This is a box-shaped bronze brooch that is currently held in the Walters Art Museum¹. This box-shaped brooch is thought to have been made between 9th and mid-11th centuries in Burgundy, France, but it was discovered in Boda, Sweden. This suggests that this brooch might have been a trading good, or an ornament captured during battle and brought to North. It is made of bronze. This suggests that it was not of exceptionally high economic value, but rather it was of general use. Although its impressive craftsmanship seems to be primarily a stylistic choice, it also gives the owner the chance to use it as a box to keep small objects in such as other types of ornaments, coins, and holy relics. This tells us about more than just the types of ornaments that the Norse used: it tells us about the clothing style of the Norse of the era. It is an important historical piece in a deductive approach to the clothing style of the time. In other words, we can make deductions about the types of clothing in the Viking Era based on the functions of this brooche in clothing. Such deductions are vital, becuase most pieces of clothing have been degraded or fully lost since the Viking Age, but this brooch helps us construct the pieces of clothing of that time almost to a full extent.
The function of this brooch, which is provided by the box-shape structure, also matches the consensus that the Norse tended to be efficient in utilizing their goods with a fairly high level of practical use as seen in examples of other items such as arm rings and neck rings used as savings accounts. To be more spesific, the function of this brooch in clothing is mainly to hold several pieces of a cloth together. The clothing style of the Viking Age involved several-piece clothes, which needed to be put together to complete a whole and functional dress². This brooch was vital in holding these different pieces of an attire together.
This box-shaped brooch tells us a good amount of information about different aspects of Norse culture: it gives us an insight to the type of clothing that they had, and also to their efficient way of making the most use out of their items.

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