Guldgubber are small gold-foil figures. They are between 0,5cm to 1,5cm high and vary in wideness. They are very thin - about a millimeter thick - and made of a gold alloy, mostly mixed with copper, which can be seen by the red colour and the red spots that sometimes appear on the guldgubber.

Guldgubber were found and recorded for the first time 1869 by E. Vedel in Sorte Muld (Bornholm/Denmark), but Sorte Muld was already known for gold-foil figures since 1569. Guldgubber are found in whole Scandinavia, but not elsewhere like Brakteats. A distribution of finds can be found under Finds and Archaeology.

Guldgubber are hard to date as they cannot be dated themselves and other dateable surrounding finds are rare. At some places, however - Uppåkra for example - dateable material or soil layers are found and the Guldgubber were thereby dated to 400-800 a.d. (Migration Age).

The pictures on the Guldgubber can be divided into 7 main categories:

Recently the guldgubber were catalogized and published in an online PhD downloadable at:

To define male and female figures, one has to differ between the two sexes first. So what is typically male and what typically female?

Typically male is short to shoulder length hair, normally worn open. The dress consists of a kaftan or a tunic or trousers and sometimes a cape. All of this never exeeds the length of the mid lower leg, so that the ankles and feet are always visible. There are also attributes that only appear in combination with men, this being: staff or long sceptre, Merovingian Sturzbecher, diadem, torque and a long paddle like undefined object.

Female figures are easily to distinguish, as the female dress code did not change from the Migration Age to the Viking Age. Women wore a long dress that reached from ankle to floor length. This can be combined with a smaller dress above the underdress and a cape with various styles and lengths.

The most stricting detail, however, is the hairstyle, which does not change at all. All women wore a so called Irish-Ribbon-Knot which constists of a knot of the hair and is fixed with a normal hairpin.

Women have typical attributes as well. They are often depicted with a drinking vessel, which might be a horn, wear a necklace or a big and rich fibula. Very rarely an undefined object which has similarities with the upside down rune ᚠ - germ. *fehu - is depicted.

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Men Category [A]

There are several different types of male figures: staff-bearer, drinker, with sword, with different gestures and men with attributes.

The majority of male dies have been found on Bornholm - out of 1207 whole and unsevered guldgubber (as of 2003) 804 can be defined as male. At other places doublegubber prevail.

The staff-bearer wear a kaftan - "Klappenrock" in German - with rich embroidery or tablet woven brim.

The kaftan was worn until the Viking Age and remains of such a clothing have been found at the harbour in Haithabu (Northern Germany). But there are staff-bearers with no or sparse clothing as well, thought they are rarer.

The staff is either long - man size - or short - arms length.

There are - up to now - only two dies (the one below including) known showing a man with an obvious beard.

The drinkers have a Sturzbechertype drinking vessel in one of their hand. At the top of the vessel a tongue is liking out, as if the contained fluid is spilled. The drinkers also wear a kaftan like gown.

Up to now - as my knowledge - only two warrior like man have been found - both on Bornholm. One of the wears the already knwon kaftan, the other one is in an action like move and not complete unfortunately. Both have a sword in their hand which seems to be a sax.

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Women

There are as well some single gubber depicting only women. They are normally shown in profile and sometimes with an objekt in their hands. Their dress is embroided or at least made of different patterned cloth.

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Doublegubber

Doublegubber are gubber, which depict two people on one gubbe. Normally these are a man and a woman, but up to now there are three to four known gubber, on which two persons with the same clothing - therefore probably the same sex - have been found in Scandinavia.

There are three different ways to depict a couple:

1. He is grasping her around her waist or holds his hand above her hip. She has no gesture at all.

2. She is grapsing him at his wrist, his hand may point downwards as well as upwards. He has no other gesture whatsoever.

3. They are both holding or hugging each other and noone is grasping the other.

Their clothing and style varies from artist to artist, but the theme remains the same.

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Wraiths

Wraiths are a new group of Guldgubber which are classified here for the first time. Some of them were normally classified as dancers, because of there poses on tip toe. But as parallels to the German Sachsenspiegel and several graves showed, the Guldgubber depict presumably dead people, here called wraiths.

They are all depicted in a very similar way: their eyes may be drawn bigger than normal, no facial features whatsoever are to be seen on them. Their gesture is mostly with their hands pointing downwards and their feet parallel to each other; sometimes their toes pointing downwards as well.

They are depicted without any gendermarks whatsoever and thus should be considered as neutral.

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Animals

Animals have only be found on Bornholm. They are more or less ornamentally styled and it is hard to identify an animal species. Just two of them might be identified as a bear and a pig (these ones are shown here). The other ones could not be identified up tp now.

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