En guldfoliefigurs funktioner samt en översikt av tolkningar och fyndplatser

During an archaeological excavation in Uppåkra 2010 I found a so-called “guldgubbe”(goldfoilfigure). This find really caught my attention and especially so because their functions are still debated. This master thesis is about the meaning and use of this, more appropriately called, goldfoilfigure. Many attempts to solve the questions surrounding the functions of the figures have been made during the 300 years since they were first described in texts. To make it easier to overview the thesis has been divided into four parts. The first part consists of a presentation of earlier overviews, a presentation of different dating suggestions of the figures through time, relevant authors/scientists interpretations of their functions and a presentation of all the sites in Scandinavia that includes finds of figures. The early finds are poorly documented which degrades their significance but they will still be used in the overview because of my ambition to present an overview as complete as possible. The main goal with the overview, however, is to present the finding contexts that will be used in the analysis. The second part of the thesis consists of an analysis of the different finding contexts and draw conclusions about the functions of the goldfoilfigures using spatial- and ritual perspectives. I will try to decide if the placement of the figures in the room can determine whether the figure had a ceremonial/ritual symbolic use or not. A contextual overview for comparison has been used in research purposes before but not including all the figures from Scandinavia. The earlier work that has been made using context analysis has other questions to the material and is not answering mine. The third part of the thesis consists of an iconographic analysis that focus only on the figure I found in Uppåkra. The iconographic method divides the figure into several elements. The elements are: hair, clothes, attributes, gestures/body language, face and frame. Interpretations of the elements are based on origin, symbolism and gender. The fourth part of the thesis contains a discussion about the outcome of the contextual and iconographic analysis where other relevant authors/scientists interpretations are either dismissed or used in my own conclusions about the functions of the figure found by me. To widen and deepen the understanding of the goldfoilfigure that I found I will also have a discussion on dating and origin