As the sword is the most characteristic object among the grave-goods of the man, the brooch is also the most characteristic object among the grave-goods of the woman. The brooch, which is constantly found in these interments in Norway, is a most peculiar ornament. It is always of brass, massive, oval, and bowl-shaped in form, and is distinguished from all other brooches that are known, not only of this, but of every other area and every other time, by the fact that it is an article of personal adornment which (though as capable of being used singly as any other form of fibula might be), is almost never found singly, but constantly occurs in pairs—the one being usually an almost exact duplicate of the other. This singular type of brooch is the special ornament of the female dress which prevailed in Norway during the last three centuries of their heathen period.[21] It differs entirely from the types that preceded and succeeded it; and it differs as completely from the types of the later Iron Age in all other European countries. ----- Footnote 21: For this reason the geographical distribution of these brooches marks the range of the Scandinavian conquests of the ninth and tenth centuries. In Iceland, in Russian Livonia, in Normandy, in England, in Ireland, and on our own shores in Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, and Sutherland, and in the Hebrides, including even the remote St. Kilda, their presence attests the historical fact of the Viking settlements from Norway. But the area in which they are specially abundant, of course, is in Scandinavia itself. I find on comparing the different records that there are now upwards of five hundred of them known in Norway. When we add the number known in Sweden, which exceeds four hundred, and those of Denmark, which only amount to thirty-eight, we have a gross total of nearly a thousand, of which the larger portion are from Norway. No archæological period in any country is marked by such a distinctly peculiar and characteristic type. -----