Early large-scale petroglyphs in Central Scandinavia – the relevance of landscape and hunting contexts for implicit narrativity

Some of the earliest Scandinavian petroglyphs depict big game, such as elks and reindeer, dating from around 9000 to around 4000 BCE. These large images were represented as singular motifs, usually without any interaction with other figures, and without any explicit narrative appearance. However, involvement with the surrounding natural landscape and hunting contexts, particularly river rapids and straits, seems to have affected the placement of the images and likely given them narrative implications. This involvement may have given the earliest large-scale rock petroglyphs an implicit narrative functionality. Specifically, due to their size and visibility, especially from waterways, the images could have had an effective indexical function as ‘signposts’ at strategic hunting grounds related to water crossings. In order to corroborate these assumptions, examples from Sweden (Landverk, Gärde, and Duved) and Norway (Stykket) will be discussed, and contrasted with a later miniaturizing tradition.