The thesis project "Rulers in life and death. Social exclusivities and power strategies in the Lake Vänern region during the Late Iron Age" attempts to study and capture how social elites during the Vendelian and Viking periods achieved and maintained positions of power in the Lake Vänern region, but also in the rest of Scandinavia. Between 2000 and 2012, annual excavations were carried out as part of the Sunnerby archaeological research project on an island in Lake Vänern in Västergötland. Sunnerby's bog turned out to have a fantastic history, including a magnificent chieftain's burial in a large mound and a large farm with a hall building. Large mounds and large farm complexes with halls are the categories of archaeological evidence that form the starting points of the thesis. The material traces of contemporary events constitute the main source material, but written material (runic inscriptions, Ynglingatal and Beowulf) is also analyzed based on a practice-oriented and verb-oriented analysis method. The aim is thus to study how the leading social elites, through specific actions, a certain lifestyle and with the help of socially exclusive things, strategically operated in the socio-political arena, how they created and used an ideology of domination and expressed and maintained (negotiated, confirmed and renegotiated) power in a time before the formation of kingdoms and established royal powers.