Bohuslän is quite a unique landscape in Sweden. Similar-ish landscapes can be seen on parts of the Baltic Coast, but Bohuslän in unusual in Sweden for facing, touching against an area of sea, namely the Kattegat, which has around average salinity levels. Whereas the Baltic coast of Sweden has much lower salinity levels. So essentially, the sea-life in Bohuslän resembles more that of western Norway or Scotland, whilst that of say the Stockholm archipelago resembles more that of a freshwater lake. 

The coastline of Bohuslän is complex and intersected by many fjords, although these fjords, whilst often referred to as fjord in Bohuslänska, are more akin to fjärds known elsewhere in Sweden, i.e. they are not deep river valleys supposedly gouged out by ice, but instead supposedly result from the ice moving over flatter landscapes, removing sediment and gouging out areas of shallow pools, lagoons, leaving many islands, before the landscape became flooded. Similar “fjärdic” landscapes can be found in other parts of Sweden, parts of Western Norway, and for example on the Uists in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, Lochmaddy, Loch nam Madadh, being a good example on the island of North Uist. A good example from the Scottish Mainland is Loch Laxford in West Sutherland. 

Bohuslän contains within it a fair number of known prehistoric sites, including many examples of petroglyphs. There are a number of dolmens in the area, such as that at Hagadösen and the Rixö dolmen.. There are stone circles, such as Hoga Domarringar stone circle.

The petroglyphs of this area frequently depict Bronze Age pre-Norse ships. People are sometimes depicted with the ships, as are tall, giant stallo-type figures. Perhaps these stallo-like figures are in some ways linked to the local mythology about giants. The Backa Brastad Hällristningar petroglyph site for seems to depict, among many things, two men in a pre-Norse ship, with a giant man positioned behind them. The nearby Brastad 18:1 site similarly depicts, among other things, a Bronze Age boat, with both a man and what appears to be a giant in the boat. There are other examples I have discussed elsewhere, some of which show the giants as being much larger than in the aforementioned examples, and sometimes they also have horns. I have discussed other sites in Bohuslän elsewhere too. Often “celestial wheels” are depicted in these petroglyphs. Sometimes they may indeed be representing the sun, but as I have discussed elsewhere in detail, I think they are sometimes depicting something more like an “Ophan”, i.e. one of the Ophanim from Biblical tradition. 

The ships in the rock art also converge with, and are often hard to tell apart from, images of worm or serpent-type beings with horns, legends of which are found in many parts of Sweden. The beings may also have a relationship to the Njuggle of Shetland tradition and to similar water-horse type beings, and it seems to me, that in the pre-Viking age and later, ships were carved to be like these worm-horse-dragon entities (which I have discussed other aspects of in a lot of detail elsewhere, including their connection to Finns) - because both the worm-horse-dragons and the ships were seen as transcenders of this world, i.e. like the ancient Egyptians and others, the ships were seen as being able to transcend the boundaries of this reality, and were thus linked to the most ancient gods connected to the sea, and their different forms. 

This appears to be what is depicted in the Bronze Age petroglyphs too, in my opinion. The depiction regarding the giants upon these boats might be something along the lines of “the giants, gods, or stallo are guiding people’s souls on a shamanic journey to the underworld, upon the ship or worm-horse-dragon.” The animals depicted in the petroglyphs can also in a sense be seen as spirit animals connected to this world and to the otherworld, whilst the celestial wheels depicted I think represent Ophanim, but also in a sense, the sun, and time, but fundamentally it may be that they are guiding the shamanic journey, perhaps north, to the underworld, and also represent the alterations of time and space that occur on the shamanic journey.
However, in certain examples of these petroglyphs one could also make a physical interpretation that the giants are sometimes inslaving the ordinary sized people in some way, and that perhaps these images in part represent these “giants” taking people as slaves, which, at least to some degree, aligns with the traditions about stallo and other northwestern European traditions regarding giants, which is not to say by any means that all “giants” in western European mythology, nor that they are to be perceived as all negative, on the contrary there are a lot of reasons to suggest otherwise.
And furthermore, I would argue that the possible depictions of giants “taking people across the sea on a shamanic journey” does not inherently imply negativity, it could just, again, be that the giant is guiding these people and that they go there for some higher purpose on these journeys. 

Some of the petroglyphs, like those at Kallsängen, seem to depict bird-headed humanoids, interestingly, at least some of which also appear to have wings. Many of these giant, or bird-headed humanoids are also depicted with a phallus, and, this almost reminds me of this concept in Biblical tradition regarding “angels choosing the daughters of men as wives”. Again, if one adds this to the concept of slave-taking, then it does align with stallo-mythology, and also to my comments in other publications about how the slave-taking Vikings may have been an extension of stallo, berserker-culture, with the stallo often being depicted like berserkers. This does not again mean that these Bronze Age depictions implied anything non-consensual, but that this would have occurred at some point as the original knowledge was corrupted, seems fairly obvious, especially given how this may have been accidentally attributed to the Vikings rather than a specific inner berserker, stallo culture; how the Bible describes Nephilim, how giants are often described elsewhere; how these pre-Norse petroglyphs often depict horned or clown-like, nephilim-like giant beings etc. I do not believe any of these are evil or negative, merely that at some point the knowledge became corrupted. I would argue that a non-corrupted version of this concept exists as the heyoka in Sioux traditions. Early European depictions of some indigenous American peoples in the eastern USA, especially near where the moundbuilders and their “giants” and culture are located, also depict the people in those areas as being very tall, pale, with body paint making them appear very heyoka-like. The way that the giants of Lovelock Cave in Nevada were described, in terms of their clothing, is also somewhat heyoka or clown-like. Due to the association between the heyokas in Sioux culture and the thunderbird deities, could the bird-like humanoids depicted in some of the Bohuslän petroglyphs be depicting something akin to a thunderbird rather than to an angel, or are these themselves both connected? The Seraphim angels, and perhaps the Cherubim and Ophanim too are all kind of cthulhonic but also bird-like. This perhaps also harks back to the idea that giants in European mythology are frequently associated with thunder and lightning, and also, Cumbria in England for example, with its many legends and reputed finds of ancient giants, also has bird-head-shaped boulders called “thunderstones” or “thunnerstians” in local dialect. Also for example the bird-head carving at Heysham. I have discussed much else on this in other publications, and also will be discussed more in the future - including in my upcoming Silly Linguistics publication about Mator and some more Siberian languages. 

Whilst looking at Bohuslänska recently, I learned that the Swedish word stolle means a “crazy person”. This is the Swedish and not the Bohuslänska word, but nevertheless, I have noticed here that stolle is very much like the word stallo, or in Northern Sámi stálu. I have previously discussed the etymology of this word in other publications, but, Swedish stolle is an interesting thing to add as a possible cognate, especially as the stallos were considered probably as crazy by the Sámi people. The fact that Bohuslän has its own equivalent of this word, which in Bohuslänska is fomme, is also interesting, given the local petroglyph depictions of stallo-type beings. I have no suggestions on the possible etymology of this word, other than that it bares a similarity to English “foam”, Dorset dialect “fob” etc, so if there is any connection here, it may hark back to that the stallo-like beings are in Bohuslän (but not in the northern Scandinavian mountain, as I have discussed elsewhere), - may be connected to the sea and to boats. Note also that lomme in Bohuslänska means “pocket”. Note I discuss other aspects to the clowns and giants, and stallo, in other publications, with different aspects to this discussed in my books and in other articles, e.g. article number 66 on this website, and to a lesser degree aspects of these topics are discussed in article 65 on this website, and in many others to different degrees. 

In other publications I have discussed more details on the Bohuslänska dialect, but I will note here with different examples that there is a lot of variation across the different dialects of Bohuslänska, and also between those on the coast and inland For example, Swedish jag är, det är, jag har varit, meaning “I am, it is, I have been”, would be jä ä, de ä, jä har vört at Klädesholmen Tjörn in Bohuslän, whereas in Strömstad, these particular forms would be:

jaj e, de e, jaj har vort. On Hallevadsholm and Hedekastraken the forms would be: jä/jäj ä, dä ä, jäj har vört. These examples were kindly provided to me by local people of Bohuslän. 

I hope this article was an interesting read. It was written for my family. For reference purposes, the web address of this article in front of you, the web address you are on, is: https://www.bookofdunbarra.co.uk/website-articles-78-96/80-more-on-language-in-bohuslaen-ancient-bohuslaen-and-interconnected-topics-20-10-2025 .