In southern Sweden, near Tanumshede , lies one of the richest collections of rock art in Europe. The Tanum Stones , a UNESCO World Heritage Site, comprise several thousand petroglyphs engraved between 1800 and 500 BC .
Without stone temples or an alphabetic writing system, the peoples of the Bronze Age chose rock as their medium. There, they inscribed a language of signs: human figures, warriors, boats, animals, solar wheels, phalluses, and shields. Images that, three millennia later, still speak to those who know how to look at them.
A coded visual language
Tanum's engravings compose a sophisticated visual system :
- Multiple rowing boats , symbols of collective travel, perhaps between the world of the living and that of the dead.
- Warriors armed with spears and shields , engaged in ritual duels rather than real battles.
- Sexual scenes , extolling fertility, vital power and the continuity of lineages.
- Radiant suns , cosmic figures of order and regeneration.
- Animals (horses, bulls, deer), linked to agricultural cycles and the forces of nature.
Each engraving seems coded: a mythical language that only initiates could decipher.
The major symbols of Tanum
Several recurring motifs structure Tanum's spiritual universe:
- The ship : In the Nordic world, the ship has long been a coffin, a funerary ark, a metaphor for the passage to the afterlife. The engravings of Tanum already suggest this initiatory role.
- The sun : a vital star, it organizes the cycles of the seasons.
- The phallus : a raw and powerful symbol of fertility , but also of vital authority. Far from being obscene, it sacralizes generative power.
- The shield : a weapon of defense, but also a sign of honor , a ritual object, a mark of identity in ceremonies.
These symbols speak of life, death, fertility and transcendence and are engraved archetypes .
Interpretations and mysteries
What exactly did these engravings depict? Archaeologists are still undecided. Several hypotheses are being considered:
- Religious rituals : ceremonies dedicated to the sun, fertility or ancestors.
- Cosmology : maps of the sky, diagrams of the divine order.
- Collective memory : stories of wars, migrations, sacred marriages.
- Shamanic visions : trance states inscribed in rock to fix the spiritual experience.
The mystery remains unsolved. But one thing is certain: these images transcended the everyday. They represented an attempt to fix the order of the world in stone.
The rock as a sacred book
The peoples of the Bronze Age did not yet have books. But they had stones. And they knew how to inscribe their memories on them.
To engrave a ship was to ensure that it would also sail to the other world. To draw a duel was to sanctify courage. To trace a sun was to capture its cosmic power.
The rock became both an altar and a book : an eternal support for a language that transcends generations.
Spiritual and archetypal heritage
The stones of Tanum resonate with other Indo-European traditions:
- Sun worship is found in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India.
- Funeral boats foreshadow Viking traditions.
- The phallus is reminiscent of ancient fertility rituals.
This site therefore connects us to a common memory of humanity : one where the sacred was expressed first through images, before words.
The invisible engraved in stone
The petroglyphs of Tanum are archaeological remains that shed light on a world where man sought to speak with the gods .
They remind us that, long before writing, our ancestors already knew how to create symbolic languages to express the inexpressible: life, death, fertility, cosmic order.
The stones of Tanum invite us to listen to this engraved silence. They tell us that before words, there was already art, and that through art, man sought to inscribe in matter a part of the invisible .