GOLDGUBBERNE

'Guldgubber' from the German Iron Age were found at a large settlement site in Ibsker, known as 'Guldageren' in the Middle Ages. Besides shards, spindle weights, jewellery, lances, glass fragments, knives, denarii and animal bones, a wider exploration of the settlement strata at Sorte Muld in 1986 and 1987 found more than 2,300 goldfoil figures from about 550-600 A.D. During the examination the excavated culture-soil was rinsed through several sieves, in order to catch small fragments of gold and other antiquities. Guldgubbe is an old Swedish name for a little, cut-out goldfoil figure. The figures are stamped with a patrix (die) and weigh about 1/10 gram. More than 400 different dies are employed.

A bronze patrix was found in 1992, at a settlement site at MżllegŚrd in Klemensker. (The patrix is kept in the National Museum.) Presumably the figures were used as sacrifices, 'temple money'. Since they are rather thin and break easily, they can hardly have been used on clothes or for payment. The most common depiction on the guldgubber is of a man clad in a dignified habit or caftan with a long sceptre. A beaded stave - "beaded frame" - around the figures is possibly an imitation of the portals in late-antiquity emperor portraits. Depiction of round bottomed jars is common in the Merovingian (Frankish) area c.500 A.D., a way to date the guldgubber. Shoulder length hair, as seen on many of the figures, was a royal privilege of the Merovingian Dynasty. Women are pictured less often and look like gods. Individual goldfoil plates picture two figures embracing each other, but double figures are principally known from Sweden and Norway, and about 100 double figures were found recently at Lundeborg on south-east Funen. The guldgubber are a Scandinavian-wide phenomenon, even though most are found at Sorte Muld. Style and dress tell of connections to the princely life of Europe, especially in the Frankish area that set the fashion during the 500 and 600's. The "dancing" guldgubber, with neckring, belt and the rest, are in many ways equivalent to heathen gods that are seen on gold 'bractea' from the older German Iron Age. 
Bractea were imitations of Roman gold coins (solidi) but are stamped only on one side and provided with a screw eye. Figures similar to guldgubber are also found on contemporary helmet plates. The figures are thus linked to the social elite, who were in charge of cultic ceremonies. To date over 2,600 small goldfoil figures have been found in Denmark. More than 90% of them are from Bornholm.