Rune Stones and Honourable Wounds: The Gothic Idea in Two Eighteenth-Century Swedish Medals

Abstract

This paper discusses Northern European antiquity as perceived in Sweden during the Age of Liberty (1720-1771). Two unique medals presented to wounded participants in battles of the Pomeranian war are used as points of departure. The paper argues that the general perception (as opposed to specialist discourse) of Swedish antiquity in this period was based on conceptions of collective past identities, characteristics and practices, rather than specific individuals or events. This perception should be understood as a «networked idea», as defined by Shane Butler: «… what no single text has shown us, but which is seen all the same as residing in the tradition itself…». It is here designated «the Gothic idea», as the Gothic heritage was dominant among its sources. It was closely associated with the harsh natural conditions of the north, which were supposed to produce courageous and war-like inhabitants. Not least in martial and patriotic contexts, the Gothic idea was thus part of masculine self-understanding. It was also referenced in the literary and social culture of the time. However, it was difficult to represent and was thus disproportionally absent from visual and material culture. Rune stones were virtually the only type of object that was both widely familiar and associated with Swedish antiquity. Valued as literary sources, they were alien to eighteenth-century taste, but their depiction on the two medals discussed in this paper demonstrate that, on apparently rare occasions, rune stones were used to visually reference the Gothic idea. Their presence situated both givers and receivers of the medals within a living idea of northern antiquity that had been developed for several centuries (indeed, since antiquity) and, for better and worse, continues to evolve to this day. The development of an iconography that goes far beyond rune stones is part of this later story.