The subject of this research is the use of jewellery (dress-accessories) and costume for the display of cultural and ethnic identity in the period of c. AD 400–650/700: in other words, the Migration Period and the beginning of the Merovingian Period in the Norwegian archaeological scheme. The selected ranges of jewellery which will be examined come from Scandinavia, with a predominance of finds from what is now Norway (cf. Ch. 4.1.3).1 One of the most characteristic features of Scandinavian jewellery from this period is that the artefacts are closely related to counterparts from the same date found in other parts of Europe. Several of the same types of jew-ellery are found concentrated in an extensive area around the North Sea, in England and the northern Continent, while also occurring more diffusely to the south in Germany. The corpus of jewellery thus links Scandinavia to a broader European zone. The research that has been undertaken on the jewellery in Scandinavia has, however, differed in various ways from that undertaken elsewhere in Europe. While emphasis has generally been placed on the ethnic associations of the jewellery in Continental and Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, attributing the forms to specific historically attested peoples, Scandinavian scholarship and research have more usually focused on the social status of those who wore the jewellery, on cultural contacts and similar issues.