The size of the gold foil figures is about the size of half a postal stamp and consists of millimeter-thin gold plates with depicted motifs. They may be the smallest artefact that we have left from the Late Iron Age, more specifically 6th and 7th Century CE. Despite this, it has not stopped the craftsman from creating such detailed motifs that are almost impossible to see to the naked eye. In previous research, the gold foil figures have been treated as representative images, however, this present work shows that these small gold plates have been considered as more than just images. An investigation is conducted of phenomenological aspects that can be observed in the picture, and of different conditions in which the find arises. By studying and discussing the collection of gold foil figures from four locations in southern Sweden and comparing various aspects that arise in the material, interesting patterns and details are noted which did not receive much attention previously.

This thesis explores bodily representations in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (400–1050 AD). Non-human bodies, such as gold foil figures, and human bodies are analysed. The work starts with an examination and deconstruction of the sex/gender categories to the effect that they are considered to be of minor value for the purposes of the thesis. Three analytical concepts – masks, miniature, and metaphor – are deployed in order to interpret how and why the chosen bodies worked within their prehistoric contexts. The manipulations the figures sometimes have undergone are referred to as masking practices, discussed in Part One. It is shown that masks work and are powerful by being paradoxical; that they are vehicles for communication; and that they are, in effect, transitional objects bridging gaps that arise in continuity as a result of events such as symbolic or actual deaths. In Part Two miniaturization is discussed. Miniaturization contributes to making worlds intelligible, negotiable and communicative. Bodies in miniatures in comparison to other miniature objects are particularly potent. Taking gold foil figures under special scrutiny, it is claimed that gold, its allusions as well as its inherent properties conveyed numinosity. Consequently gold foil figures, regardless of the context, must be understood as extremely forceful agents. Part Three examines metaphorical thinking and how human and animal body parts were used in pro-creational acts, resulting in the birth of persons. However, these need not have been human, but could have been the outcomes of turning a deceased into an ancestor, iron into a steel sword, or clay into a ceramic urn, hence expanding and transforming the members of the family/household. Thus, bone in certain contexts acted as a transitional object or as a generative substance. It is concluded that the bodies of research are connected to transitions, and that the theme of transformation was one fundamental characteristic of the societies of study.

<p>This thesis explores bodily representations in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (400–1050 AD). Non-human bodies, such as gold foil figures, and human bodies are analysed. The work starts with an examination and deconstruction of the sex/gender categories to the effect that they are considered to be of minor value for the purposes of the thesis. Three analytical concepts – masks, miniature, and metaphor – are deployed in order to interpret how and why the chosen bodies worked within their prehistoric contexts.</p><p>The manipulations the figures sometimes have undergone are referred to as masking practices, discussed in Part One. It is shown that masks work and are powerful by being paradoxical; that they are vehicles for communication; and that they are, in effect, transitional objects bridging gaps that arise in continuity as a result of events such as symbolic or actual deaths.</p><p>In Part Two miniaturization is discussed. Miniaturization contributes to making worlds intelligible, negotiable and communicative. Bodies in miniatures in comparison to other miniature objects are particularly potent. Taking gold foil figures under special scrutiny, it is claimed that gold, its allusions as well as its inherent properties conveyed numinosity. Consequently gold foil figures, regardless of the context, must be understood as extremely forceful agents.</p><p>Part Three examines metaphorical thinking and how human and animal body parts were used in pro-creational acts, resulting in the birth of persons. However, these need not have been human, but could have been the outcomes of turning a deceased into an ancestor, iron into a steel sword, or clay into a ceramic urn, hence expanding and transforming the members of the family/household. Thus, bone in certain contexts acted as a transitional object or as a generative substance.</p><p>It is concluded that the bodies of research are connected to transitions, and that the theme of transformation was one fundamental characteristic of the societies of study.</p>

Gold Foil Figures or guldgubbar (henceforth GFFs) are precious metal artefacts from the Scandinavian Late Iron Age. This master's essay offers a new approach to GFFs. As opposed to the established understanding of GFFs as representational images with real or mythic referents, belonging to an aristocratic milieu, this essay instead attends to GFFs in terms of their material and Figural traits. The material for this study consists if 42 GFFs from the find site of Västra Vång, Blekinge, Sweden. A comprehensive presentation of this artefact material is a secondary aim of this essay. With the aid of a neomaterialist theoretical apparatus that draws heavily on the work of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Wilhelm Worringer, the 42 GFFs undergo two separate analyses. In the first, the material traits expressed in the sequence of GFF production and deposition is studied in terms of a chaîne opératoire. In the second, I attend to the non-significatory expressive qualities of form and expression, or Figural traits, belonging to these 42 GFFs within the wider artistic milieu of Animal Style Ornamentation. I conclude that GFFs were as a rule artefacts made for purposes of immediate disposal, not display, as a mode of dispersing gold. Västra Vång’s GFFs offer several indications that handling between the cutting operation and deposition was minimal, such as the fresh, unworn edges. The thin, brittle foils are ill suited to display. Approaching the designs on these artefacts as various sets of Figural traits being expressed allows me to contextualise the GFFs within the wider artistic milieu of Animal Style Ornamentation. New territorial rhythms can be established only as certain elements are freed from a settled state, and made to act together with new elements, in new terrains. GFFs bring about new territorial rhythms of form and expression to gold matter, gold made to circulate as it becomes deterritorialised from a monetary function within the Roman economy. A flow of gold is extended as gold is brought to Scandinavia from continental economies. The influx of this flow of gold is not contained to an élite social stratum. Individuals in possession of minute amounts of gold returned to Scandinavia, having acquired gold as payment for involvement in military operations on the continent. This ownership of gold may have hindered their harmonious reintegration into a society based on other economic principles. The GFFs emerge as a vector of dispersing gold. The artistic expression of Figural traits is equally energised by movements of de- and reterritorialisation. Understanding that the Figural traits expressed on the GFFs from Västra Vång are part of a wider artistic milieu of Animal Style Ornamentation, alongside other systematised expressions making up parts of a collective assemblage of enunciation, makes their appearance on artefacts that were deposited immediately upon their manufacture easier to grasp. The particular procedures of miniaturisation allowed for an acceleration of the expression of variation in the conjunction of a flow of artistic expression onto a flow of gold matter. The dispersive handling of gold must be traced to both the material premises and the expressive artistic ones. Gold is not chosen because it is precious, or because of what it connotes, but because it is available, because the artisan smith is attendant to its traits as a metal matter.