Ing-Marie Back Danielsson

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

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.

More Theory for Mortuary Research of the Viking World

This themed journal issue provides many examples of ways forward in the study of death and memory in the Viking world. While all contributions demonstrate that there are exciting new ways to study remains from funerary contexts that focus on different forms of citation involving material culture and monuments, this article will very briefly discuss dimensions that have not been addressed here. Specifically, it showcases how the mortuary citations approach can also use post-humanist theory for further development and exploration of mortuary practices in the Viking world. Although short, this article discusses rune stones, particularly rune stones with kuml inscriptions, which I have examined elsewhere. The term kuml appears on contemporary rune stones; it refers to different material entities such as rune stones, mounds/cairns, and other standing stones. The being and becoming of kuml is briefly discussed through the concepts of intra-action and agential cuts championed by Karen Barad.