Bronsristningar

Resumé

Bronze engravings

Two-dimensional depictions of men, animals and objects, punched or engraved on the flat surfaces of bronze objects (or more rarely cut in bone, horn, wood or pottery), or in moulds for bronze articles, may for the sake of brevity be called bronze engravings. They can be more easily employed chronologically than rock engravings, and are more accessible to interpretation. The possibilities for dating bronze engravings are also good, since these usually occur on just those objects which form the basis of Bronze Age chronology, whereas it is a hopeless task to build a chronology for rock engravings on internal criteria. An important method of dating petroglyphs is, however, comparison with bronze engravings. A bronze object with an engraving has the same value as evidence as a closed find consisting of both these components.

No Nordic rock-engraver should ever have seen a continental petroglyph, but in the question of bronze engravings the existence of a European prototype is always a possibility, and its effect also possible to trace. Another important property of bronze engravings is that they have undoubtedly been composed consciously by the artist, whereas of two adjacent petroglyphic figures one can never be certain whether their spatial relationship is the result of a conscious composition by the engraver.

To the earliest motifs of bronze engraving belong daggers and axes (fig. 1:1), unhafted and formally arranged on the object. Later, axe motifs were incorporated in the ornament (fig. 1 :2). These axe pictures have parallels in the engravings of the Kivik cist, which like the bronze engravings, but unlike the true rock-engravings, constitute a chronological and compositional entity. The prototypes for the Kivik engravings could be textiles, which would explain why all eight are framed, and composed in horizontal belts. Support for the view that imported textiles lay behind them is found in the preserved articles of Bronze Age dress, which seem poorly suited to a northern climate. The Egtved woman's string skirt seems suited to a southern climate, and the men's knitted caps meant to provide protection from hot sun. The theory that Bronze Age dress should have developed from native skin dress seems rather unlikely. An influence from the Mediterranean region seems more reasonable.

On the inside of the brooches, a hand is often depicted (fig. 3 :2). The thumb usually points away from the other fingers, precisely as in a number of Nordic Bronze Age sculptures, like the figurines from Grevensvænge for instance. The hand also occurs in graves with rock engravings (fig. 4), usually accompanied by four lines. Four lines also occur with hands on the reverse of brooches (fig. 3 :2), also when the reverse depicts an axe (fig. 3:3). The numbers two and four are very common in Bronze Age art. The most reasonable explanation is that the hand means approximately »protect« and when it is supplemented by four lines »twice two protected«. Hand amulets of pottery or bronze are common in Hungary and other southeastern regions which may have influenced Scandinavia. The same is true of wheel and cross motifs which occur both on the back of brooches and in many other circumstances.

The ship first appears on the curved sword from Rørby (fig. 5:1), and there in a perfect form which is never bettered in the later rock-engravings. The ship picture should originate from the Mediterranean area; it has been accepted in Scandinavia's coastal regions becauce they also had ships there, but it hardly gives any realistic depiction of these. The ship picture must have spread to Scandinavia via Hungary, but has hardly left any traces there because the interest in ships was small. The ship on the Wismar lur (fig. 5 :2) resembles that of the Rørby sword and the Kivik engravings (fig. 5 :3). The Wismar lur ornament shows, like the Kivik engravings, a horizontal division which suggests textiles.

Whereas axes and ships become ornamental on the later bronzes, birds and fish (fig. 2:2 and 6:1) retain their naturalism, which probably means that their symbolic content was more powerful for men. Snakes are ornamentalized frequently (fig. 7:1). The horse, however, occurs only pulling the sun (fig. 7 :2-3) and always retains its natural form. Whilst the axe, hand, ship, bird and fish always occur singly or in pairs, the horse is always part of a scene. The same is true of human figures. On the razor from Vestrup (fig. 7:2), the three most important motifs in Bronze Age sculpture are depicted: the two men from Grevensvænge with horned helmets and axes in their hands, the woman from Fårdal with her snake and the horse with the sun disc from Trundholm.

With regard to the origin of the bronze engravings, it is clear that the dagger, hand and possibly ship occur in the Hungarian Transylvanian area; rock engravings of daggers and axe blades are a common European occurrence during the Early Bronze Age, manifest in particular in the British Isles and the Ligurian Alps. As far as the scenes are concerned, the Hallstatt Culture's pictorial repertoire has undoubtedly influenced the later Nordic rock-engravings. But even earlier the Kivik engravings may have been influenced by the continental imagery which is manifested on the gold discs from Ottlaka, Siebenbürgen (fig. 8), which belong to the period of the Hajdúsámson horizon.

The central area of the Nordic Bronze Age is Denmark and Scania, but the petroglyphs are more numerous, richer in content, and artistically better in Central Sweden and South Norway. The reason for Southern Scandinavia's relative lack of petroglyphs cannot be the lack of suitable stones, as the Kivik cist shows. Rock engravings are a peripheral phenomenon, in Scandinavia as in Europe as a whole. In Central Sweden and South Norway, people engraved pictures of offerings and cult processions; but in Southern Scandinavia they had the economic resources to make real offerings and carry out real cult processions, either with human actors or with the aid of small bronze figurines and miniature wagons.

Mats P. Malmer