Violence, Warriors, and Rock Art in Bronze Age Scandinavia

Abstract

Violence and war-related social and ritual traits are common features in the Scandinavian rock art from the Bronze Age. Warriors in staged scenes with weapons in or adjacent to war canoes are a recurrent theme on rocks. The rock art appears at the same time as Scandinavian societies became engaged in long distance trade of metal. Local warriors would have increasingly played an important role in this metal trade. Elite household investment in the maritime forces of production , ships and warriors, was therefore a crucial feature for engagement in this kind of action. The ability to fund boat construction and crew ships provided a new control apparatus, for maritime ventures, based on ship ownership. This would have favored the rise of maritime polities in Scandinavia. In this chapter, we argue for the notion that the praxis of carving ships onto the stone could have served to manifest the agency of the maritime warriors.