New gold foil “old man” found in Norway

A rare Nordic Iron Age “gold man,” a tiny piece of gold foil stamped with the image of a man and a woman, has been discovered in southwestern Norway. It dates to between 550 A.D. and the beginning of the Viking age in 793 A.D. The piece was discovered by metal detectorist Kjetil Særheim on his family farm in Klepp. It is just 1cm (.4 inches) long and made of such thin foil that Særheim was surprised that it even registered on the detector.

Gullgubbe (literally “gold little old man”) have typically been found at important centers of power in Scandinavia. Most of the 3600 or so known examples have been found in Denmark. Only about 50 have been found in Norway, and this is the first one discovered in the southwestern Rogaland province in 127 years.

They often appear in connection with hall buildings, and archaeologists believe they were laid down as part of religious rituals.

“We believe they were used in ritual contexts, and that they were laid down as sacrifices in these hall buildings,” says [Sigmund Oehrl, professor of archaeology at the Archaeological Museum at the University of Stavanger].

In 1897, a total of 16 such “golden men” were found at Hauge in Klepp, not far from this latest discovery.

The Hauge gold men were unearthed by a farmer during agricultural work, so the details about the find site are unknown. The new discovery in Klepp gives archaeologists a precise find site close to the 19th century finds, a useful departure point for further research. The area is already recognized as archaeologically significant because several burial mounds and a ring-shaped courtyard have been found there. The gold man may indicate there was a large hall or god’s court at the site as well, which would have given it great cultural importance in Nordic Iron Age.

The 16 gold men found in Hauge were transferred to the University Museum in Bergen because there was no museum in Stavanger yet in the late 19th century. The Klepp gold man will therefore be the first one in the possession of the museum closest to where they were found.

* This article was originally published here