ABSTRACT
Besides the seven medallions discovered in Scandinavia, thirteen so-called 'barbarian' medallion imitations have been found in Scandinavia, including one from Denmark, seven from Norway, and five from Sweden. Over one thousand bracteates have been found, mostly in southern Scandinavia but also distributed across Europe from England to Hungary. Unlike medallions and their imitations that were struck from both sides simultaneously, bracteates were made by means of a simpler one-sided stamping technique, perhaps reflecting what Greg Woolf calls a 'technology gap' that was experienced in the provinces when local artisans aspired to produce Roman-type artefacts. Although the pictures on Roman medallions were at least superficially emulated on Scandinavian bracteates, the meaning of the images has been interpreted largely on the basis of later sources from outside the Roman world. Aleksander Bursche describes medallions and coins as imperial payments to barbarian leaders who had served in the Roman auxiliary troops.
