Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• An in-depth study of Bronze Age stone art footprints offers up a deeper meaning than just decoration.
• The carvings typically appear alone or in mismatched pairs whose differences in size and design indicate that each print belonged to a separate individual, possibly added at different times.
• Pairing footprints in stone served as a ritualized way of forging a lasting bond between two people, such as a friendship, agreement, or marriage.

Footprints carved into the bedrock of southern Scandinavia during the Bronze Age harbor deep meanings, something far beyond artistic flair. The thousands of examples found peppered across Sweden, Denmark, and Norway highlight a Nordic Bronze Age tradition that ran from 1700 to 500 B.C.E., one likely intimately connected to distinct living people and the water flowing across the rock where the carving took place.

The footprint-shaped rock carvings known as podomorphs commonly appear on bedrock throughout the region, but their locations aren’t random. Neither are their meanings, according to a study published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology by Fredrik Fahlander of Stockholm University.

The study took a bottom-up approach, focusing on how the footprint carvings are organized and articulated on the rock rather than on what they might symbolize. Nordic Bronze Age rock art includes six main motifs, of which the simple cup mark is by far the most common, accounting for over 90 percent of all registered carvings. Among the remaining figurative motifs, podomorphs stand out for their careful rendering. Fahlander noted that many include pecked cross-straps and other fine details designed to mimic the impression a real foot or shoe would leave in a yielding surface such as sand, clay, or snow, suggesting the carvers intended each one to emulate an actual, specific footprint.

And each one is unique. “Bronze Age podomorphs in general are linked to specific individuals,” Fahlander wrote. The carvings were deliberately placed in relation to water and on key features of the rock, such as mineral veins or natural depressions that would fill with rainwater or wave splash. Most of the carvings were placed so water would flow over them—the interaction between stone and water was a deliberate part of their design. When etched into the colorful minerals, the prints were easier to see against surrounding stone. Fahlander believes the water was meant to activate the art.

“The concept of footprints could most likely be employed for more than one purpose in Bronze Age ontology, but the care and energy invested in this practice show the importance of materializing personal prints in stone,” Fahlander wrote. “In contrast to the temporary nature of tracks, shadows, and reflections, podomorphs were pecked in stone to persist.”

Most podomorphs appear either alone or in asymmetric pairs. When two prints sit together, they nearly always differ in size, shape, and level of detail, and many show evidence of having been carved in stages, with a second footprint added to an existing one at a later date. Fahlander interprets these differences as signs that each print belonged to a separate individual, possibly of different age or sex. He suggests the practice amounted to a bonding ritual: two people each contributed a footprint to the rock, creating a permanent physical record of a friendship, pact, or marriage.

“One interesting aspect of the Bronze Age podomorphs is that, in contrast to the animal tracks of the Neolithic rock art tradition of northern Fennoscandia, podomorphs only rarely seem to indicate movement,” Fahlander wrote.

Another unique aspect of the footprints is that unlike ships, animals, and other common Bronze Age designs, the footprints never show up on bronze objects or in burial monuments, only water-exposed bedrock. That lends more credibility to the conclusion that the prints served a personal and relational purpose. Fahlander believes this practice may be related to Siberian and Icelandic traditions in which a footprint is an extension of the living person. These footprints in stone weren’t memorials of death, but something powerful for the living.