One for the vikings! - Lake Kanozero petroglyphs

[sandbender]

From the excellent bldgblog blog.

"...Last winter, Past Horizons Archaeology ran some remarkable photos from a site in NW Russia, close to the border with Norway, where more than a thousands petroglyphs have been discovered carved into the horizontal surface of the local bedrock.

Most of the site had been buried under 5,000 years' worth of mud, soil, and plant roots, and was only recently cleared by Jan Magne Gjerde, who otherwise works as a project manager at Norway's Tromsø University Museum.

Interestingly..."Boats represent one of the most popular motifs in the rock art of Kanozero; they form 16% of all figures,"..."

[Image: Boat glyphs from Lake Kanozero, courtesy of Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia].

More here...

http://bldgblog.blogspot.hu/2013/02/librarian-of-rocks.html

 

[wicca]

That's interesting Sandbender. Most of them show an animal figurehead of some kind on the stem post 'Viking' fashion, but many of them also show a kind of Ram Bow not unlike Greek, Roman and other Mediterranean vessels of the time. I know Med vessels also had figureheads too, but I wonder if they depict vessels the Vikings saw on their voyages? Look above the word 'courtesy' in the line of print. The big vessel second line up..Looks like something off the River Nile with that big steering oar aft.

 

[boatman]

Almost the standard boat images from there and Scandinavia. Lot of controversy how they were built. Skin used to be favourite guess for the hull material but it is difficult to work out how the sticking out bits could be there while keeping the hull watertight. All skin boats we know of have an unpierced hull. Alternatively they could be of planks, maybe with a "keel" of a hollowed tree trunk projecting forward.

Of course the images might just be based on those of a swimming elk with fanciful additions.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...oBA&sqi=2&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=elk&f=false