It was December and the primary snow of the season was falling when the three buddies set out on their weekly hunt by way of the fields of Ostfold, in southeastern Norway. Though it was not fairly 6 p.m., the solar had set hours earlier and, apart from the flickering glow from their home made flashlights (a.ok.a. bike lights duct-taped to sticks), it was pitch black.
Tromping throughout the blanketed farmland, the boys got here to a low outcrop of rock, a couple of toes large. With a child-size plastic broom, they brushed away the newly fallen snow from the stone to disclose the define of a ship, its curved keel carved into the granite roughly 3,000 years in the past.
It was only one greater than 600 Bronze Age rock carvings, referred to as petroglyphs, that Magnus Tangen, Lars Ole Klavestad and Tormod Fjeld have found. Since making petroglyph searching their collective interest, in 2016, the three lovers have reworked information about prehistoric artwork in Norway, greater than doubling the variety of carvings recognized of their house area. And though they’re motivated, partially, by the pleasures of friendship and the outside, their findings have additionally lent severe weight to theories in regards to the mysterious petroglyphs’ that means.
Rock carvings from the Bronze Age (which in Scandinavia started round 2,000 B.C.) are widespread in elements of Sweden and Norway. Areas in each nations have been declared UNESCO heritage websites due to the density and the range of the pictures, which embrace human figures, animals, geometric shapes and, continuously, ships. But as a result of they’re generally minimize into granite that’s low to the bottom and simply obscured by leaves or snow, they usually go unnoticed.
Petroglyphs are additionally simpler to see when the solar will not be overhead — a realization that has been one of many keys to the three buddies’ success. As a result of the hunt for them is a interest somewhat than a profession — Tangen is an archaeologist working in a distinct discipline, Fjeld a graphic designer, and Klavestad a panorama architect and artist — they find time for it at evening.
“This isn’t an 8 to 4 job,” stated Tangen. “It needs to be a ardour.”
The joys of the hunt has naturally led them to invest on the carvings’ that means. As a result of the petroglyphs are typically extra seen within the slanted rays of nightfall, or with angled synthetic lights, Tangen stated he believed that their creators had made deliberate use of shadow and light-weight of their work. Because of the solar’s altering angle, Petroglyphs can look totally different relying on the hour of the day, or season, he defined. “I believe the pictures should do with the awakening of individuals’s minds to time,” he stated.
That’s in step with findings from skilled archaeologists about rock artwork and stone monuments, in locations like British Columbia and Scotland, whose options are seen solely at sure occasions of 12 months. There may be additionally proof for an additional one in every of Tangen’s theories: that among the pictures had been meant to be seen in flickering mild, in order that they appeared virtually animated.
Kristin Armstrong-Oma, a professor of archaeology on the College of Stavanger, stated that “in excavations round some carvings, archaeologists have discovered indicators of burning or charcoal.” That prompt fireplace was getting used, virtually like a film digicam. “The residing flames give the carvings a sense of motion,” she stated.
The petroglyph-hunting trio obtained their begin in 2016, when Fjeld, the graphic designer, was strolling his canine within the countryside and located an odd mark in a rock. He questioned if it was made by people, or nature. Making an attempt to determine it on-line, he got here throughout a web site with images of petroglyphs, and contacted its proprietor, Tangen, who prompt Fjeld’s discover might be a Bronze Age cup mark — a easy, spherical carving that may be a widespread motif in prehistoric artwork.
His curiosity piqued, Fjeld began paying higher consideration on his walks, and shortly discovered a carving that was unmistakably made by human palms: a picture of a ship.
“That was very, very enjoyable,” Fjeld stated. “So I began going frequently.”
Tangen, who had made comparable discoveries whereas strolling his personal canine, joined him, and earlier than lengthy prompt that they invite Klavestad, an area fanatic who had discovered his first carving when he was 10.
“We didn’t know one another, however I hadn’t met anybody else with a lot ardour for it,” stated Klavestad. “We’re, all three, very devoted.”
Since then, the three have gone out roughly one evening every week, and it’s common for them to return house at two or three within the morning.
“Sure, our households assume we’re loopy,” stated Fjeld.
As a result of a lot Bronze Age rock artwork was made close to the ocean, the trio start by consulting topographical maps to see the place the ocean degree, which was increased within the Bronze Age, would have been 3,000 years in the past. Aerial images has additionally helped them determine areas with the low granite outcroppings that Bronze Age artists seem to have favored.
Norwegian conservation legal guidelines prohibit the petroglyph hunters from digging, in order that they work solely with probably the most rudimentary instruments: flashlights and brooms. “It’s vital that we aren’t one, however three,” stated Klavestad. “That means one can maintain the sunshine, one can sweep and one can look. You uncover extra that means than if you’re alone.”
Though archaeologists have lengthy maintained that the carvings are primarily mythological or ritualistic, that notion is altering. “All of the myths we create, all of the symbols we make are at all times rooted in one thing actual; they symbolize fragments of the previous,” stated Armstrong-Oma, the archaeology professor. “These are extraordinary as a result of they permit us to see the world the best way that Bronze Age individuals noticed it.”
Along with carvings of people, animals and ships, Fjeld, Klavestad and Tangen have discovered a number of panels with pairs of life-size footprints. Jan Magne Gjerde, senior researcher on the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Analysis, stated the footprints had been “linked to a loss of life ritual that symbolizes strolling your ultimate stroll.” However, he added: “That’s simply an interpretation.”
The fellows desire to interpret them as an indication that their Bronze Age ancestors trod the identical floor. “It simply offers you the concept possibly they came to visit the ridge and had been simply wanting on the sundown,” stated Tangen. “After we discovered this it was like, ‘Sure, they’ve been right here!’”
Every time the boys uncover a brand new carving — final 12 months, they discovered round 80 — they {photograph} it and report it to Norway’s cultural heritage workplace. It’s then the job of Jone Kile-Vesik, an archaeologist, to confirm the discover. (“It’s normally fairly simple to inform if they’re actual or not,” Kile-Vesik stated. “As a result of they’d have been made with stone instruments, which give a softer minimize than metallic ones.”)
If the panel seems to be genuine, Kile-Vesik then registers it right into a nationwide database for cultural preservation. Though there had been a couple of “variations of opinion,” she stated, many of the three males’s discoveries have been validated, they usually have put Ostfold on the map as a big locus for Bronze Age tradition.
Fjeld, Klavestad and Tangen all stated they had been happy to play a task in preserving their area’s heritage. However they had been additionally simply in it for the enjoyable of hanging out collectively in nature. At one level on that December evening, they reached a very massive rock outcropping and swept apart the shortly accumulating snow to disclose an earlier discovery: a spectacular carving of human figures with outstretched arms above a ship.
“We name it the ghost carving,” Tangen defined as Klavestad poured from a thermos of mulled wine. “As a result of it looks like they’re hovering or dancing over the ship.” He warmed his palms on the cup.
“I like you can be driving by way of the panorama and have this map in your thoughts,” he stated: “a gallery of all of the ships and footprints and other people dancing. It offers you a lot pleasure.”
