A collection of casts in Sweden

In 2018 most of the surviving casts from the Ahnenerbe expeditions were donated to the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Archaeologists at the university had already attempted to use the casts to document the effects of environmental change on the in situ rock art, even travelling to Austria in the 1990s to study the casts at a local museum. Some of the casts were later 3D-scanned by Swedish authorities for more detailed studies of weathering effects (Legnér Reference Legnér, Larsen and Křížova2025).

The casts were transferred as it had become politically incorrect to display them in Austrian society, which had begun to settle the score with its Nazi past (Mandl Reference Mandl, Modl and Peitler2020), while Swedish archaeologists had reasons to preserve the casts and to get better access to them. When the rich rock art at Tanum in Bohuslän was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994, there were fears that many images were deteriorating quickly. With the new heritage status came an obligation to protect the rock art against dangers caused by increased precipitation, acid rain and infrastructural projects. Archaeologists hoped that the casts would prove useful in understanding the extent to which the images had been affected by weathering since the 1930s. Today, most of the casts are owned by the University of Gothenburg but deposited at Västergötlands Museum, while a few are kept at the National Historical Museums in Stockholm.

The casts present a vexing paradox: while the ambition had been to document early Aryan symbolism, it is not clear why it was necessary to spend considerable resources on making exact copies of Scandinavian rock art, nor why these copies had to be preserved for the future. Many prehistorians opposed the radical interpretation of the casts. Modern German scholarship has rightly criticised the pseudoscientific characteristics of nationalist archaeology in Germany and has stressed the lack of methodology and the tendency to invent evidence where none existed (Hunger Reference Hunger1984; Halle Reference Halle2002; Schlegelmilch Reference Schlegelmilch and Eickhoff2023). However, if one wanted to invent a glorious past, why spend valuable resources and time on making precise casts? Why was it so important to have authentic and to-scale reproductions? There were, in fact, several alternative methods of reproduction available that offered good results in less time and at a lower cost than plaster casting, including sketching, photography and the use of wet cardboard (Anati Reference Anati1977). If we can answer these questions, we should be able to achieve a deeper insight not only into the workings of the Ahnenerbe, but also of the ideological uses of archaeological knowledge in mid-war Germany and Scandinavia.

Scandinavian culture was held in high regard in Germany long before the Nazis came to power in 1933, and Scandinavians generally also held German scholarship in high regard. In Nazi Germany, people of the ‘North’ were looked upon as racially superior, having avoided mixing as much with other ethnicities as Germans had (Arnold Reference Arnold2006). Evidence for this alleged superiority was sought through multiple academic disciplines such as medicine, biology, linguistics, ethnology, anthropology and prehistory (Demoule Reference Demoule2023). Under the Nazi regime, prehistory was ascribed two main tasks: to demonstrate that European culture originated in Germany; and to counter general arguments about the barbaric nature of Germanic culture, proving that it had in fact been highly civilised (Halle Reference Halle2002: 66). As early as 1933, museums were already being used to stage travelling exhibitions in which German prehistory was explained in racial and territorial terms (Maner Reference Maner2018: 263).

Herman Wirth and the Ahnenerbe

In 1935, Herman Wirth (Figure 1), a Dutch-German scholar and co-founder of the Ahnenerbe alongside Heinrich Himmler (chief of police and the Schutz-Staffel, the ‘SS’, in Germany) and Richard Walther Darré (agricultural minister and Nazi ideologue), became preoccupied with historical and linguistic studies using ancient texts and symbols as sources. The Ahnenerbe had three goals: to study the ideas of the Indo-Germanic peoples; to present and bring these ideals to life; and to encourage Germans to take part in this particular use of the past (Kater 2006 [Reference Kater1974]: 37). German prehistorians, most prominently Gustav Kossinna, worked to produce evidence that the very roots of German culture were to be found in southern Scandinavia (Demoule Reference Demoule2023: 170). During the Second World War (1939–1945), the Ahnenerbe ransacked museums in eastern Europe and committed other serious crimes in pursuit of their goals, including lethal experimentation on prisoners (Schlegelmilch Reference Schlegelmilch and Eickhoff2023: 54).

Figure 1.

Herman Wirth filling in a rock art image in Bohuslän, Sweden, with chalk (courtesy of Vitlycke Museum).

The Ahnenerbe launched a series of expeditions to different parts of the world, with the first two (conducted in 1935 & 1936) destined for Sweden and, to a lesser degree, parts of Denmark and Norway. The primary aim was to copy Bronze Age rock art, which Himmler and Wirth believed to contain the language of an ancient Aryan civilisation. Himmler was obsessed with proving the racially superior origins of his people and believed that evidence of this was to be found along the coasts of Scandinavia, where emigrants from a Nordic Atlantis had once settled (Longerich Reference Longerich2009: 253–63). The existence of these people could still be sensed in the shape of the rich rock art they left behind, evidencing the first written language used by humans. The work of the Ahnenerbe and the ideas of Herman Wirth have been subject to many studies but, while his general theory has attracted scholarly interest, the casts themselves have not been analysed much (Hunger Reference Hunger1984; Wiwjorra Reference Wiwjorra and Danckwortt1995; Halle Reference Halle2002; Kater 2006 [Reference Kater1974]; Löw Reference Löw2016; Schlegelmilch Reference Schlegelmilch and Eickhoff2023). Consequently, not much is known about exactly what kind of support these casts would provide to German nation building of the 1930s, or why some motifs were selected for the casts while much of the other rock art was ignored.

Fantastical founding myths are prevalent throughout Europe, yet German society seems to have been particularly susceptible to nationalist founding myths in the early twentieth century. The Nazi regime did not entirely invent its mythology, but took advantage of already popular images of the past. Prehistoric research in the late nineteenth century was closely tied to the project of nation building and the claims of nations to culture and territory. The German nation was born out of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870–1871, but considerable parts of the German-speaking population continued to live in neighbouring territories, which supported the conviction that Germany had a right to expand its territory to include areas that historically had belonged to a ‘German’ cultural sphere. The catastrophic end of the First World War sent the nation into an existential crisis, feeding the already present racist fantasies of a paradise lost (Cornell et al. Reference Cornell2009: 40).

In the late nineteenth century, prehistoric research was used to bolster ideas of the ancient origins of the German nation. A racialised view of the historical and geographical origins of Indo-Europeans emerged and replaced the previous focus on linguistics with an obsession of ethnicity (Demoule Reference Demoule2023: 125). Especially in Germany, references to the Indo-Germanic race became popular, supporting the argument that such a race had originated in Scandinavia and northern Germany and further stressing the cultural and ethnic similarities between present-day Germans and Scandinavians. The prehistoric settlers of Scandinavia were increasingly identified on racial grounds and prehistoric findings were used to describe the culture of early Scandinavians and their racial characteristics (Wiwjorra Reference Wiwjorra and Danckwortt1995).

Herman Wirth was an ardent follower of the German völkisch movement, believing in the existence of a primeval Nordic race who had been forced to emigrate from a now-lost Atlantis to the Scandinavian region. His book Der Aufgang der Menschheit (The ascension of man) became an immediate success in Germany and made him a celebrity (Wirth Reference Wirth1928). In German academia, however, he was accused of conducting pseudoscience and relying more on belief than on knowledge (e.g. Hunger Reference Hunger1984: 192). Feeding on the popular notion that German culture had once been superior to any other culture but was rapidly declining in the modern age due to evil external influences, Wirth argued that society’s ultimate downfall could be delayed if people returned to an agricultural way of life while paying heed to ancestral Nordic traditions and true German values. To Wirth, these traditions and values were centred around an ancient fertility cult expressed in Nordic rock art of the Bronze Age (Wirth Reference Wirth1936a: 28). There was a continuity in the Scandinavian use of symbols dating to the Stone Age and lasting until the eighteenth century, when peasants finally stopped making runes. The most basic ideograms of human culture rested on a few primordial symbols found in rock art and the much younger runes. If correctly interpreted, Wirth believed that the messages left by these ancestors on rock outcrops, mostly found in western Sweden, would make it possible to understand and even reinstate the cult. This was the primeval religion of the Aryans, Ur-Monotheismus, in which there had been no priests and no church but only a cult of the soil and the sun (Wirth Reference Wirth1928: 9).

Between 1928 and 1936, Wirth’s work was reviewed, debated and criticised in hundreds of articles in the German press (Wiwjorra Reference Wiwjorra and Danckwortt1995: 102). In publications and public talks, he urged Germans to return to the soil, become farmers and revere his primordial religion. Rock art and the fascination of a distant past captivated those who believed Germanic heritage should be reclaimed to defend the nation against internal and external threats. At this time, Bohuslän was the most well-known area in Europe containing an abundance of rock art. The rocky landscape, with numerous flat granite outcrops, was ideal for carving images, and more than 1000 rocks decorated with some 40 000 images have been found (Ling Reference Ling2024: 57). The images are believed to have been created c. 1800–300 BC and include depictions of animals, humans, vessels and symbols.

The Ahnenerbe expeditions 1935–1936

The coming to power of the Nazi movement in Germany in 1933 opened up new vistas for Herman Wirth. His work was especially useful for Himmler, who was obsessed with the idea that knowledge of prehistoric times could help create a strong identity for his SS. Himmler was not so much interested in contributing to German nationalism in general but in making the SS into the guardian of Germanic heritage. Symbols, archaeological artefacts and sites were to be used to build the identity of this racial elite (Longerich Reference Longerich2009: 243). The authenticity of historical objects and sites was of central importance to Himmler’s view of the German past.

By visiting symbolically significant sites, such as the Externsteine in Horn-Bad Meinberg, it was possible to make spiritual contact with the ancestors, but this was not enough. It was also of the utmost importance to demonstrate tangible and authentic evidence that the origins of German culture were ancient and highly advanced. To this end, and to strengthen the patriotism of the Germans and the SS, Himmler was at times ready to manipulate the past (Halle Reference Halle2002: 63). Myths could be adjusted as necessary but there would still be a need for tangible evidence (sites and objects) that could stir emotions and put the German people in contact with their forefathers. For this contact to occur, new archaeological finds, objects and sites of cultic importance had to be found (Focke-Museum 2013: 47). These were not only props that would make Nazi mythology believable, they were also necessary for the staging of a neopagan cult introduced by Himmler’s SS (Longerich Reference Longerich2009: 240).

Together with Wirth and the ideologist Richard Walther Darré, Himmler founded the Ahnenerbe on 1 July 1935 (Kater 2006 [Reference Kater1974]: 37). Only three days after the founding of the organisation, Wirth was instructed to plan and conduct the first Ahnenerbe expedition. In his books, Wirth had already described the cult of the runes, but he hoped to uncover more details by copying some of the images and subjecting them to rigorous analysis in his studio. He also thought that copies of them should, in the future, be dispersed among German museums; if public exhibitions were created, they could spread Wirth’s thesis much more efficiently. He imagined a future in which much of the rock art was destroyed by quarrying, when Germany would then boast the most complete collection of rock-art casts in the world.

Swedish authorities were approached to give the necessary permits for making casts on rock art sites (Gustawson Reference Gustawson1935–1936) and, after having secured these permits, Wirth and his small team travelled through the southern and middle parts of Sweden by car in the late summer and early autumn of 1935. They had a busy schedule and managed to produce a total of 113 casts. A sculptor supervised the cast-making, acting as quality controller (Bohusläningen 1935). To create the casts, a wooden frame was constructed and fixed to the rock with clay. The rock was then brushed with a soapy liquid to enable the easy removal of the cast once it had hardened. Plaster was poured into the frame and reinforced with sackcloth and a layer of iron grids (Figure 2). Once set, the cast was removed and placed on a truck. Wirth paid great attention to this method and sometimes the procedure had to be repeated because the first attempt was not sufficiently precise. A year later, a second, much more extensive expedition was carried out with a bigger team and a much larger budget. This second expedition travelled further, including incursions into Denmark and Norway (Himmler Reference Himmler1936). In total, the two expeditions produced 221 casts, of which 172 were made in Sweden, most in Bohuslän on the western coast (Figure 3) (Wirth Reference Wirth1938a).

Figure 2.

Preparations being made for casting an image in Bohuslän, Sweden (courtesy of Vitlycke Museum).

Figure 3.

First page of Wirth’s list describing the casts produced in 1936 (courtesy of Antikvarisk-topografiska arkivet, Stockholm).

The method of casting was crucial to Wirth, who argued that previously unnoticed details would be revealed when the casts were subjected to a strong raking light in an indoor environment (Wirth Reference Wirth1939a). Many of the inscriptions were quite shallow and difficult to differentiate from natural cracks; images had also eroded over time, making them less visible. This presented a way for Wirth to control the interpretation of the images—only he could see the crucial details by studying the casts in his private studio, thus avoiding the scrutinising gaze of competing scholars.

Immediately after the expeditions, Wirth used the Ahnenerbe facilities to make positives of the first set of casts. He began by photographing the negatives in a strong side light, making the reliefs stand out clearly (Figure 4). In this way, he could expose details that previous scholars could not have noted when looking at the images in daylight (Wirth Reference Wirth1936b). Following this, he cast the positives and applied paint to make them look more three dimensional and resemble the original rock art. Some of the casts also have a rugged surface that gives the impression of rock treated by inland ice and thousands of years of slow erosion. Wirth’s intention was to create a museum in which the casts would be displayed in a setting reminiscent of the Bohuslän landscape. This intention explains why it was crucial to make the casts look like natural rocks.

Figure 4.

Example of a studio photograph taken by Wirth in 1936 of one of the Bohuslän casts (courtesy of Antikvarisk-topografiska arkivet, Stockholm).

After 1936, Himmler did not allow Wirth to launch a third trip to Sweden. When he could not make new casts directly, Wirth began producing moulds based on pictures in a book published by the Swedish prehistorian Oscar Almgren (Almgren Reference Almgren1927). It is uncertain, however, whether he ever had the chance to make any casts from these moulds. Himmler demanded complete control over Wirth’s work and was not interested in using Ahnenerbe facilities to produce fake rock art (Hunger Reference Hunger1984: 195). Only the casts from the expeditions were considered authentic because they had touched the rocks.

Soon after the second expedition, Wirth was marginalised in the Ahnenerbe and ultimately forced to leave. His theory that women had been the political and spiritual leaders in traditional Germanic society clashed with the conventional image of the male warrior and chieftain cultivated in National Socialism. Wirth remained controversial among academics and became even more so when a purported genealogical chronicle of an ancient Nordic society that he had previously published (Wirth Reference Wirth1933) was shown to be a nineteenth-century forgery. His ultimate fall from grace was, however, the result of an internal power struggle and Himmler’s growing concern that Wirth’s controversial research risked not only ridicule of the Ahnenerbe but was also wasting important funding (Wirth Reference Wirth1939a). After dismissing Wirth, Himmler kept the casts under lock and key at the Ahnenerbe headquarters in Berlin (Wirth Reference Wirth1938b). In April 1938, the director, Wolfram Sievers, told Wirth to destroy any casts he may still possess, since they could cast doubts over the research carried out by the Ahnenerbe (Sievers Reference Sievers1938). Wirth does not seem to have paid any attention to this command.

Himmler showed his fixation with archaeological finds at different occasions: for instance, when planning the building of the Sachsenhain monument commemorating Saxon prisoners who were supposed to have been slain by Charlemagne in AD 782. At Sachsenhain, Himmler prohibited the use of any rock other than erratics carried south from Scandinavia by glaciers in the latest ice age (Haney Reference Haney2023: 279–81). While the landscape of Sachsenhain was manipulated to meet the demands of the SS, it was crucial that it appeared as if the site had been left untouched since the battle. Himmler was so concerned about the site’s authenticity that he later ordered archaeological excavations in the hope of discovering exactly where the massacre had taken place. Similar cases where authenticity was prioritised include the archaeological investigations carried out at the early Christian site of Externsteine and at Wewelsburg Castle, which was turned into a spiritual centre of the SS (Halle Reference Halle2002; Goodrick-Clarke Reference Goodrick-Clarke2004).

Ultimately, Himmler had motives of his own for keeping the casts and controlling the production of copies. He does not appear to have sympathised much with Wirth’s dream of dispersing copies to museums all over Germany and had even forbidden Wirth from working on a costly outdoor exhibition as it was not politically useful (Hunger Reference Hunger1984: 195). There may have been plans to use some symbols found in rock art when designing new memorial sites and cemeteries for SS members (Pringle Reference Pringle2006: 159) but, if so, the war and the subsequent fall of the Third Reich prevented their realisation.

Wirth’s interpretation of rock art

Looking at the casts, it becomes obvious that Wirth was not interested in reproducing complete images. Many of the rock art sites in Bohuslän comprise a large number of images that may cover most of a rock outcrop and include diverse motifs such as anthropomorphic figures, ships, animals, weapons and chariots or wagons. Wirth was interested in specific details found in the images, often in shapes such as circles, lines or squares, which he interpreted as symbols. Consequently, and despite the preservation of some very large casts, many are only parts of much larger panels. One detail of great importance to Wirth comes from a preserved cast of an image found in the parish of Fossum (Figure 5) (Wirth Reference Wirth1936c). The cast is a painted positive measuring 0.89 × 0.72m that includes the soles of two feet, a ship, two discs of different sizes with irregular lines protruding from them, and several cup marks. The discs provide a connection to Wirth’s understanding of a primeval religion and the supposed continuity between symbols in rock art and Nordic runes (Hunger Reference Hunger1984).

Figure 5.

The Fossum disc cast, today kept in Västergötlands Museum (photograph by Mattias Legnér).

Wirth’s argument about the importance of the Fossum image is developed partly in his book Die Heilige Urschrift (first published 1931–1935), which followed Der Aufgang der Menschheit. Whereas Der Aufgang has been used frequently in previous research, Die Heilige Urschrift is not often mentioned, probably because it is much harder to read, does not contain as clear an argument as the first book did and did not receive as much attention upon first publication. Die Heilige Urschrift is crammed with references to images left by numerous ancient civilisations found in different parts of the world. Wirth compared these images and argued that the primary and oldest ones must have originated in the ‘North’ and then have been dispersed by migrants to other cultures as the ascendants of the Nordic culture spread across the world. The discs found in the Fossum image represented to Wirth a version of the most primordial rune in the shape of a wheel (Wirth Reference Wirth1933: 44).

By reading Die Heilige Urschrift and Wirth’s letters to Swedish authorities, we can begin to understand why he made highly detailed casts from a small selection of rock images, some of which he interpreted as ancient runes (Wirth Reference Wirth1936a: 28). He proposed that anyone “who wishes to learn about the intellectual prehistory of the Nordic race on the basis of Nordic rock carvings will in the future have to go to … ‘Deutsche Ahnenerbe’, because only there will a comprehensive overview of the main monuments be on display” (Wirth Reference Wirth1936d, author’s translation). The anticipated museum would, Wirth argued, make Germans turn their backs on the decadence of the cities and on the Judeo-Christian culture in its entirety, and return to their primordial roots.

A manuscript written by Wirth dating to 1939 contains his interpretation of the ‘Fossum disc’ (Figure 6) (Wirth Reference Wirth1939b). Wirth was convinced that the disc represented a calendar of the year, celebrating especially the Nordic midsummer and midwinter solstice. The year, with its four seasons, could thus be represented as a circle repeating itself time and again. The footprints, in turn, depicted the presence of the God son, who the Judeo-Christian religion later interpreted as Christ (Wirth Reference Wirth1936e: 242). The twisted lines protruding from the disc he interpreted as runes, providing a predecessor to the runic calendars carved in wooden rods found in Scandinavia (Wirth Reference Wirth1939a). The Fossum disc was so important to Wirth that he not only made casts of it but even suggested to Himmler that Hitler should receive one as a Christmas gift in 1936 (Löw Reference Löw2016: 249).

Figure 6.

Wirth’s interpretation of the Fossum disc in his unpublished manuscript Den store Gudens äldsta runor (The great god’s oldest runes; Wirth Reference Wirth1939b) (courtesy of Antikvarisk-topografiska arkivet, Stockholm).

The image had a special significance because Wirth believed that the very first written sign was a circle divided by a vertical line (Wirth Reference Wirth1936a): the sign of the pole circle and the division of the arctic year into six months of constant light and six months of darkness. Since humans originated in the arctic region, this was the way they had first understood the passing of time and the calendric year. This was the context in which the first concepts of the cycle of life and death had been imagined. A circle like the Fossum disc, then, was a holy sign, and it was from a series of such basic signs that Wirth reconstructed his primordial scripture.

Wirth claimed there was 4000 years of unbroken continuity in how these symbols were later expressed in the man rune (ᛉ) and the sig (ᛋ) rune, which were central to Nazi mythology (Wirth Reference Wirth1936a). The Swedish prehistorian T.J. Arne, however, rejected the idea that rock art could contain ancient runes and in a letter to Curman he accused Wirth of forging casts (Arne Reference Arne1939). Yet the Fossum image remained important to Wirth for its potential to demonstrate that written language had first developed in the North, not in the East. The argument that runes had not evolved out of influences coming from the south was not entirely new, but Wirth went even further by arguing that it was in fact the first written language in the world. This, he said, would prove that Germans had a glorious past and that the reputation of ‘Germanic barbarians’, established by the Roman historian Tacitus and perpetuated by later scholars (Demoule Reference Demoule2023: 10), was undeserved.

One rune identified by Wirth in the Fossum disc was called odil or odal (see Figure 6), signifying the bonds between race and soil. This one was the younger of the odil runes described by him (Figure 7). The significance ascribed to this rune by the German Nazi movement is attested by its use in Nazi heraldry: it became the sign of Darré’s Race and Settlement Office (RuSHA) (Löw Reference Löw2016: 256). One of the tasks of the RuSHA was to ensure that SS members married only women who were considered racially pure. Runes—existing ones as well as invented ones—were important for the Nazi movement not just as images. They were also associated with supernatural powers and spiritual connection to long-dead Germans (Mees Reference Mees2008: 201). To Wirth, the odil rune had appeared in several forms developing from its most basic form, which was a vertical line with a circle at each end, representing the cyclic movement between midsummer and midwinter in ancient Atlantis. He thought he had found this original shape of the odil rune in a cast he took of rock art in Bohuslän (Figure 4; Wirth Reference Wirth1936f: 885–86). His attempts to prove the existence of this rune demonstrates how Wirth twisted facts in ways that would suit his ends.

Figure 7.

The historical development of the ‘odil rune’ according to Wirth (Wirth Reference Wirth1936f).

Yet, the self-proclaimed most important implication of Wirth’s work was not the revelation of a primeval religion but of the bonds existing between all ‘Nordic’ peoples, including Germans. Scandinavians and Germans thus shared a common origin based on racial as well as culture-historical grounds, and their future destinies were intertwined. Ultimately, Wirth’s aim was not just to study the past but to lay the groundwork for the restoration of a lost social and racial order in which the Nordic peoples would unite and return to an agrarian way of life free from capitalism, communism and all Jewish influence (Wirth Reference Wirth1937).

Wirth remained active after the Second World War and returned to Sweden several times to make new casts, but now without permission from the authorities. Accusations of damage to rock art in Bohuslän in the mid-1960s finally put a stop to his cast making in Sweden (Riksantikvarieämbetet 1965) but he continued working in Germany until his death in 1981, still committed to his plan to open a museum of the primordial religion showcasing his casts.

Final reflections

This article highlights how the production and interpretation of casts shed new light on the early years of Ahnenerbe research on symbols (Sinnbildforschung), when its attention was still directed towards the Nordic region. State-of-the-art methods in prehistoric fieldwork were employed by professional craftsmen with the goal of creating an outdoor museum in Germany, in which rock art would be presented as the holy scripture of the Indo-Germanic people. The photographic documentation of the casts, performed in a studio, was undertaken to a quality that could not be replicated by Swedish prehistorians of the time. By studying the preserved casts and the documentation associated with them, it has become evident that the Ahnenerbe, despite the previous emphasis in scholarship on its pseudoscientific endeavours, went to great lengths in at least some of its projects to collect precise and high-quality evidence to prove ideas that in themselves were absurd. The project of creating a museum ultimately failed because of Wirth’s unwillingness to obey Himmler’s orders and because of his copious spending and unbridled individualism. Additionally, in 1937, the Ahnenerbe was reorganised to better align with Germany’s new agenda of preparing for the upcoming war effort (Kater 2006 [Reference Kater1974]: 59).

Völkisch scholars were looking both inside and outside of German borders for tangible evidence of the existence of a highly advanced civilisation in the ‘North’ that pre-dated the last ice age. Herman Wirth was definitively one of these scholars, but he differed from most in his obsessive search for evidence emanating from Scandinavia and in his access (initially) to the resources necessary to conduct ambitious expeditions (Hunger Reference Hunger1984: 193). There were several reasons for producing highly detailed casts of Swedish rock art. The most obvious is that the rock art was seen as evidence of a highly sophisticated culture existing in ancient northern Europe; that the rock art contained a form of written language. Wirth claimed to have found the most basic and earliest runes within the rock art, connecting them to the calendric year and sun worship and making possible the reconstruction of early Nordic religious beliefs. Swedish scholars also associated the rock art with a cult of the sun, life and death (Almgren Reference Almgren1927) and some, such as Arthur Nordén, believed there to be an unbroken continuity from rock art to runic scripture (Nordén Reference Nordén1934). Most, however, believed that runes had been imported from the south of Europe much later, implying that Nordic culture did not precede the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean. Even after his dismissal from the Ahnenerbe, Wirth’s work was described by its director as groundbreaking in the budding research field of symbol studies (Hunger Reference Hunger1984: 203).

Archaeology did not cease to be used for ideological purposes with the end of the Second World War. Many later such uses of prehistory within extreme right-wing circuits have been more subtle than the openly racist ideas perpetuated by the Ahnenerbe, yet these were still built on an almost identical ideology. In recent decades, Wirth has become a popular icon among eco-feminist, neopagan and far-right movements internationally. Today, the casts are available for study as useful comparators to measure weathering, yet the esoteric and racist views that once motivated their creation should not be hidden and forgotten but scrutinised critically so that the world may move forward in a more informed manner.