Nordic rock art and Nazi mythology: the Ahnenerbe and the search for Germanic origins

Following its formation in 1935, the Nazi German think-tank, the Ahnenerbe, launched numerous archaeological investigations, including two expeditions to create detailed casts of Swedish rock art. Previous scholarship has emphasised the pseudoscientific claims made by Ahnenerbe scholars and the racist motivations behind the fieldwork, yet the casts and other documentation from these early expeditions have not been analysed in detail. This article delves into the archives, examining how the casts were produced and interpreted and tackling the question of why it was necessary to make exact copies of rock-art images when the past was already being falsified for political means.