View of Norrforsen's landscape
Postcard showing the rapids of Norrforsen, c. 1920

Norrforsen are rapids in the Ume River in Sweden, between the villages of Norrfors and Sörfors 15 kilometers west of Umeå.[1] The rapids are located downriver from the dam of the hydroelectric power station at Stornorrfors.

At Truthällorna, an island that is underwater when the upriver dam gates are opened, are a number of ancient rock carvings. The petroglyphs are believed to have been carved by hunter-gatherer people between 3,000-2,000 BCE.[2][3] The carvings were discovered in 1984 by a group of archaeology students from Umeå University.[4]

The people made these carvings likely survived the winter in part by hunting moose (sv. älgar, also translated as elk).[4] The majority of the carvings depict moose along with images of boats, a human figure, and unidentified fragment carvings.[5] Note that these are petroglyphs (carvings) and not rock paintings; it is common to paint petroglyphs red in Scandinavia, to make them more visible.[6]

References

  1. ↑ "Sverigeplats.se - Norrforsen". Retrieved 29 August 2015.
  2. ↑ "Umeå, Norrfors". Europreart.net. Retrieved 2023-04-10.
  3. ↑ Lars-Erik Edlund (1995). Tore Frängsmyr (ed.). Norrländsk uppslagsbok: ett uppslagsverk på vetenskaplig grund om den norrländska regionen. [Lapp-Reens]. "Band 3". Umeå: Norrlands universitetsförlag. p. 249. ISBN 91-972484-1-X.
  4. 1 2 "Umeås historia – forntid". umea.se. 2023-01-30. Retrieved 2023-04-12.
  5. ↑ "L1938:7601 Hällristning". Riksantikvarieämbetet. 2018-11-21.
  6. ↑ "Att måla runstenar (To Paint Runestones)" (in Swedish). Riksantikvarieämbetet. 2014-10-14. Retrieved 2023-04-12.

63°52′45″N 20°01′30″E / 63.8792°N 20.0250°E / 63.8792; 20.0250

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