Swedish archaeologist Dr. Martin Rundkvist has written up a brief article on a gold foil figure die that his team found in April. He has published the preprint on his blog.

The die would have been used to make small gold foil figures known as guldgubbar. Guldgubbar, which are only found in Scandinavia, date from the Vendel period and depict men and women singly and in pairs. The figures have been interpreted as gods or heroes, although contemporary scholars are beginning to dispute this interpretation.

This piece depicts a single woman. The line drawing at left shows the woman’s dress and posture; she may be sitting on a low stool. Although the meaning of their iconography is unclear, guldgubbar are the expression of a high Heathen aristocratic culture. Rudolph Simek’s paper Rich and Powerful: the Image of the Female Deity in Migration Age Scandinavia is a detailed interpretation of exactly this type of figure. Simek’s student Sharon Ratke has a website where she shares her own research, along with more information such as maps, a bibliography, and lots of pictures.