Tanumshede, the central town, is located about halfway on the main road between Gothenburg and Oslo. Once you've left the highway, the site gets the same low-key flavour as its Finnish Bronze Age counterpart Sammalahdenmäki. I started my visit here at Vitlycke, which has a small 'museum', a shop and a cafe. Entrance is free and there are handy maps on offer to get a feel for the whole area. The story told at the exhibition is simple: about 3000 years ago this area was located at the seashore, because the sea level was about 25 meters higher then than now. The local people cut carvings into the rocks of items symbolic of their daily life and beliefs.

The first taste of the real carvings is to be had across the road, at the Vitlycke panel. The carvings have been painted red to make them stand out - I'm a bit ambivalent about that: on the plus side their forms are clearer to see and thus better appreciated, on the minus side the red colour tends to dominate the image that stays on in your mind.

From Vitlycke I drove to Aspeberget. It's only a couple of minutes away. Uphill is a large panel with a lot going on: strong bulls, hunters, a number of sun representations, and numerous ships. The best panel of them all, I think.

On the other side of the road, a bit more inland lies Litsleby. This is the site of the great Odin figure.

Finally, I went to the other side of town to the panels of Fossum. These were the least interesting ones, but there are some cute little dogs depicted.

Allow about one hour for Vitlycke and half an hour each for the other main areas that are open to visitors. These all have explanatory boards to point at what you're looking at. It can be slippery here on the rocks. The other sites are also less visited than the main site at Vitlycke. One or two sites are currently covered up to recover from erosion and pollution.

This was my first visit to a significant 'Rock Art' site. There are no less than 20 of those on the list, mainly of the petroglyph variety (carvings instead of paintings). I really wanted to know how this site compares to the others. Does it belong to the top 5? Is Tanum the biggest / most numerous / most artistic? But I haven't been able to find this kind of 'ranking' among rock art. The art essentially is viewed as reflecting local life, so it can only be compared regionally (or sometimes by age). So I guess the list of inscribed rock art sites will grow and grow ...