Among the most characteristic artefacts of the Viking Age (c. 800–1050 CE) are the pairs of oval brooches. They have come to be regarded as essential parts of female Scandinavian costume, and in the various overseas settlements, their discovery is seen as evidence for the presence of Scandinavian women. The oval brooches as a group have been seen as communicators of female gender and Scandinavian ethnicity, but the individual brooches have received less attention. This chapter examines the brooches discovered in Britain, Ireland, and Iceland more closely, demonstrating that they were not always used as matching sets. It presents a number of non-matching brooches, single brooches, and brooch fragments. Although the oval brooches were made as matching sets and were normally also deposited as such in graves, the examples presented demonstrate variations in use and perhaps also in meaning. These variations highlight the oval brooches as more than parts of a set; they are individual objects with distinct life histories. By examining the oval brooches in detail as well as the context in which they were discovered, this chapter addresses the question: How and why were the pairs split apart, and how do they function in their new context?