(UN)Masking Gender — Gold Foil (DIS)Embodiments in Late Iron Age Scandinavia

Abstract

Humanoid figures exist on many objects from Late Iron Age Scandinavia (550–1050 AD). These artefacts include gold foils, pendants, amulets, Gotlandic picture stones etc. Traditionally, they are interpreted by archaeologists as cult objects, and/or portrayals of gods, identified through later, medieval written sources. Using primarily gold foils as an example, this paper aims at showing that Late Iron Age humanoid figures express different, sometimes competing and opposing stories, and that these played important roles for the shaping of the social as well as the individual sphere. For long, gold foils have been described as being encountered at so-called ‘central places’ allegedly serving administrative, economic, political and religious functions (e.g., Olsen 1909, Holmqvist 1957, Steinsland 1989, Watt 1991 and Lundqvist 1997). Little attention has been paid to the embodiments of disembodied performances and masked appearances of these figures, and their performing, changing and engendering character and function. In order to expand interpretations of Scandinavian gold foils beyond iconographic identification schemes, this paper makes a tentative start, in favour of issues of gender identity and bodies in flux.