Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hästoffer i den fornnordiska religionen. Jag kommer att koncentrera innehållet i undersökningen kring tiden för yngre järnålder: folkvandringstid (år 400 ? 550), Vendeltid (år 550 ? 800) och vikingatid (år 800 ? 1060). I vissa fall kan exemplen vara från både tidigare och senare tid än den avsedda. Detta material kan ändå vara relevant att ha med i sammanhanget för att få en bred inblick i offrandet av hästar i nordisk, förkristen sed.

When the Iron spirals investigated in this paper saw the light again no one looked at them as nothing more than decoration. It was first during the 2011 excavation in Old Uppsala that the symbolism of the items no longer could be ignored. The spirals of Old Uppsala lay along the walls of the great hall, which stood upon one of the human constructed plateaus in the area. The hall had been burned down and then cleared of all lumber. Then the iron spirals had been placed in the positions and then everything was sealed with a layer of clay.A study of the artifact began with the purpose to contextualize and interpret the iron spiral.

This paper deals with the connection between food and burial habits during the late Iron Age in present-day Sweden. The archaeological material used in the study consists of 16 potsherds from a burial site at Alsike hage, Alsike parish, in the province of Uppland in east-central Sweden. On these potsherds have been conducted FTIR- and GCMS-analyses, in order to see what types of food have been deposited in the burials. Furthermore, the result of the GCMS-analyses has been compared to contemporary material from both burial sites and settlement sites, in order to establish whether differences between the compared materials exist. The analyses show that there are differences between the material from burial sites compared with the material from settlement sites, but not any particular differences between the material from different burial sites.

Fish-head pendants are one of the characteristic Gotlandic Late Iron Age artefacts. This object has been rather neglected and mainly considered as an insignificant embellishment, normally worn as a neck-collar and seen as an artefact include in the typical Gotlandic set of female jewellery.The fact that the fish-head pendant has a very long life span, which stretches from grave-finds in the Early Vendel Age to hoards in Viking Age as well as secondary usage as brooches in the Early Middle Ages, makes the artefact an excellent starting point for discussions on social practices and change through material culture. It's shown in this study that, contrary to previous beliefs, the normal usages for fish-head pendants is as solitary pendants and not as neck-collars. Neck-collars is shown to have an intricate relation to inhumations for young individuals, whereas solitary pendants are found in cremation deposits for adult individuals, something that relates to a fixed social practice mainly in the period 700-900 AD and that develops from the cremation funeral practice. This particular social practice relates to aspects of attraction and protection and continues in to the 10th century outside of funeral structures, which is shown by the composition of hoard-finds from the 10th century, but is totally absent when the pendants is given a secondary usage as brooches in the end of the 11th and beginning of the 12th century.