Iron Age Myth and Materiality: An Archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400-1000 by Hedeager Lotte

Author:Hedeager, Lotte [Hedeager, Lotte]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2011-04-28T16:00:00+00:00

Gold in the Old Norse sources

In Volsunga Saga, treasures of gold generate the greed that constitutes the main story line. In Old Norse sources, gold and gold treasures regularly play a central role in the construction of stories. Time and again we meet the devastating greed for gold as an archetypal theme in myths and stories; here and in other heroic tales, such as Beowulf, Saxo's Gesta Danorum and Snorri's Ynglinga Saga, the highly ritualised competitive gift-giving system endows the gold with authority and power (Mauss 1990: 1–7, 60–3; Enright 1996; Herschend 1998; Bazelmans 1999, 2000; Härke 2000b). Gold itself is personified in the name Gullveig, which means ‘golden-drink, golden-intoxication’ or ‘golden-power’; altogether, it implies a ‘personified greed for gold’.13 Gold was a potent vehicle of cultural values and it could function as a medium of power, of art, and of exchange (Herbert 1984: 301–2). The amount of gold treasures from the fifth century AD confirms this general idea.

The ‘Golden Age’ of Scandinavia is the Migration Period. Immense quantities of gold were deposited in the fifth and sixth centuries, in the course of only a few generations.14 The written sources, whether the Old Norse ones or texts from continental early medieval Europe, convey the impression that gift-giving was the crucial instrument in creating and upholding political alliances. Movable wealth items with strong symbolic connotations were the most prestigious gifts in this highly ritualised process (Bazelmans 1999, 2000; Le Jan 2000; Enright 1996; Herschend 1998). Much gold and silver, and many swords and other prestige goods, must have circulated as gifts without leaving any traces in the archaeological record (cf. Theuws and Alkemade 2000). However, if the strategy of gift-giving included an element of competitive display, it was more likely to play a central role in political strategies. In such cases we should expect to find evidence of the ritualised use of prestige goods in hoards and in graves (Barrett et al. 1991: 240).

According to the early written sources, gold treasures and their powerful enchantments were associated with members of the upper social stratum. How-ever, treasure legends preserved in folklore from later periods feature people of a lower social standing. These later tales contain an element of ludicrousness never encountered in the Scandinavian legends from the Early Middle Ages and the Late Iron Age, where the value of the treasures is bound up with the notion of faith. Gold represented its owner's honour and riches, and as such it was equivalent to happiness. Stealing a treasure not only meant robbing someone of his riches, but also to steal his good fortune, and thus condemned him to a dismal fate. For this reason, those who managed to steal a treasure were struck by dire punishments (Zachrisson 1998).

To sum up, objects of gold were central to political strategies primarily because such treasures had been acquired by honourable and daring acts performed in far-away places. In the Late Iron Age and Early Middle Ages, items of gold represented the honour and respectability of their owner.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.