This paper discusses Late Iron Age gold foil figures from Scandinavia. The figures can be described as tiny humanoid beings stamped on very thin gold foil. They date to c. AD 550–800, and are commonly interpreted in representationalist ways, and as being symbols. By contrast, this paper starts from the assumption that art and imagery are simultaneously material, affective and emergent. As a consequence the gold foil figures are seen as to be continuously in the making, where Karen Barad’s concepts of intra-action and agential realist ontology are especially helpful to illuminate the open-ended and generative character of the figures.