ODDR OMRISSER

The versatile naturalist who didn't care about the final rock-art product

Allan Krill, Professor of Geology
Trondheim, Norway

Three pre-Viking artists —Steinn Stikkmann, Ingi Innrisser, and Oddr Omrisser— made nearly all the petroglyphs in Norway and Sweden.

This website discusses Omrisser. To read about Innrisser and Stikkmann, and why the Stone Age paradigm should be avoided, go to Helleristninger.com.

Oddr Omrisser began his rock-art career in northern Sweden by painting rock panels. He used red ocher pigment, probably mixed with oil that penetrates the rock surface, leaving red marks that are still slightly visible after more than a thousand years. At at few sites in Norway, he painted and engraved on the same rock panel. (See my message #391). The animals in his paintings and early engravings are not as anatomically correct as in his later nailpoint and lichen-scraped petroglyphs.

Digitally processed photos by Jan Magne Gjerde of red ocher paintings. Flatruet (Sweden) on the left. Sandhalsen (Norway) on the right. From www.sciencenorway.no

Map of sites of Oddr Omrisser.

In Sweden, Omrisser must have worked during the winter or spring, when he could stand on ice-covered lakes and paint rock panels at the lake edge. I suspect that he spent winters there, and was maybe born south of Strömsund Sweden, where there is a cluster of rock paintings, all within skiing distance from each other. They are not far from Nämforsen, where he and Ingi Innrisser worked together making nailpoint petroglyphs.

Omrisser usually made outlines of his objects —of animals, of boats, of people, and even of the antlers of reindeer and the penises of men. He made images large and even life size when possible. He was a naturalist, and many of his animals are very lifelike. The species of his deer, birds, fish, and whales can often be identified.
He had his quirks. He liked to draw a line for the mouth, but no eye. He often ignored the feet, leaving the legs unfinished or ending as points. He usually drew animals in profile, showing only one foreleg and one hind leg on four-legged animals. (Innrisser and Stikkmann usually drew four legs.) But the ears were not in profile. The two ears usually form a V. He sometimes indicated a 'life-line' from the mouth to the stomach or heart. Innrisser did this also at some of his sites.
Omrisser's images are typically overlapping and incomplete. I think he drew the complete animal, maybe with charcoal, and then engraved it only partially. We can deduce that from seeing incomplete images such as the 6-meter long whale in the tracing below. He had the habit of cluttering rock panels by drawing large and inappropriate images right on top of earlier carvings. He cluttered most of his own panels in that way, and defaced Stikkmann's panels at Bardal, Hammer IX, Revlan, and Stavanger, and Innrisser's panels at Alta, Bogge I, Ekeberg, Kåfjord, Langnesholmen, and Nämforsen. He was most interested in the drawing process, not the engraving process, and he was uninterested in how the panel looked when he was done.

At Bogge I, Innrisser drew many deer, and then Omrisser put an oversize moose on top of some. He added a large deer-head there as well. Below is part of the tracing by Gutorm Gjessing (1936) of the defaced panel, where I have colored Omrisser's two images blue. I think Innrisser told Omrisser to get away and find another place to work. So Omrisser went down the hill and made two panels of his own (Bogge II, Bogge III). The same thing happened at Holtås I and II.

Below on the left is a tracing by Eva & Per Fett (1941) of a panel at Stavanger (Åmøya). It shows typical boats and shoe prints by Stikkmann. Omrisser defaced the panel by putting a few images (which I have changed to blue) on top of Stikkmann's images. Omrisser was copying Stikkmann's boats, to learn how to draw outlines of that boat type. He then made a 5.5 meter boat nearby. (That petroglyph is shown further down on this page.) On the right is a tracing by Tansem (2022) of a panel at Kåfjord by Innrisser. Omrisser defaced the panel by putting several images on top of Innrisser's images. Note that Omrisser drew the same fish at Stavanger and Kåfjord, and the deer-head at Kåfjord is the same as at Bogge. He made that distinctive deer-head (often without the body of the deer) at many places in Norway and Sweden.

Some of Omrisser's added images almost fit in. At Bergbukten (Alta), Omrisser added reindeer (slightly oversized) to Innrisser's panel, which showed reindeer and a corral. All the images were painted red by Alta Museum, but I have changed Omrisser's images to blue in my photo (August 2025).

Omrisser usually made humans as small stick figures, like many of Innrisser's. But some of his humans are large and outlined, like his animals. Below is a collection of Omrisser's outlined humans. His men in profile, at Lånke, Bardal, Alta, and Hammer, have long torsos and undersized legs. In his sex scenes at Bardal and Alta the female has the size and proportions of a child. These are interesting quirks.

Omrisser's earliest engravings may have been the amateurish ones at Tennes. I think Ingi Innrisser showed Omrisser how to engrave at Tennes and at Alta (Storsteinen and Amtmannsnes.) Omrisser liked to draw porpoises, and the ones at Tennes may have been his first. He typically showed porpoises with the tails pointing down. Also note that he used two short lines to indicate flippers on porpoises at Tennes, Amtmannsnes (Alta), Tjøtta, Salsnes, and Hammer. Such quirks suggest the work of a single artist.

Omrisser was a versatile artist. He used four different petroglyph techniques during his career. He started with red ocher stain, but mostly he used the nailpoint technique. On two panels of soft rocks (at Gärde and Hell) he engraved with the point of a knife. Late in his career, at the peak of his anatomical drawing skill, he discovered that he could quickly and easily make large petroglyphs by scraping away black lichen that covers the surfaces of glacially-polished white granites. Using that technique he made life-sized and lifelike images of animals at seven known sites in Nordland: Leiknes, Fykanvatn, Mjønes, Nes, Sagelva, Valle, and Åmøya.
Omrisser made Scandinavia's largest images. His outlined orca whale at Leiknes (below left) is 7.5 meters long, and his outlined boat at Åmøya on one of Stikkmann's panels (below right) is 5.5 meters long.

Omrisser 'signed' many of his panels with rhombic designs. The rhombic designs at Fångsjön, Hell, and at Forselv have a remarkable 3D-look.

Dynamics of two artists working together
Where Innrisser and Omrisser worked together on the same panel, their images can be rather similar and difficult to distinguish. Omrisser liked working together with Innrisser, but Innrisser was sometimes annoyed that Omrisser was defacing his panels. When Innrisser chased Omrisser away, he often went down the hill to work. I think that was so he could watch Innrisser. If he went up the hill, he would need to stop working and turn around to look down at Innrisser. This probably also suited Innrisser best. He did not want to be distracted by seeing what Omrisser was doing.

At Ekeberg in Oslo, Innrisser and Omrisser each made four deer. Innrisser’s deer are higher on the panel. They have four legs, tiny heads, two parallel ears, and straight backs without shoulder humps. Omrisser’s deer have two legs, two outlined ears that form a V, and shoulder humps.

Nämforsen in Sweden is another typical example of Omrisser's work below Innrisser's.

There are many examples of Omrisser's art occurring below Innrisser's art: Ekeberg, Bogge, Holtås, and Nämforsen, and in Alta at Bergbukten, Ole Pedersen, and Bergheim. Omrisser liked working closely with Innrisser, but I don't think the feeling was mutual.

Petroglyphs cannot be dated directly, and that has been a problem, because people expect archaeologists to tell just how old an artifact is. Norwegian archaeologists adopted the 'shoreline dating method' a century ago. Shoreline dating gives the time that the land area rose above the sea during post-glacial uplift. That is the oldest possible time of human activity on that land. It is a geological age, not an archaeological age. It only works if the petroglyphs were made right at the shoreline. But I think they would not have been made there. My geology students and I cannot work with slippery shoreline rocks.
At many petroglyph sites, images high on a hillside are said to be hundreds of years older than similar images a few meters lower down. At Alta, the age difference is said to be over 5000 years. The figure below, from a publication by Jan Magne Gjerde (2024) shows the four supposed phases of rock art at Alta that were established in a publication by Knut Helskog (1988). I have added in red the years BP (Before Present) that are claimed for those phases. The ages apply only to the ancient shore levels, not the images. I ignore the elevations of Alta images, and can identify most of them as the work of either Innrisser (brown) or Omrisser (blue).

I think that the positions of images on a rock panel have no chronological significance, other than within a single day's work. Petroglyph artists probably tended to move upward on a hillside as they worked, as geologists usually do. Look again at the lichen-scraped images at Leiknes, with the 7.5-meter orca whale. Modern vandalism shows that such images can be made in only a few minutes. I suppose that Omrisser produced them all in a single day, working from the lowest image to the highest. In contrast, Gjerde (2010) suggested that the lower images were drawn at a shoreline several hundred years after the upper images were drawn at a higher shoreline. Those shorelines are about 8,000 years old.

Allan Krill
allankrill@gmail.com

Click on a site name to see some of the petroglyph images.
Almfjellet, Trøndelag [ocher technique]
Alta, Finnmark (Innrisser + Omrisser)
Alta Apanes, Finnmark
Alta Bergbukten, Finnmark (Innrisser in red, Omrisser in blue)
Alta Kåfjord, Finnmark (Innrisser in black, Omrisser in blue)
Alta Ole Pedersen, Finnmark (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Bardal I, Trøndelag (Omrisser, with Stikkmann's work not shown)
Bardal II, Trøndelag (Stikkmann & Omrisser) [39% cup marks, 21% shoe soles]
Bogge (Boggestranda) I, II, III, Møre og Romsdal (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Bogge I, Møre og Romsdal (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Bogge II, Møre og Romsdal
Bogge III, Møre og Romsdal
Brennholtet, Nordland
Bøla, Trøndelag
Dokkfløyvatnet, Innlandet (Innrisser? & Omrisser?)
Drotten, Innlandet (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Duved (Åresjön), Jämtland
Eidefossen, Innlandet (& Innrisser)
Ekeberg (Sjømannsskolen), Oslo (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Flatruet, Jämtland [ocher technique]
Forselv (Skjomen), Nordland [3D rhombic 'signature']
Forså (Efjord), nordland
Fykanvatn, Nordland [lichen-scraping technique]
Fångsjön, Jämtland [ocher technique] [3D rhombic 'signature']
Geithus, Buskerud (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Glemmestad, Innlandet (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Gärde, Jämtland [knife-point technique]
Hammer I, IV, V, VI, VIII, X, XIII, XIV, XV, Trøndelag
Hammer IX, Trøndelag (Stikkmann + Omrisser)
Hell, Trøndelag +page, [knife-point technique] [3D rhombic 'signature']
Herjangen, Nordland
Hinna (Honhammer, Tingvoll), Møre og Romsdal [ocher technique]
Holtås I, II, Trøndelag (& Innrisser)
Hommelvik, Trøndelag
Honnhammerneset (Tingvoll), Møre og Romsdal [ocher technique]
Horjem, Trøndelag
Hästskotjärn, Jämtland [ocher technique]
Isnestoften (Langnesholmen), Finnmark (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Kvennavika, Trøndelag
Landverk (Ånnsjön), Jämtland
Langnesholmen (Isnestoften), Finnmark (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Leiknes, Nordland [lichen-scraping technique]
Lier (Utenga), Buskerud (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Lånke (Tønsåsen), Trøndelag
Mjønes (Vågan), Nordland [lichen-scraping technique]
Nes (Josarsaklubben, Lødingen), Nordland [lichen-scraping technique]
Norrfors, Norrland +page
Nämforsen, Västernorrlands län (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Rauhammer, Trøndelag [ocher technique]
Reitaneset, Møre og Romsdal (Innrisser?)
Rykkje (Kvam), Vestland
Røsand, Møre og Romsdal
Sagelva (Tømmerneset), Nordland [lichen-scraping technique]
Salsnes (Reppen), Trøndelag
Salthammeren (Vangdal), Vestland (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Salthammeren (Vangdal) upper panel, Vestland
Sandhalsen, Trøndelag [ocher technique]
Sjøhagen-Meling (Åmøy), Rogaland (Stikkmann & Omrisser)
Skavberget 1,2, Troms
Skavberget 3, Troms (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Slettjord, Nordland
Stein (Steinsodden, Steinsholmen), Innlandet (& Omrisser)
Storsteinen Alta, Finnmark (& Omrisser)
Strand, Trøndelag
Stykket, Trøndelag
Søbstad, Møre og Romsdal
Tennes (Bukkhammaren), Troms (Innrisser
Tennes (Gråberget), Troms (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Tennes (Kirkely), Troms (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Tjøtta (Valen, Rødøya, Røøyen), Nordland
Valle (Finnhågen, Efjord), Nordland +page +page
Vangdal (Salthammeren), Vestland (Innrisser & Omrisser)
Verdal, Trøndelag
Vik on Rolla, Troms
Vistnesdalen (Vistnes, Vevelstad), Nordland +page
Åbodsjön, Ångermanland [ocher technique]
Åmøy, Rogaland (Stikkmann & Omrisser)
Åmøya (Klubba), Nordland +page [lichen-scraping technique]

Internet resources.
Kulturminnesøk, Norway.
The Megalithic Portal.
Swedish Rock Art Research Archives.
Swedish Rune Map.

Multi-site descriptions. (More references).
Engelstad, Eivind, 1934. Østnorske ristninger og malinger av den arktiske gruppe.
Gjerde, Jan Magne, 2010. Rock art and landscapes. Studies of Stone Age rock art from Northern Fennoscandia.
Gjessing, Gutorm, 1932. Arktiske helleristninger i Nord-Norge.
Gjessing, Gutorm, 1936. Nordenfjelske ristninger og malinger av den arktiske gruppe.
Hagen, Anders, 1965. Rock Carvings in Norway.
Hagen, Anders, 1976. Bergkunst: Jegerfolkets helleristninger og malninger i norsk steinalder.
Hagen, Anders, 1990. Helleristningar i Noreg.
Helberg, Bjørn Hebba, 2016. Bergkunst nord for Polarsirkelen.
Helskog, Knut, 1988. Helleristningene i Alta.
Mandt, Gro & Trond Lødøen, 2005. Bergkunst. Helleristningar i Noreg.
Mandt, Gro & Trond Lødøen, 2010. The Rock Art of Norway.
Mandt Larsen, Gro, 1972. Bergbilder i Hordaland.
Mikkelsen, Egil, 1977. Østnorske veideristninger: Kronologi og øko-kulturelt miljø.
Moe, Steinar & Einar Østmo, 1994. Norske helleristninger.
Simonsen, Povl, 1958. Arktiske helleristninger i Nord-Norge II.
Sognnes, Kalle, 1999. Det levende berget.
Sognnes, Kalle, 1999. Helleristninger i Stjørdal.
Tansem, Karin, 2022. Helleristningene i Alta: Estetikken, geologien og figurene.

The links below explain my evidence and hypotheses (including hypotheses that I have abandoned).
Index of the website https://groups.io/g/VikingRockArt

394. Map of the known rock-art sites of Oddr Omrisser (5/2026)

391. Who painted pictures like this on rock walls in Norway? (5/2026)

385. Hommelvik petroglyphs, 20 km east of Trondheim (5/2026)

348. Gutorm Gjessing fooled the ski-world for 90 years (1/2026)

335/338. Guide to helleristninger at Apana Gård, Alta (12/2025)

333/336. Guide to helleristninger at Bergheim, Alta (12/2025)

332. Guide to helleristninger at Ole Pedersen, Alta (12/2025)

328/329/330. Can you find Omrisser's reindeer within Innrisser's herd? (11-12/2025)

327. Omrisser and Innrisser at the five main sites of Hjemmeluft, Alta (11/2025)

323/326. Guide to helleristninger at Bergbukten Alta (11/2025)

321/325. Guide to Nämforsen hällristningar (11/2025)

324. Guide to helleristninger at Bogge (11/2025)