Tanum Petroglyphs

Yesterday we traveled to a misty lake and discovered some tracks...

What will today's journey reveal? Well today we are going to Tanum a spot of archeological significance near Tanumshede and is a world heritage site by UNESCO since 1994.

In total there are thousands of images called the Tanum petroglyphs, on about 600 panels within the World Heritage Area. These are concentrated in distinct areas along a 25 km stretch, and covers an area of about 51 hectares (126 acres or 0.5 km²).

A really interesting fact to know about this place is that the location was near the coastline when the carvings were first made about 3000 years ago! Today it is located several kilometers inland at an elevation of about 25m.

The grasslands near the site are a home to many cute looking cows! Long hair and the two sharp horns seem to be their trademark. But it's probably good to keep some distance...

The site itself first may not look very unusual. There are some trees on an elevated area (it's the rocks with the carvings), but other than that one wouldn't suspect to be near anything remarkable.

Entering the place it becomes obvious that there are a lot of rocks here. But it was the ones on the ground where the petroglyphs were carved on. It is rather remarkable that they survived thousands of years exposed to the weather! In fact, the following depictions were actually somewhat renewed I was told: the red paint was added more recently (although they found some red paint pigments on the original ones, so it is an accurate representation). But running my fingers on the markings revealed a very shallow depression: they really were carved in stone and not just painted on. This way they really could survive all of these years. But it probably also means that many many paintings were very likely lost in time as they would have been much easier made than carving into rock.

Here are some exmaples:

We can see boats, animals (reindeer, a whale which I think is the only one that was found) and of course people. There are also many more mysterious symbols which, however, can be seen on many ancient sites in all cultures, like the spiral. We also see what could perhaps be the sun. But why are women (?) connected to it? The animal depictions are particularly cute in my opinion :)

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