There are not a lot interpretations for the Guldgubber. The first and up to 2003 the only interpretation said, that the Guldgubber depicted gods like Odin, Freyr, and Freya and were used as temple money, due to the fact, that the Guldgubber were deposited at the poles of houses.

This interpretation lacks quite a few details. First, the people from the Migration age had no temples as such, as every young student of the Scnadinavian studies should know by now. They might have had houses for their feasts, but not temples in the Roman or Christian sense. So temple money, which is used like the Roman temple money makes no sense at all.

The assumption that the poeple depicted on the Guldgubber must be gods is based on Christian belief again. It says, that only gods were worthy enough to be depicted - but we do not know if the Migration Age people thought the same. Even if they are gods, they must not be neccessarily the Gods of the Viking Age. We do not know what the people of the Migration Age believed in, we can only speculate. So the conclusion to Odin, Freyr and Freyra is far fetched from the very beginning.

Here a new interpretation should be presented, which tries to interpretate the pictures on the Guldgubber. There are other circumstances that should be respected:

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On the doublegubber, attributes play only a minor role and only a few items include a beaker held between the couple or a plant (leek?) held similarly between them.

As there is no indication that any of the typical attributes of the male single gubber of the „princely“ or „parading“ figures or of the women’s attributes, we have to rely on the brachial gestures. There are three different types of doublegubber:

The position of the couple reminds one of a marriage or love scene. If we have a look at the Germanic marriges, we see, that there are three different types we know of: The first is the common munt marriage, where the woman is handed over in the munt of her husband. The second one is the so called Friedel-marriage, where man and woman are allowed to live together without a formal contract – it is more or less a love marriage. The third type is a sub-form of the so-called friedel-marriage, in which women are allowed to choose their husbands without the consent of a man wielding the munt over her, and at the same can keep their property without loosing her legal status even if she marries below her rank. However, in this type of marriage she seems to have forfeited some of her inheritance rights, unless she was a widow.

The first category, that it is to say where the man obviously holds the woman in some way or touches her with his hand, while she remains static and does not show any gesture whatsoever, might be identified with the classical munt marriage. Our reason for this interpretation is that the meaning of OHG munt was „hand, protection“, ON mund „hand, guardian“, ON mundr „bridal gift; dowry“, OE mund „hand, tutelage, bridal gift“ and that the protection and tutelage provided by formal marriage may have been depicted on the gubber by the somewhat exaggerated hand being protectively extended towards the female.

The one special case where the male touches the female’s chin shows otherwise the same formal position of the two partners, but this particular gesture in medieval iconography normally signifies love or affection (cf. the iconography of Hosea and Gomer in medieval art), but normally connected with marital love.

The second category, where the woman in some way grasps the man’s wrist nearest to the viewer, may be connected with the particular type of the medieval sub-form of Friedel-marriage, namely the “widow” marriage. We come to this conclusion as she is taking him, and therefore obviously being the active part and chooses him.

The third category, however, seems to me to show the marriage between to equal, consenting partners but without the formal ritual of conferring the munt from the bride’s father (or guardian) to the husband, as would have been the case in arranged marriages. This type of marriage would be typical for love matches and was perfectly legal, but the woman did not enter the munt (tutelage) of her husband, but rather had equal rights. Later, after Christianisation, this type of marriage was not considered fully legal by the church or at least of equal legal standing, but was nevertheless quite common. Medieval manuscripts show the distinction between this friedel-marriage and the formal arranged marriage iconographically by hugging and embracing in the first case and the formal way of joining the partners’ hands by a priest in the second case. So I consider this to be a normal Friedel-marriage.

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The second major group of guldgubber that offers itself for a non-mythological interpretation is the group of gubbers with depictions of men bearing the Sturzbecher type glass vessels. These often coloured glass vessels (mainly green and yellow) were produced in the Franconian empire during the Merovingian Age (5th – 8th centuries), especially along the Rhine and in the Black Forest. The name refers to the fact that the bottom of these vessels is round, so that they cannot be put down without being emptied beforehand. There are several different types of Sturzbecher, with cone-shaped ones varying with bell-shaped ones and very long tall glass beakers. The main types of these can all be found on the guldgubber. Archaeological finds in Scandinavia both from graves and great halls testify to the actual usage of these beakers in Scandinavia, although they all seem to have been imported from the continent.

The other attributes of the males with Sturzbecher type vessels vary: unidentified longitudinal objects and rings are the most common, but there usually is at least one other attribute to be found in connection with the beakers. As the drinking from the raised beaker is the only obvious common gesture to these depictions of males on guldgubber, we shall concentrate on them even though the identification of the other objects is far from certain.

Unfortunately, there are no comparable pictures of people drinking from any type of vessel in medieval legal illustrated manuscripts, and thus a simple comparison seems impossible at this stage. Despite this lack of illustrations, there is actually a medieval legal custom connected with formal drinking outside religious practice, namely the drinking to arrha.

The arrha was originally a sum of money paid out to the seller of an object, especially those of substantial value (land, houses, cattle, women), as a deposit in confirmation of the contract during or after the signing of the contract. It thus had a symbolical function in finalising the arrangement. It was increasingly converted into its value in form of a drink taken together by the seller and the buyer and thus took on the meaning of “formal drink to confirm a sale”. The custom is preserved right up to the present in the shape of the custom of “we shall drink to that” at a contract.

The fact that the depiction of a formal drink on the guldgubber – and the fact that an expensive imported glassbeaker is used throughout, points to a formal drink. Being connected at least one case with a ring shown on a free area of the picture may also point to a formal promise or oath. We should therefore consider the raised cup as some sort of confirmation of a contract, just like the arrha. But whether it referred to an actual sales contract between two humans, or to formal and symbolic transference of allegiance to a lord or even a deity, or whether it could simply confirm a votive oath is very hard to establish without further archaeological evidence or iconographical parallels.

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There are two kinds of gestures mainly found on the pictures of wraiths that have not been discussed in previous publications to any extend but have one thing in common, namely that their medieval iconographic counterparts are both identified as gestures of refusal and incapability. One of them is by far more common on the guldgubber, namely the outstrechted arms parallel to the body with palms forward and with a greatly exaggerated size of hands. The other, more common in medieval usage, is a person clutching his right wrist with his left hand; for this gesture I have only three examples on gubber. For a further related gesture of refusal, namely the arms crossed on the chest, the gubber provide only a single imprint from Bornholm.

The wide spread group of wraiths on guldgubber shown with large hands and palm forward are typical for Bornholm. They have so far escaped scholarly notice as a separate group and have partly been identified as dancers; the few examples published have been explained as dancers mainly on the grounds of the position of the feet, which seems as if they are standing on tiptoe. There is however no indication of movement in these depictions and the stiffness of the posture speaks another language alltogether. These pictures are difficult to explain mainly because of their lack of clothing and other attributes, except a golden collar as explained above.

This type of posture is unknown from bracteates and contemporary material and can be only explained by medieval parallels. In medieval iconography, parallel arms and flat palms are found in two different contexts, namely as a sign of incapacity due to death on the one hand and as a gesture of refusal on the other hand. Both types of gestures are found in legal texts and should therefore be seen to have predominantly legal relevance, although their use is not limited to legal texts alone.

The most striking parallel to the wraiths on the guldgubber can be found in the illustrations of the Heidelberg manuscript of the Sachsenspiegel, where dead persons are presented in that posture throughout. The first consequence to be drawn from this medieval iconography is that one should view the wraiths in a horizontal position rather than upright. In this way, the strange position of their feet is logically explained as the natural position of a lying person. This explaination is far more in keeping with the stiff posture of the figure as a wohle and renders the interpretation of the wraiths as dancers totally obsolete. The fact that these wraiths are not only depicted as reclining, but also with their palms upward, naked and without detailed facial features makes an interpretation as dead persons by far the most likely. It is a natural consequence that dead persons are shown with a gesture of refusal or incapability. It is not possible from this state of investigation to say why some of the wraiths are shown with their eyes iconographically stressed and why some of them have no facial features at all, unless these are iconographical variants to the depiction of the dead. However, in medieval iconography the gesture of incapacity symbolised by parallel arms and outstrechted palms is not only limited to dead persons or in one case applied to a shadow in the Heidelberg Sachsenspiegel, and therefore we might assume that those wraiths are dead or propably even shadows like a soul. It may be that the iconographical differences mark different states of a human being.

The other, less common, gesture of incapacity found on the guldgubber, namely the clutching of one wrist with the other hand, has nothing to do with dead people at all in medieval iconography, but severely injured ones, as shown in the Sachsenspiegel. In the manuscript illustrations of the Sachsenspiegel it signifies refusal of all kinds and all classes including women and children, simply shown to be unwilling or incapable of fullfilling a task. In general iconography, especial religious contexts, the meaning of the refusal can be extended from simple inability to the stressing of a dramatic situation or the expression of intense pain. As can be seen from the obvious exaggeration of iconographical elements as hands, eyes and foot position on the gubber of the wraith type, it must have been their intention to stress the message conveyed by the picture. As in medieval iconography the two afore mentioned types of gesture of incapacity are very common and absolutely clear in their meaning, it seems likely that such an emphasis on the relevant iconographic details must point to a similar meaning in the Merovingian Age gold foil pictures. However, it is not at this stage possible to tell if all these pictures actually show dead people or whether it is possible that we are confronted with other types of refusal or incapacity as in the medieval manuscripts.

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These three examples given may serve as a preliminary indication that guldgubber cannot (only?) be seen as mythological pictures. It can hardly be disputed that at least some iconographical details strongly resemble medieval legal gestures and may thus have to be seen at least partly in a legal, or possibly legal-ritualistic, context. Though the time gap is quite distinctive from the Merovingian-Age to the Sachsenspiegel, one still may draw conclusions from the comparisons, as law gestures tend to be very conservative and stay that way for a long time.

At this stage I am not able to prove whether this legal context has to be seen in a purely secular setting or whether it is possible to combine the older mythological interpretations in the wider sense of the words (i.e. seeing the anthropomorphic beings on the guldgubber as mythological persons, if not necessarily particular named gods) with my new findings on the legal background of the iconography. The fact, however, that outside Bornholm the guldgubber were deposited in an either aristocratic and/or religious setting of the great halls, together with the precious material of guldgubber alone points towards an exclusive or élitiste usage of the little pictures, seems to assign to them a role in important legal transactions, whether these were mainly religious or secular, even dynastic in nature.

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