By Trond Lødøen - Associate Professor
Department of Cultural History - University of Bergen

It is now over 100 years since one of the most significant cultural monuments in Western Norway was first made public. In the journal Oldtiden in 1912 one could read an article with the title; "Five rock carvings at the farm Vingen, Outer Nordfjord". The article was authored by superior court prosecutor Kristian Bing from Bergen, who had come across the petroglyphs a couple of years earlier.

Bing had stayed in Bremanger, in the far north of Sogn og Fjordane to climb the east wall of the Hornelen mountain massif, when he heard about the new discoveries in the area. The climber was also a keen amateur archaeologist who immediately took an interest in the information. Shortly after, he was well received by owner Thue Gullaksen Vingen, who showed a series of animal figures carved into rocky outcrops and solid rocks around a small arm of the fjord just east of Hornelen. Bing could establish that they were prehistoric rock carvings, and was overwhelmed by the images. This inspired the owner, who then announced a number of new discoveries, both lying exposed and revealed under moss and heather.

It is part of the story that Bing also had other interests and immediately saw the potential in the powerful waterfall that rushed down the mountain side and bought the whole farm from Thue Gullaksen Vingen a few years later. He sold the waterfall rights on to other parties at a profit, before they ended up as part of Elkem's industrial base. A couple of parcels were kept, while the mountains with petroglyphs were largely sold on to the Bergen Museum. The conclusion is that today it is the University of Bergen that is both the owner and manager of the cultural monuments in Vingen. The latter task is also a collaboration with the culture department at Sogn og Fjordane county municipality, all delegated to us by the National Archives.

For Thue Gullaksen Vingen and the local inhabitants, the images had been known of for a long time when Bing visited Vingen, probably already from around 1884, but the information about the carvings was to a small or only modest extent spread on to others. The article by Bing therefore marked a clear turning point for the site and led to a great deal of interest. Already in the same year, representatives from Bergen's Museum were in place and they immediately set about planning how the rock carvings - now numbering many hundreds of figures - could be documented.

The very first documentation was carried out by Jan Petersen and the museum's curator Olav Espevoll. Haakon Shetelig, who was the director of Bergens Museum, visited the site the following year together with Petersen and realized the great potential in Vingen. He immediately engaged the Swedish archaeologist Gustaf Hallström to carry out a scientific examination of the carvings. Shetelig believed that Hallström was best suited for this task because of his many years of work with documentation of carvings in Sweden, including the large site Nämforsen in Ångermanland which he published as early as 1907. In the same year - in 1913 - Hallström was on site in Vingen, and assisted by Espevoll, documented around 600-700 figures. Not only was he a skilled archaeologist, he was also a very skilled photographer who has given us unique insight into the character of the area as it looked at the beginning of the century, when there were, among other things, many permanent residents in Vingen. It still took a long time for Hallström to complete the documentation in Vingen and get it published.

At the beginning of the 1920s, it seems that Shetelig must have grown tired of waiting for Hallström to publish his findings - and simply became uneasy that his documentation would not be completed. At the same time, another awareness had grown among Norwegian archaeologists, that the publication of original material in this country should be reserved for Norwegian researchers. These were factors which probably led to Shetelig now giving Johs Bøe, who was already employed at Bergens Museum, the task of publishing all the western Norwegian petroglyphs. Bøe carried out field documentation during the summers of 1925 and 1927, also assisted by Espevoll, and published over 800 figures in his 'Felszeichnungen im Westlichen Norwegen', as part of Bergens Museums Skrifter in 1932. Hallström, for his part, had continued his monumental work on the rock art of the Trapstone Age in Scandinavia with field stays at virtually all known fields with rock engravings in this country, and where he also tried to see similarities between individual fields, analyze style types, see connections and draw conclusions.

The scope had become quite large and the publication was constantly postponed. It was useful for him that Bøe's publication became available, before he could in 1938 publish his own work on Vingen, and as many as 38 other localities under the title 'Monumental art of Northern Europe: The Norwegian Localities'. Barely two years after Hallström's documentation and interpretation was published, the married couple Eva and Per Fett were in the same area to examine some petroglyphs which it seems that neither Bøe nor Hallström had time to examine at the neighboring farm of Vingelven. These are often included in what can be referred to as the Vingen area, obviously part of the same tradition as the other carvings in the area, and are therefore natural to include here. Their work was published in the Bergen Museum's yearbook in 1941 as 'New carvings in Nordfjord: Vingelva and Fura'.

After this publication, the Vingen area entered its quietest period with regard to documentation and publicity before major new discoveries were made in the area 20 years later, at the beginning of the 1960s. Now it was Egil Bakka who set about securing new supplies. Bakka brought a number of students with him, from both Bergen and Oslo, and was also often assisted by a local helper - Helga Vingelven - from the neighboring farm. In addition, he had invaluable help from Peder Vingen - second youngest son of Thue - who lived in Vingen for large parts of the year and who had a detailed overview of a large number of pictures. Throughout the 1960s, new figures were steadily being found, which meant that Bakka's plans to publish the new collection were constantly being postponed. He also never quite finished this work due to illness and an all-too-early death. However, several important articles that partly incorporated the information from Vingen were published by Bakka in the 1970s, including 'About the age of the rock carvings' published in Viking in 1973, and 'On Shoreline dating of Artic Rock Carvings in Vingen, Western Norway' in the Norwegian Archaeological Review in 1979. Bakka left behind extensive documentation material, with photos, chalkings and casts, as well as a number of well-written diaries which included more than 700 new figures.

Over the 1970s, interest in Vingen increased among the public. At the same time, pressure from the tourism industry for better accessibility increased. This led to the construction of footpaths between the largest threshing fields, the creation of brochures and the installation of information signs. In connection with this first, several of the carvings were painted because they could be difficult to see for an untrained eye. Parallel to this, one really began to realize that rock art was in the process of weathering away. Now a different type of documentation was put on the agenda – namely mapping of the damage and studies of the condition of the rock art. Hallström and Bøe had already pointed out in the early 20th century that the carvings in Vingen were very comprehensive. Bakka's diaries from the 1960s and early 1970s also confirm the carvings' poor state of preservation. From the mid-1960s onwards, the carvings were also exposed to several cases of ugly vandalism. A number of fields were soiled with marker scribbles and paint, in addition to many figures being damaged with deep and unsightly scratches. The mapping in the 1970s concluded that the condition of the carvings in Vingen was particularly critical and that it was urgent to find countermeasures. This situation, as well as information about many other fields that were in a critical state, led to active research being launched to find the best safeguard and the most suitable conservation methods. The awakening recognition of a large extent of damage also actualized the need for more comprehensive protection than the Cultural Heritage Act was able to fulfill at the end of the 1970s. This led to Vingen being established as a Landscape Conservation Area, however this still did not prevent the locality from being exposed to new cases of vandalism.

The researchers who visited Vingen both in the 1980s and the 90s found that many fields of carvings were heavily smeared with paint and a number of individual figures were vandalized by lines and what could appear to be attempts to scratch away the figures in their entirety. Partly prompted by this as well as the critical state of silence in many fields around the country, the National Archives was able to present a nationwide registration in which it emerged that more than 90 per cent of the country's rock art sites had varying degrees of damage. This documentation around the mid-1990s later led to the Bergkunst project.

During the National Antiquities National Rock Art Project between 1996 and 2005, a new focus was placed on Vingen, where a number of research approaches were carried out to find out what led to the breakdown of the rock and the destruction of the images. During the project, a great deal of work was done to document climate and vegetation development, as well as chemical and biological degradation processes. All previous documentation material also had to be reviewed and compared with the conditions in the terrain. This resulted in intense and long-term searching in the area to rediscover the fields and figures that Hallström, Bøe and Bakka had documented, but which over the years had been covered by thick layers of lichen, overgrown with peat or which were only fragmentarily preserved. Although the three pioneers in Vingen were very careful with the actual documentation of the rock images, it was not always so easy to find out from their location descriptions. Of course, many factors come into play here, among other things, overgrowth of the area must take its share of the blame. Another factor is that the carvings are often found on small and inconspicuous stones for which it is difficult to give a good location in the stone and block-rich Vingen landscape. Searches for the figures that Bøe, Hallström and Bakka had documented led to a further 600-700 figures, so that the scope today is around 2300 figures. But we know for sure that the number will rise in the coming years.

During the years of the rock art project and later in the 2000s, a number of archaeological excavations were also carried out, which have given us valuable additional information about the use of the area in prehistoric times. This makes us even better able to understand what all the images in the rock might have meant. During the years with the rock art project, it was also realized that neither the creation of the Vingen Landscape Conservation Area, the conservation provisions in the legislation nor extensive facilitation and information measures prevented damage to the carvings, which was largely caused by uncontrolled traffic. This meant that in 2001, a permanent conservation of the carving area was introduced with a general ban on traffic and disembarkation, but where today a dispensation is granted for organized groups with authorized guides, as well as researchers and administrative personnel. By 2012 this is roughly the history of Vingen summarized. In order to give others an insight into what the place represents, Gro Mandt and the undersigned, both archaeologists at the University of Bergen, have a goal of publishing at least part of our knowledge about Vingen during 2012. We have worked for a long time with this site and have something we would modestly call a unique insight into the history, mystery and character of the place, and which we want to convey further - and confirm the status of this cultural monument.

Our contribution is intended to secure Vingen's knowledge potential for future generations, and perhaps contribute to a renewed focus for cultural heritage. Here, the formidable work carried out by Egil Bakka in the 1960s will also be highlighted. The publication in Oldtiden was the prelude to continuous documentation work that has lasted for 100 years, and which we know will continue for years to come. For our part, it has also been useful to harvest the knowledge that has been handed down to us from people who have lived in the area here for a long time, primarily the Vingelven family. What kind of character our contribution will have, we do not want to reveal in detail before it sees the light of day, but the intentions are to collect all relevant research documentation from Vingen and make this available to other researchers and interested parties. We still have professional interests linked to the site, but have long since realized that the place is an inexhaustible source of knowledge about the prehistoric activities in the area. Many questions are still unanswered, but as we see it, it is high time to expose our knowledge to others. Precisely in this way, the professional debate about what Vingen represents can best continue.

The path towards a greater understanding and protection of the petroglyphs of Vingen has been long and tortuous, and the dedicated participants involved have gone to great lengths. But as Trond Lødøen, Associate Professor at the University of Bergen, makes abundantly clear, Vingen presents an inexhaustible source of knowledge concerning the prehistoric activities of this region, and where many questions are still unanswered. Why, therefore, would there be any doubt about securing the future of this irreplaceable prehistoric and sacred landscape?

The recent announcement that the rock art site of Vingen and its surrounding landscape is under threat from the Aksla quarry and Inste Bårdvikneset quay developments defies logic. Vingen is of World Heritage value and one of the largest and best ancient petroglyph sites in Europe, with its diversity and scale and in particular its surrounding natural landscape which is integral to Vingen’s context and one of the reasons the very ancestors of Norway marked the area with rock art thousands of years ago.

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