a low mound, in which were found an urn with burnt bones and a bronze button. The graves in the neighbourhood though robbed of their contents, present the same characteristics as those of the bronze age, to which all the cairns found in the neighbourhood belong.
