Researchers have long discussed whether Scandinavian rock art reflects narratives. Their interpretations have frequently been based on inspections of rock art panels combined with knowledge from ethnographic and historical sources. Here, the authors adopt a more focused narratological approach that takes the concept of (visual) narrativity into consideration and draws on studies by literary analysts, cognitive psychologists, and semioticians. Images of spear use in the provinces of Bohuslän and Östergötland in Sweden, given their diversity and indexical qualities, are well-suited to such a study. They reveal different kinds of indexical relationships, i.e. how the spears direct attention to possible targets, arguably corresponding to action scripts well-known to Bronze Age communities. Many spear images may be regarded as mini-narratives and mnemonic devices intended to represent schematized action sequences. The authors suggest that concepts such as iconicity, indexical relationships, scripts, and mini-narratives could be fruitfully employed in research on Scandinavian rock art and beyond.

长期以来，研究人员一直在讨论斯堪的纳维亚岩画是否反映了叙事。他们的解释经常基于对岩石艺术面板的检查以及来自民族志和历史资料的知识。在这里，作者采用了一种更加集中的叙事学方法，将（视觉）叙事的概念纳入考虑范围，并借鉴了文学分析家、认知心理学家和符号学家的研究成果。瑞典布胡斯兰省和东哥特兰省使用长矛的图像，鉴于其多样性和索引质量，非常适合进行此类研究。它们揭示了不同类型的索引关系，即长矛如何将注意力指向可能的目标，可以说对应于青铜时代社区众所周知的动作脚本。许多矛图像可被视为旨在表示模式化动作序列的小型叙述和助记装置。作者建议，在斯堪的纳维亚岩石艺术及其他领域的研究中，可以有效地运用象似性、索引关系、脚本和迷你叙事等概念。