Maarten van Hoek The Geography of Cup-and-Ring ... - StoneWatch

on the same panel as the boat figure. The major questions are now: are
these two motifs contemporary and, if present on one panel, are they
related ? Also important is the question: is the combination of boats
and cup-and-rings a feature of every rock art region of Scandinavia ?
To begin with the last question, it is surprising to note that in Norway
only very few combinations of boat engravings
with cup-and-rings are known. Only in the
Hordaland Region, the area with the densest
clustering of cup-and-ring sites on the west
coast of Norway, three such sites have been
recorded. There is a group at Bakke (Fig. 102
and Fig. 145) and a much eroded site at Os
(Mandt Larsen 1972). Another boat touching a
fine cup-and-eight-rings was once reported
from Flote (Mandt Larsen 1972: PL. 11).
FIG. 145: BAKKE.
Unfortunately both the boat and the multiple
rings (Fig. 147.A) had weathered off almost completely by 1999.
Although the example at Flote indeed touches the cup-and-ring, none of
the examples in Hordaland clearly expresses a desire to create a
premeditated combination between the non-figurative cup-and-ring and
the iconic petroglyph.
The situation in Sweden (including the neighbouring Østfold region of
Norway) is strikingly different. First of all, the boat-cup-and-ring
combination occurs rather frequent,
especially in Bohuslän and Østfold
(Fig. 117), but also further inland.
Scattered all over this area, many
cup-and-rings occur in combination
with boat engravings, for instance
at Flyhov on Lake Vänern (Fig. 94),
at the island of Tjörn (Fig. 146), at
Rosenborg, Värmland, Sweden
(Hasselroth & Ohlmarks 1966: 133),
but also at Sarpsborg in the Østfold
region of Norway (Marstrander
1946: Fig. 6), true cup-and-rings are
FIG. 146: TJÖRN-JÖRLOV.
found on the same panel as a boat carving. This brings me back to the
question of contemporaneity. It is certain that the boat engravings
belong to the Nordic Bronze Age. But this does not imply that the cupand-rings
also are Bronze Age ! In most cases the boats seem to have
been added later, being well separated from the circular motifs and
occurring in a random position. Therefore, most of these combinations
of boats and cup-and-rings do not express intent and may well be
chronologically distinct. Therefore I think that quite a number of the
M. van HOEK: 183
GEOGRAPHY