Swedish Rock Art

     The Tanum World Heritage area covers 45 square km. It has more than 450 rock carvings with tens of thousands of pictures and figures. Most of them are from the Bronze Age, 1800 - 500 BC. Since then the tradition to carve pictures in rocks has more or less disappeared. Tip: Please point to the FDC with the mouse index for more information.

      They are especially numerous and monumental around Tanum. This was one of the reasons why UNESCO 1994 included Tanum on the list of indispensable cultural remains. Another reason was that the landscape, apart from rock carvings, also has a large number of other monuments from throughout the 11,000 years of so people have lived in Tanum. The number of known carvings grows continually and each year new ones are found. Mostly they show vessels, people and animals. The researchers agree that the carvings have a religious and ritual significance

      Stamp originals and engravings: Martin Mörck, after photographs taken by Lasse Bengtssson and Torsten Högberg. Print: recess, Sweden Post Stamps, Kista , Stockholm. FDC-illustration and cancellation by Martin Mörck, photo: Thorsten Högberg, graphic design: Eva Lena Johansson. Issues on 31th January 2001. Format: 22.05 x 24.00 mm.
     Please note that these stamps have no value indicators (NVI stamps), which doesn't mean that they will stay valid the same time as the carvings lasted.

      Source: FDC inlet, Sweden Post Stamp 2001, Bulletin 1, 1/31/2001.
      Background: Masked negroid woman. The period of round-headed men. Probably later as the early Neolithic. Sefar, Eastern Tassili Mountains, Middle Sahara, Algeria.