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How the Vikings Shaped Ireland
Arriving as raiders in the late 8th century, Vikings from Norway came to Ireland to raid for loot and captives. Vikings in Ireland intensified their attacks over the 9th and 10th centuries, and the newcomers found themselves fighting alongside, against, and for the native Irish kings.
While the role that the Vikings played in Irish politics changed between the 8th and 12th centuries, they were to have a profound impact on Ireland’s socio-economic and cultural makeup. Throughout this period they were known as “foreigners,” “heathens,” and, increasingly, “Hiberno-Norse” (Irish-Norse), or Gall-Gaedhil. The change in terminology is significant, for it points to a cultural fusion almost unparalleled in importance.
The Arrival of the Vikings
A modern reconstruction of Skuldelev 2, a Viking ship built in Ireland in the 11th century and sunk in Roskilde harbor. Source: Vikingeskibsmuseet
The first Viking raid in Ireland is recorded by the Annals of Ulster under the year 795, just two years after their debut raid on Lindisfarne in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria. The Annals record “The burning of Rechru by the heathens” and that “Scí was overwhelmed and laid waste.” It is generally agreed that Rechru refers to Rathlin Island, off the north coast of Ireland, which the Vikings had clearly hit in conjunction with churches and settlements on the Isle of Skye.
From this point, annals record periodic raids on settlements and churches on the Irish coast. These early raids seem to have been on a fairly small scale, perhaps consisting of groups of no more than a few ships. When intercepted by Irish kings, as they were in 811 and 812 in Ulster and Munster respectively, these raiding parties were defeated and driven off with relative ease.
The Tara Brooch, 7th-8th century CE. Source: Wikimedia Commons
The target of these raids, initially, seems to have been the moveable wealth stored in Irish monasteries. There is archaeological evidence to suggest that Irish metalwork found its way to Scandinavia. One such case is an ornamental bronze bucket which could have been made in Ireland or Scotland and was found in a Viking-age grave in northern Norway. Another example is a bronze mount, made in Ireland, which was found in a grave containing the remains of a woman in Denmark. The mount may have been part of a reliquary, and we know from the Annals of Ulster that these precious objects were indeed a target for Viking raiders, who broke into the monastery of Bangor in 824 and “shook the relics of Comgall from their shrine.”
Significantly, both of these objects were made of bronze, an alloy that would have been quite pointless to melt down. Any silver objects looted by the Vikings most likely were melted down soon thereafter and recast into coins, ingots, or jewelry of Scandinavian design. Since silver coinage was absent from pre-Viking Ireland, and indeed silver was reserved only for very high-status items such as the Tara Brooch, it may be that the Vikings found relatively slim pickings in this regard.
From Raiding to Warfare
The Oseberg Ship, surviving Viking ship burial. Source: Wikimedia Commons
The years after 821 saw a palpable intensification of Viking activity in Ireland. This is reflected chiefly in the raids carried out on larger, more organized churches with their own militias, such as at Bangor in 824 and Armagh in 832, which they plundered “three times in one month.”
In 837, two fleets of 60 ships appeared on the rivers Boyne and Liffey and defeated the Uí Néill kings, among the most powerful potentates in Ireland, in a battle in which “an uncounted number” were killed. The penetration of Viking fleets along Ireland’s major riverine routes suggests a greater level of organization and the presence of more powerful leaders than during earlier Viking raids.
These more formidable Viking fleets were accompanied by a concomitant mutation in the nature of the economic activity underpinning Viking raids. The Vikings no longer seem to have been so interested in looting moveable wealth from Irish churches, but rather in slave-taking. The Annals of Ulster records under the year 836 that “The first prey was taken by the heathens from southern Brega,” and that the Vikings “led away very many captive.”
Viking slave exhibit, Dublinia, photo by Szarles. Source: Flickr
Raiding and trading formed a uniquely symbiotic relationship in the Viking-age psyche. One of the most famous travelers from the Islamic world, Ibn Fadlan, writing in the early 10th century, describes seeing the Varangian Rus’ (another word for Swedish Vikings) in the east, on the Volga selling slaves. These were in all likelihood procured from the subject peoples of the Rus’. We also have evidence from the early 11th century Warner of Rouen, who wrote a cautionary tale about an immoral Irish poet called Moriuht, who is captured by Vikings and sold as a slave around the British Isles and the Rhineland.
Finds of iron chains from the Viking Age corroborate these sobering textual references to slave trading. It is not unlikely that slaves taken in raids on monasteries and towns in Ireland found themselves some months later serving masters in the Islamic east, or throughout central Europe.
The Establishment of Longphuirt in Ireland
Dublin as a longphort. Source: Vikingeskibsmuseet
The year 841 is perhaps one of the most important in the history of Ireland, although few would recognize it as such. Under this year, the Annals of Ulster recount that “There was a naval camp at Duiblinn from which the Laigin and the Uí Néill were plundered, both states and churches, as far as Sliab Bladma.” This “Duiblinn,” situated on the river Liffey at or near the site of modern Dublin, was established initially as a longphort (pl. longphuirt), or a base for staying over the winter in preparation for the next year’s campaigning.
Several other longphuirt were established over the course of the 9th and 10th centuries, notably at the sites of the later towns of Waterford and Limerick. There were also other longphuirt founded at sites that have all but faded into obscurity, such as the one at Linn Duachaill, near the modern village of Annagassan.
The establishment of permanent footholds on Irish soil raised the question of political organization. Although there had been powerful fleets of Vikings in Ireland since the 830s, the establishment of longphuirt seems to have been carried out by individual bands of Vikings with diverse origins.
The Annals of Ulster recount, under the year 849, how “A naval expedition of seven score ships of adherents of the king of the foreigners came to exact obedience from the foreigners who were in Ireland before them, and afterwards they caused confusion in the whole country.” A further entry, under 851, further describes how “The dark heathens came to Áth Cliath (Dublin), made a great slaughter of the fair-haired foreigners, and plundered the naval encampment, both people and property.”
Viking battle attire, photo by Hans Splinter. Source: Flickr
Irish annals are notoriously difficult to deal with, and there is thus a degree of ambiguity as to who the various groups of Vikings at play here were. The term “dark heathens,” Dubgaill, presumably refers to a group of Danish Vikings, latecomers to the Irish political scene. The “fair-haired foreigners,” or Finngenti, are almost certainly Vikings from Norway, or from the Norse polities in the western Isles.
The most likely interpretation is that “the king of the foreigners,” often interpreted as a Norse king based in the western seaboard of Scotland, attempted to establish a measure of authority over the disparate Viking groups in Ireland with a large force. A second group of Vikings with Danish origins then supplanted the Hiberno-Norse king’s representatives a mere two years later.
It is shortly after this point that we get the first references to a Viking leader whose descendants were to dominate the Irish seaboard for the next 300 years. Ímar, who may or may not have been identical to the quasi-historical Ivar “the Boneless,” appears in the Norse sagas as the son of Ragnar Lothbrok, and arrived with or shortly after his brother Amlaíb, who is described by the Annals of Ulster as the “son of the king of Lochlann.” Their arrival seems to have constituted the consolidation of political authority under one dynasty. It seems that these men were from the ranks of the Finngenti. However, since the term “Lochlann” can refer in the Irish annals either to Scandinavia or to the Vikings on the western seaboard of Scotland, who faced their own internal struggles, it is difficult to know with certainty to which ethnic group that dynasty belonged.
A family tree of the early Uí Ímar. Source: Wikimedia Commons
The establishment of longphuirt, and the consolidation of political authority in the hands of a single group of Vikings, went hand in hand with efforts by the Vikings to carve out their own polities within Ireland. Viking leaders often had to ally themselves with other Irish kings, usually ambitious sub-kings who wished to rid themselves of their overlord, in order to face down the powerful native Irish potentates.
The Annals of Ulster recounts how, in the year 861, “Mide was invaded by Áed son of Niall with foreigners.” Áed Findliath, king of the northern Uí Néill, sought to claim the kingship of Tara from the Irish High King, Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill, and it is likely that the Vikings of Dublin and other longphuirt across Ireland joined with him to gain some recognition of their territorial claims.
By the end of the 9th century, it appears that the Vikings were able to establish several settlements on the site of what had been temporary bases known as longphuirt. Viking kings carved out territories around their settlements, the most important of which was Fine Gall, the hinterland surrounding Dublin. These served to supply the burgeoning Norse settlements which were to become the first “towns” in Ireland during the following century.
Viking-Age Dublin
The Cuerdale Hoard, 10th century. Source: The British Museum
Although technically founded in 841, the Hiberno-Norse were not to found a town, as such, at Dublin for almost another century. Although united under the leadership of ímar and his brother Amlaíb for a time, the ruling dynasty was wracked after their deaths in 873 and 874 by internecine disputes that enabled the native Irish, under the leadership of the kings of Brega and the Laigin (Leinster), to drive the Vikings out of Dublin in 902.
The Cuerdale Hoard, the most magnificent Viking Age treasure ever discovered, is usually dated to this period. Buried in Lancashire, facing Dublin from across the Irish Sea, it perhaps represents all or part of the moveable wealth that fleeing Vikings were able to save from the settlement as it was overrun by native Irish levies. The hoard consists of more than 8,000 items and comprises coins, ingots, and hack silver. Even if this were taken to be the entire wealth of the Dublin Vikings, it attests to burgeoning trade that caused a major capital inflow of silver to Ireland.
The Vikings of Dublin were to fight across northern England, the Scottish lowlands, and Man until in 917. Ragnall, one of the grandsons of Ímar, returned with his kinsman Sihtric Cáech to Ireland, whereupon they attacked the Norse settlement at Waterford and the coast of Leinster. Ragnall’s arrival on the Irish political scene, incidentally, was to set up a new political axis across the Irish Sea, encompassing both the Viking settlements in Ireland and the kingdom of York.
The re-establishment of Dublin, and its development into a more defensible and permanent settlement, can also be dated to this period.
Silver penny, minted in Dublin, reign Sihtric III (d. 1042). Source: The British Museum
Excavations at Wood Quay and Fishamble Street have uncovered the remains of what seems to have been a dense settlement pattern in Viking Age Dublin. Houses were of regular size and shape, consisting in the case of the so-called Fishamble Street “Type 1” dwellings of a central aisle that contained the hearth, with areas on either side for housework and sleeping. Significantly, longhouses of the type which are so characteristic of high-status settlements and central places in Scandinavia are totally absent from Dublin, and indeed from all other Viking towns in Ireland.
There is also evidence of earthwork defenses around the inland perimeter of the town, dating from the Viking Age. Regular planning and defensive fortifications are good incidental evidence of a high level of political organization since Dublin’s rulers were able to dictate the layout of the city and marshal the labor necessary to embark on large-scale building projects.
Dublin also seems to have been a significant center for manufacturing goods. Excavations from the city show that the area around modern-day Essex Street was a particular center for manufacturing, and evidence has been found for work in bone, antler and ivory, metalworking, leatherworking, shipbuilding, and textile production.
The city was home to a mint from around 997, set up under the auspices of the king of Dublin at the time, Sihtric “Silkbeard.” Coins bearing his name, and copying exemplars from Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Danish England, are found in increasing numbers from this date.
Dalkey Island, photo by Majestic Lukas. Source: Unsplash
References to it in the written and material records suggest that slave trading may have been one of the most important economic activities in Dublin during the 9th and 10th centuries. The Hiberno-Norse of Dublin raided for slaves on both sides of the Irish Sea littoral, and there is evidence to suggest that Dalkey Island, some 10 miles south of Dublin, was used as a holding compound for slaves. The Annals of the Four Masters describe how, in 938, an Irish abbot was drowned here by the Vikings whilst trying to escape captivity with the treasures of his church.
By the end of the 10th century, Dublin had become an established Viking town. The development of manufacturing, a regular street pattern, and its incorporation within a lucrative long-distance trade network, while hardly making Dublin a truly “urban” settlement in the modern sense of the word, certainly marked it out from the agrarian, cattle-based society around it.
The distinctiveness of Dublin, as well as its rival Viking towns in Waterford and Limerick, made it a target for native Irish kings who would ultimately be responsible for integrating these “urban” islands into the political community at large.
The Uí Ímar, the Irish and the Anglo-Saxons
A map of Irish kingdoms c. 900. Source: Wikimedia Commons
The first half of the 10th century saw the Hiberno-Norse of Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick insert themselves into Irish politics much as they had during the preceding century. They met with immediate success in 919 when, according to the Annals of Ulster, they defeated the king of Tara, Niall Glúndub, in battle and slew him. They were also active in Ulster during the 920s, conducting systematic raids and attempting to establish a Viking kingdom there before being defeated in 926 by Muirchertach mac Néill, king of Aileach.
The 930s saw Gofraid and his son Amlaíb busying themselves with political events on both sides of the Irish Sea. Amlaíb fought and defeated the rival Limerick dynasty who sought to supplant him in Dublin. He was to have less success against the Anglo-Saxons at the famous Battle of Brunanburh in 937, at which Amlaíb, allied with the kings of Scotland and Strathclyde, was defeated by King Æthelstan.
Amlaíb mac Gofraid, and his kinsman and successor Amlaíb Cuarán, would contest the kingship of York with the Anglo-Saxon kings for several years thereafter until the Hiberno-Norse were expelled from Northumbria for good in 952.
Unifier of England, Aethelstan, presenting a book to Saint Cuthbert, c. 930. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Far from a source of strength, it could be argued that the Dublin-York axis served to weaken the Norse kings of Dublin. While resources from Dublin helped them to stake a claim in Northumbria, the determination of Æthelstan and his heirs to keep the Uí Ímar out of England meant that they could establish no firm foothold there.
Their absence from Ireland, however, would sap the strength of the Uí Imar’s hold on Dublin and prove damaging to their fortunes. Not only were the rival Limerick dynasty able to briefly occupy the city in the 930s, but the Uí Néill under Congalach, king of Tara, was able to plunder Dublin in 944 during one of Amlaíb Cuarán’s brief reigns as king in York.
From 953, however, the attention of the Uí Ímar was fully focused on Ireland. They were able to score some notable victories in the late 970s, killing the son of Domnall ua Néill, king of Tara, in 978, and the king of Laigin in the following year. A final showdown between Amlaíb Cuarán and the king of Meath, Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill, at the Battle of Tara in 980 was one of few battles in medieval Irish history that was truly decisive. Had Amlaíb succeeded he may have struck at the very heart of Uí Néill’s power in the midlands, and established a Viking polity unrivaled in extent and power by the remaining native Irish kingdoms.
As it was, despite the presence of mercenaries from the Norse settlements in the western isles among Amlaíb’s troops, Máel Sechnaill roundly defeated Amlaíb, who died a broken man in 981, after retiring to the monastery of Iona.
Statue of Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill in Trim, Co. Meath. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Máel Sechnaill’s victory irreversibly changed the positioning of the Hiberno-Norse and their settlements within the political configuration of Ireland. Instead of becoming territorial kings whose power would rival or even overawe the native Irish kings, the Uí Ímar were relegated to a position of vassalage, serving whichever native Irish dynasty was in the ascendancy at any one time.
The Hiberno-Norse After 980
Battle of Clontarf, by Hugh Frazer, 1826. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Ireland between 980 and the arrival of the Normans in 1171, arguably came as close as it ever would to unification under its own rulers. A succession of powerful kings from a new dynasty in Munster, in the southwest, would use the resources of Viking Limerick as a springboard to political power in the rest of Ireland.
The most famous member of the dynasty known as Dál gCais, Brian Boru, asserted his authority over Munster, Leinster, Dublin, and the kingdoms in the north. He would marshal the resources of Dublin and the other Hiberno-Norse towns in Ireland to project power across both Leth Cuinn and Leth Moga, the two “halves of Ireland,” as high king of Ireland.
Sihtric Silkbeard, king of Dublin, who had witnessed the plundering of his city by Brian Boru, was eventually to rise up against Brian alongside the king of Leinster in 1014 at the Battle of Clontarf, which was a victory for Brian Boru at the cost of his own life. The defeat of Sihtric was to bring the brief Indian summer of Hiberno-Norse political agency in Ireland to a definitive close.
Alleged banner of Brian Boru. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Subsequent kings fixated on Dublin as a source of men, ships, and money. This was particularly the case for Diarmait mac Máel na mBo, of the Leinster Uí Cheinnselaig dynasty, who for the first time assumed direct control of Dublin, expelling the Uí Ímar altogether, in 1052.
Muirchertach Ua Briain, Brian’s great-grandson, and his rival Toirdelbach Ua Conchobair, from Connacht, continued to make extensive use of the resources of the Hiberno-Norse towns, particularly Dublin, to establish and maintain their respective positions as high king of Ireland in the later 11th and 12th centuries.
During this time, the fleets of Dublin sailed further afield to war than they ever had previously. Several scions of the Godwine family, including Harold, returned to England from exile in 1052 with the help of ships and men from Dublin, while Muirchertach Ua Briain seems to have sent a Hiberno-Norse fleet to support his son-in-law, Arnulf de Montgomery, during the rebellion of the Bellême family against Henry I in 1101-2.
As the sphere of political action for the Hiberno-Norse shrank, that of native Irish potentates expanded. The latter were drawn into an increasingly interconnected political community with the powerful kingdom of England—whose centripetal orbit expanded outward to encompass the Irish Sea—at its heart.
A fragment of the Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib in the Book of Leinster, c. 1160. Source: Irish Script on Screen
The most important written evidence of the relationship between the native Irish kings and their Hiberno-Norse dependents is the text known as the Cogadh Gáedel re Gallaib (The War of the Irish with the Foreigners). Commissioned in the early 12th century by Muirchertach Ua Briain, it tells the story of Brian Boru’s defeat of the Limerick Vikings in the late 10th century and is plainly a piece of political propaganda glorifying the Dál gCais Dynasty, to which Muirchertach belonged as a great-grandson of Brian.
The Norse, as such, are demonized as oppressors, to the extent that “none of the men of Erinn (Ireland) had power to give even the milk of his cow, nor as much as the clutch of eggs of one hen in succour or in kindness to an aged man.” On the other hand, the Norse clearly offered enticing economic advantages to the native Irish kings.
Upon Brian’s defeat of Ímar of Limerick and the sacking of the town, the Cogadh describes how the Irish “carried off their jewels and their best property, and their saddles beautiful and foreign; their gold and their silver; their beautifully woven cloth of all colours and of all kinds; their satins and silken cloth, pleasing and variegated, both scarlet and green, and all sorts of cloth in like manner.”
The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife, by Daniel Maclise, 1854. Source: National Gallery of Ireland
No text could better encapsulate how the Hiberno-Norse were perceived by the native Irish in the years following the defeat at Tara in 980. Native Irish kings could use the Hiberno-Norse as a convenient scapegoat for the state of political dismemberment of Ireland that had existed before their own time, without referencing an innate instability that was the norm since the early Christian period and before.
At the same time, ambitious kings were able to use the vast wealth of the Norse towns in Ireland, as well as their fleets, to subdue rivals and in fact to come closer to political unification than they had at any point prior to the arrival of the Vikings in the late 8th and 9th centuries.
The Norman Invasion of Ireland in 1171 would ultimately scupper any hopes of a native dynasty establishing any lasting authority over the entire island. Yet it was arguably the Norse, through their seafaring and membership of a wider diasporic network, who had played the decisive role in bringing Ireland, one of the most insular of all political communities, into a wider European world.
Aside from giving Ireland her principal towns, most of which were founded over the course of the 9th and 10th centuries, the Vikings also left their mark on the Irish genome. A study of modern DNA in the British Isles found that, of all areas analyzed, Ireland was second only to Orkney in the number of Norwegian haplotypes observed among the population samples that they took.
Few would contest the notion that the Vikings in Anglo-Saxon England have captured the modern popular imagination to a greater degree than their counterparts in Ireland. Yet the Norse period in Irish history played host to a narrative no less thrilling. And it was one that ultimately, perhaps, left a more enduring legacy.
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