PROTECCIÓN DEL DOCUMENTO

Anthropological and ethnographic approaches have been far more popular in Scandinavia, as seen in Figure 2.13. Furthermore, Tilley (1991) and Goldhahn (2002) have drawn extensively on ethnographical and anthropological concepts, in relation to Nämsforsen. Tilley regards the motifs at Nämsforsen (1991) as elk totem figures, and the boats as representing a means of undertaking cosmic and shamanic journeys of the mind (analogous to the journeys of boats along the Ångerman River).

Figure 2.13 Understanding Northern Swedish rock-art in relation to Sami mythology (Mulk & Bayliss-Smith 2006).

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Fuglestvedt (2010) links the development of styles during the Late Mesolithic in Northern Scandinavia, to the anthropological concept of churingas -the Australian aboriginal word for a totem (which has already been explored by Tilley (1991). Goldhahn (2010) investigates rock- art’s relationship with the landscape; undoubtedly the creation of rock-art was a meaningful and ritual action. There is, however, little discussion within rock-art research regarding how art can help make place out of space (Ingold 1986; 2000). In essence, what Goldhahn is suggesting is that researchers of rock-art often take the issue of place at face value- but do not pay additional attention to why rock-art may have been carved there in the first place. Goldhahn attempts to analyse this using the Maori concept of the Hau, which seems to resemble a Hegelian absolute spirit (Geist), with the ritual of gift giving outlined by Mauss (1954) perhaps representing the symbolic and dialectical movement towards Hau.

Figure 2.14 Naturalistic rock-art in typical northern Scandinavian location, on vertical rock face, close to water. Photo: Gustaf Hallström 1907, after Gustaf Hallströms research

archive, Umeå, Sweden.

Applying these ideas to the research area, the evidence of economic activity at Nämsforsen suggests rock-art here is related to a number of activities; 1) salmon fishing, 2) the creation of

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red slate daggers and 3) red ochre production (Fuglestvedt 2010, 114). Moreover, since red slate daggers had to be brought from outside the Nämsforsen area, they may have been exchanged for salmon and ochre, at that site. Thus, a common link between rock-art sites is that they are associated with the quarrying of materials (soapstone, red ochre, quartzite, quartz) and their exchange, as part of ritual gift giving (2010, 119). Furthermore the placement of rock- art in the landscape gives the area a hau (or spirit), which meant that it could become a place

(as opposed to space) in which communication and exchange could occur-along with all the social, ritual and economic engendering of social relations. However, such discussions from an anthropological perspective tend to lead to the same ends (outlined in chapter 3) as landscape approaches to rock-art; in the words of Goldhahn ‘putting the images to one side enables us to move beyond the images and the rock-art site to explore other pathways’ (2010, 122).

Bolin (2000) discusses the three most common motif types in northern Sweden; elks, boats and humans. It is suggested that these design elements are related to a form of social/ritual practice during the Neolithic and EBA. Bolin outlines some of the central elements of ‘shamanic’ practices in the North-the most important of which is connecting the physical world to the spiritual world, along a cosmic river. The idea that a Shaman travels along this metaphorical watercourse to intercede with the gods (Anisimov 1963; Bolin 2000, 157; Drury 1996, 14; Tilley 1991), is reinforced by the physical location of much of the art. The locations of rock- art next to water must have been a significant part of the art’s meaning. Bolin further suggests that there is a difference between the ‘type’ of water that rock carving and rock-painting sites are located next to. Carving sites tend to be found by rapids and swift water- which may be associated with the ‘cosmic river’ like those found in some forms of Siberian Shamanism (Anisimov 1963, 166; Tilley 1991, 132; Bolin 2000, 161)- whilst other rock painting sites are located on steep rocks which fall away into calm water.

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Away from water, the elk (which makes up about 90 percent of all motifs in Northern Sweden) is argued by Bolin to be the conceptualisation of an elk ancestor of the local population group. According to Bolin’s speculative narrative, the elk is said to have moved up the Ångerman River, populating certain regions (later moving up the tributaries to populate the settlement sites that are found further inland (Bolin 2000, 168)). Whilst one may disagree with the interpretation (due to its heavy reliance on Siberian ethnography), elk certainly did represent a core ideology for the people who lived in this region. The representation of ‘new’ motifs (Baudou 1993, 261) must have been the result of external Late Neolithic/Bronze Age influence in the region, as the shoe soles and circles with crosses did not belong to the Northern World in Ångermanland (Forsberg 1993, 244). Bolin simply sees this use of southern motifs as evidence that the hunter’s rock-art was ‘alive and well’ during the Bronze Age (Bolin 2000, 173). He rejects the possibility that the new motifs were the result of a change in the ethnic population with a differing economic farming base that is suggested elsewhere (Baudou 1977, 144; Kristiansen 1987, 82; Tilley 1991, 163).

The use of anthropological analogy, however, raises many difficult questions, since specific and often contemporary ethnographic examples are used to understand rock-art (that is thousands of years old). Moreover, the biggest issue here is that many anthropological approaches contradict themselves by, firstly, rejecting the evolutionary frameworks of earlier processual approaches, but then simultaneously reaffirming an ethnographical analogy which sees all primitive peoples (at all times and in all places) as sharing a similar belief system- simply because they are primitive.