Fig. 10.
Fig. 11.
The troll drums of the Lapps find their analogy in those of the kindred Samojed tribes to the East, which present figures of the same class. But the pictographs on these will be found to fit on to the rock-carvings or petroglyphs of Siberia, first described by Strahlenberg, of which a specimen is given in [Fig. 12].[21] Similar rock carvings may be traced through a vast Finno-Ugrian or Mongolian region to the borders of China, and the Chinese characters themselves must have arisen from a branch of the same great Northern family.
This Finno-Tataric province of primitive pictography touches the Atlantic in Northern Norway. In the south of the Scandinavian Peninsula we have numerous examples of picture-writing in the shape of carving,[22] mainly belonging to the Bronze Age, either on rocks or on the slabs of sepulchral barrows. Of the latter class are the well-known examples from the Cairn of Kivik, on the east coast of Scania, and the rock-carvings extend through Southern Norway and Denmark. The most remarkable of all are probably those of Bohuslan, of which an example, in which ships figure largely, is shown in [Fig. 13].[23]