Bracteate
A
bracteate (from the
Latin bractea, a thin piece of metal) is a flat, thin, single-sided
gold coin produced in
Northern Europe predominantly during the
Migration Period of the
Germanic Iron Age (in Sweden this includes the
Vendel era), but the name is also used for later produced coins of
silver produced in
central Europe during the early
Middle Ages. There are also described piece's from the Hun caucases and the Hunnic invasion of India, in the style of Gupta and Roman coinage.
Gold bracteates commonly denote a certain type of jewelry, made mainly in the 5th to 7th century AD, represented by some spectacular gold specimens. Pierced or fitted with an eye, most were intended to be worn suspended by a string around the neck, supposedly as an
amulet (
alu). The bracteates are believed to have started as one-sided copies of Roman
coins but soon developed into jewelry. The native
proto-Norse term, from the evidence of the
Tjurkö bracteate inscription, appears to have been
walha-kurn, "
Welsh (i.e. Roman) grain (for coin)".
The motifs are commonly those of
Norse mythology and are believed to be Norse pagan
icons for protection or divination. For this reason the bracteates are a target of iconographic studies by scholars interested in Norse belief systems. Several bracteates also feature
runic alphabet inscriptions (a total of 133 inscriptions on bracteates are known, amounting to more than a third of the entire
Elder Futhark corpus). The study of migration period bracteates are considered an interdisciplinary field of
Germanic art,
Norse art,
numismatics,
archaeology,
iconography,
Norse mythology and
runology.
Typology
The typology for bracteates divides them into several letter-named categories, a system introduced in a
1855 treatise by the Danish numismatist
Christian Jürgensen Thomsen named
Om Guldbracteatene og Bracteaternes tidligeste Brug som Mynt and finally defined formally by the Swedish numismatist
Oscar Montelius in his
1869 treatise
Från jernåldern:
*A-bracteates (appr. 87 specimens): showing the face of a human, modeled after antique imperial coins
*B-bracteates (appr. 88 specimens): one to three human figures in standing, sitting or kneeling positions, often accompanied by animals
*C-bracteates (best represented, by appr. 400 specimens): showing a male's head above a quadruped, often interpreted as the Norse god
Odin*D-bracteates (appr. 336 specimens): showing several animals
*E-bracteates (appr. 280 specimens): showing an animal
triskele under a circular feature
*F-bracteates (appr. 14 specimens): as a subgroup of the D-bracteates, showing an imaginary animal
*M-bracteates (appr. 17 specimens): imitations of Roman imperial bust-medallions
Corpus
More than 1,200 bracteates are known in total. Of these, 135 (ca. 11%) bear
Elder Futhark inscriptions.
[often very short; the most notable inscriptions are found on the Seeland-II-C, Vadstena and Tjurkö bracteates. See also list of Danish bracteates with runic inscriptions.]The German
Karl Hauck, archaeologist
Morten Axboe and runologist
Klaus Düwel have worked since the
1960s to create a complete corpus of the early Germanic bracteates from the migration period, complete with large scale photographs and drawings. This has been published in three volumes in German named
Die Goldbrakteaten der Völkerwanderungszeit. Ikonographischer Katalog.
Silver bracteates are different from the migration period bracteates and were the main type of coin minted in German-speaking areas, with the exception of the
Rhineland, beginning at around
1130 in
Saxony and
Thuringia and were taken out of circulation at about
1520. In some
cantons of Switzerland, bracteate-like
rappen,
heller, and
angster were produced during the 18th century.
Medieval silver bracteates may be large, but most are about 15 millimeters across and weigh about 1 gram.
These coins were made by the invading
Hunnic tribes as they entered India, from 635 ad they seen to have issued gold coins to the weight of half a gram to one gram in the style of
Gupta and
Roman coinage.
*The most complete corpus of gold bracteates:
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*Hauck, K., 1970: Goldbrakteaten aus Sievern. Spätantike Amulett-Bilder der "Dania Saxonica" und die Sachsen-"Origo" bei Widukind von Corvey, München (Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften 1).
*Starkey, K., 1999: Imagining an early Odin. Gold bracteates as visual evidence?, Scandinavian studies. The journal of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study 71-4 (1999), 373-392.
*Simek, R., 2003: Religion und Mythologie der Germanen, Darmstadt.
*
Era of the Great Migrations, 375 BC - 550 AD, Bracteate*
©Canterbury Archaeological Trust Ltd*
Hunnic bracteates*
Pfennig or bracteate, 0.89 g, silver, from Halberstadt, around 1200*
Gold Bracteates - Fake?*
Hoards from the Roman Iron Age â€" Early Viking Age*
Evidence of the Jutes BBC
