The Story of Ireland

by Neil Hegarty

  Word of the cataclysmic raid on Lindisfarne spread quickly from community to community, from Northumbria to Iona and across the water-knit territory of Dál Ríata to Ireland. The records speak of a rising apprehension and of similarly strange phenomena as noted in the Chronicle: a blood-red moon; heavy snows falling after Easter. Two years after the raid on Lindisfarne, Viking longships appeared in Irish waters. Centuries later, when the tale of these years was written down, unceremonious chroniclers memorialized the event. ‘Devastation of all the islands of Britain and Ireland,’ noted the Annals of Ulster laconically on the burning of the monastery on the island of Rathlin. And so began a pattern of attack and plunder on the hosts of monasteries built on indefensible sites all along the coastline.2 In 802 and 806 the Vikings attacked Iona itself: in the latter raid sixty-eight monks were killed, and in response the Columban federation of monasteries began construction of a new Irish foundation well inland in County Meath, carrying from Iona the precious Book of Kells.

  By the middle of the ninth century, Viking ships had scouted out the entire coast of Ireland – even Skellig Michael, the most isolated and austere of Ireland’s monasteries, found itself under attack in 824. Little wonder that a clerical scribe could look out across a wintry sea and smile:

  Bitter is the wind tonight,

  It tosses the ocean’s white hair.

  Tonight I fear not the fierce warriors of Norway

  Coursing on the Irish Sea.3

  And as in Ireland, so it was across northwestern Europe: in France, where in 843 the dreadful sack of Nantes by the Norsemen led to slaughter on a vast scale; in England, where Saxon London was attacked and burned in 851; in Wales, where the Vikings fell upon fertile Anglesey in 853; and in many other places besides. And there were other consequences to this Viking activity. The political cohesion of Dál Ríata, for example, had long been under strain: the increasing sense of the island of Ireland as a distinct cultural entity was loosening the ties that bound northeastern Ireland and southwestern Scotland; the Scottish half of the kingdom was becoming an increasingly important player in specifically British affairs; and the increasing Viking control of the sea lanes now made communications between Scotland and Ireland more and more difficult. Before long, the two halves of the territory had gone their separate ways; and the Scottish half would gradually coalesce with Pictish society to form the embryonic kingdom of Scotland.

  It proved almost impossible at first to defend against the Vikings’ tactics. Their small, agile ships could appear and disappear rapidly, long before any resistance could be mustered against them. They were, moreover, shallow-draughted and thus able to nose up many of Ireland’s rivers: soon, they had made the Shannon and other waterways their own; fleets were based on lakes across the country, and not even such wealthy and powerful inland monasteries as Birr, Clonfert and Clonmacnoise – the last of which was torched in 835 – were safe from assault. In 837, two great fleets of sixty-five ships sailed up the rivers Liffey and Boyne; and at the end of the summer of 841, for the first time the Vikings on Lough Neagh did not go home but instead pulled their longships out of the water, signalling their intention to winter on the lake. Nor were the treasure and grain stores of the monasteries their only goals: in 821, Viking ships raided the harbour at Howth on the northern edge of Dublin Bay and seized great numbers of women – slaves and thralls being as valuable to the Vikings as they were to the Irish.

  These ferocious Norsemen have come down to us as very demons from hell – for so they must have appeared to the monks and scribes who recorded the history of these years and who saw their achievements and their very civilization suddenly under attack. The shock of the Viking arrival had much to do with the expansive nature of their warfare: the wars carried by the Irish from túath to túath were often highly localized in nature, often involving no more than cattle raiding, and the local inhabitants became adept at getting quickly and quietly out of the way. The Vikings, on the other hand, were driven implacably by economic survival, and their methods were much more brutal.

  While the monks may have been largely defenceless against the axes and swords of the Viking raiders, they had to hand a weapon that had been fine-tuned for decades. Just as they had set in stone a cultural and political history of Ireland that suited their interests and those of their political allies, so now the monasteries fought the Vikings with ink and scroll. They castigated these newcomers for any and every harshness, injury and oppression witnessed in Ireland in these years; and added a variety of satanic flourishes for good effect, presenting the northern onslaught as divine retribution for Ireland’s sinful ways. Like the Irish annals, the clerical accounts of the Cogadh Gaedhil re Gallaibh – the War of the Irish and the Foreigners – were written retrospectively, yet they came to be viewed as eyewitness testimonies; in the process, they imprinted themselves on to the collective consciousness, doing much to create the image of the Vikings that has come down through the centuries. Take the following passage, which portrays a much put-upon Ireland struggling under the Viking yoke:

  There was an astonishing and awfully great oppression over all Ireland, throughout its breadth, by powerful azure gentiles, and by fierce hard-hearted Danes, during a lengthy period and for a long time, namely for the space of eight score and ten years…. The whole of Munster became filled with immense floods, and countless sea-vomitings of ships, and boats, and fleets, so that there was not a harbour, nor a landing port, nor a fort, nor a fortress, nor a fastness, in all Munster without fleets of Danes and foreigners;…and they ravaged her kingdoms and her privileged churches, and her sanctuaries; and they rent her shrines and her reliquaries and her books….4

  Such passages contain a great deal of historical truth: they record and preserve the sense of the Norse impact on the Irish scene. Violence was of course an accepted aspect of monastic life: since the monasteries of Ireland were significant centres of population, wealth and political power, with strong ties to local Irish dynasties, they had always been drawn into the island’s many internal conflicts. The raiding and burning of monasteries, however, was certainly stepped up by the Vikings, who were a good deal more thorough in their application of such strategies: to judge from the unearthed contents of many a grave in Norway itself, they did not hesitate to loot as many monastic treasures as they could get their hands on, with jewelled missals, Bibles and altar treasures carried away as booty.

  However, the notion of a solid Irish front against these Norsemen – regardless of the cultural affinities that existed within the collective Irish population – is not borne out in fact. There was no sense of united resistance: the internal disputes between dynasties meant that the Irish were too devoted to fighting amongst themselves to consider general alliances in some notional common Irish good. Indeed, Irish leaders were not averse to forging local alliances with the Vikings themselves in order to further their own position or to mount a successful attack upon the monasteries of their opponents. Nor can the lurid accounts of Viking savagery obscure the resilience of the Irish monastic system in the face of this onslaught. In Britain and France whole monastic settlements disappeared as the Norsemen began to take and govern great tracts of land for themselves. In Ireland, on the other hand, it was possible for monasteries and Viking settlements to develop in close proximity, as demonstrated at Cork. Such a state of affairs points to a rather different version of history from that propagated by the Irish monks; and it finds its best expression in the example of Dublin, which at this point in history begins its evolution into the principal city of Ireland.

  At the dawn of the Viking age, twin settlements existed side by side close to the mouth of the river Liffey. At a site a little way inland, a low hill rose on the southern bank of the river and around its base a little tributary stream – the Poddle – curled to form a tidal lake before joining the main flow of the Liffey. At this point the river could be forded, though with some difficulty: here a settlement named Áth Cliath – the hurdle ford – grew up and throve on trad
e coming in from across the island. At the same time a monastic settlement had developed on the edge of the little lake, from which it took its name: dubh linn, the dark pool, today the site of the gardens of Dublin Castle. Patrick himself was reputed to have come here to christen the district’s first converts on an island in the Poddle; later, St Patrick’s Cathedral would be built on the spot. The two settlements, though different in character, naturally had much in common and much to gain from communication and cooperation; and gradually the population and prosperity of the district grew. It was this growing wealth, of course, that drew the Vikings, whose fleet of sixty longships entered Dublin Bay and made land-fall on the Liffey’s shingled banks in the spring of 837.

  The Norsemen built their first fortified stockade on the shores of the dark pool itself: the area provided anchorage, and the nearby hill was a safe place from which to survey the district. A good deal of archaeological evidence exists to show that these new settlers had rather more on their minds than rape and looting. While dark layers of ash and charcoal in the digs provide evidence of burning and destruction by fire, it is also known that Christian churches in the Dublin area continued to function throughout this period. Although we can only guess as to the nature of everyday society in this place and at these times, there is evidence enough that life carried on in the aftermath of the Viking landings. As the newcomers acculturated, trade inevitably took the place of pillage.

  More and more of them arrived in this promising place, and the Dublin settlement would eventually become a principal colony of the Vikings in Ireland. At suitable spots along the southern and eastern coasts – at Arklow, Wicklow and Waterford, Youghal and Cork – similar colonies arose, and would in time become Ireland’s first full-fledged towns. Only in Ulster would the Vikings ultimately fail to overcome local opposition and establish any stronghold: the Uí Néill and Ulaid were tough fighters and their landscape was rough, remote and mountainous.

  The Scandinavians brought with them no domestic traditions of city-building. They founded and fortified their ports because they were obliged to do so, not because of some cultural imperative carried with them from the north; and therefore it is a reflection of the opposition to their presence in Ireland that Viking towns were such sturdy, solid places. For the Norse-men did not by any means have everything their own way. From the middle of the ninth century they had begun to suffer serious reversals: the Uí Néill ambushed a force of Norsemen in County Meath in 848, for example, and put some seven hundred of them to the sword; and such attacks were far from uncommon. In 849, Danes were added to the cultural mix – appearing in Ireland not to join forces with their Norwegian kin, but rather to struggle with them for mastery of valuable turf; and the Danes too were not beyond making temporary, expedient alliances with local Irish kings.

  The most serious of the Norse military defeats came at the beginning of the tenth century. Having ostensibly consolidated their power bases in Ireland, they had begun to turn their attention towards Britain in an attempt to hamper an increasingly powerful rival presence across the island. By the late ninth century, Danish kingdoms had been established at York and across the east of England; Danish forces were probing deep into Wales and Scotland; and the relative fragility of the Norsemen in Ireland itself had been demonstrated in 853, with a devastating naval defeat at the hands of the Danes on Carlingford Lough. But the decision of the Norsemen of Ireland to focus elsewhere proved costly: stronghold after stronghold was ransacked by an array of Irish forces; and after a period of localized civil war the Norse rulers of Dublin were expelled by the native Irish (acting, for once, in concord) in 902 and driven into exile in Scotland and the Isle of Man.

  It seems unlikely that the general Norse population of the town, having put down roots and begun the process of integration, was thrown out with the city’s rulers. Instead, such potent, binding ties changed the situation, for Dublin was no longer merely a strategic Norse stronghold on the Liffey: its population was increasingly Hiberno-Norse through bonds of kinship, trade, intermarriage and friendship. The Norsemen had settled in Dublin, built homes, developed trade, married into prominent Irish families and produced offspring of their own. Olaf, King of Dublin in the middle of the ninth century, for example, had married the daughter of Áed Finnliath, King of the northern Uí Néill, and had become a Christian as part of the deal. Dublin, in other words, was home to the Norsemen – and they intended to take it back. After twelve years in exile, a large fleet of Viking ships recaptured Waterford and over the course of several years built up their strength in the town enormously. By 917 they were ready to make their move: they advanced north and recaptured Dublin, and their expansion in Ireland began again.

  This new nexus of Viking power was by any standards a place of wealth and industry. New fortifications were constructed to protect the town, which was now increasingly referred to as Dubhlinn – the Dyflinn of the Icelandic sagas – and within the city walls the markets throve through trade in slaves, leather and jewellery; the city’s artisans began to deal in glass and jet; weavers, blacksmiths and shipwrights were hard at work; and the authorities struck the first coins. Dublin now lay at the centre of a vast semi-circular trade route that ran from Constantinople (modern Istanbul) and Russia through the Baltic to Norway, Iceland and Greenland: wine and silver from southern Europe were funnelled through the city and north to Scandinavia; furs, walrus ivory and amber flowed south through Dublin and into a wider world. And in Dublin, as in the other Norse seaports, cultural mingling became increasingly the order of the day: in the decorative work that survives from the period, for example, Norse symmetry and interlacing begins to replace the Anglo-Saxon detail that had previously influenced Irish design. This influence was, moreover, gradually disseminated throughout the country: both the Crozier of Clonmacnoise (fashioned in bronze in the first half of the twelfth century) and the Cross of Cong (created in the same period to house a fragment of the True Cross) would be unmistakably influenced by a Scandinavian aesthetic.

  In the wider hinterland of these ports, meanwhile, other cultural changes were beginning to be felt. Shortly after the recapture of Dublin, the ports of Wexford and Limerick were founded; and the Vikings began to act as economic middlemen between the native Irish and overseas markets, helping to funnel Irish timber and hides through their harbours for export. The sharp dividing line between Gall and Gael – foreigner and Irish – as delineated by medieval propagandists, then, became increasingly blurred in eastern and southern Ireland; and in the major ports it began to vanish entirely. Human economic and emotional imperatives now began to forge a new culture, a new world.

  In the latter half of the tenth century, the great power game in Ireland began to shift. Norse influence reached its zenith in eastern and southern Ireland, while the Uí Néill retained supremacy across the north and held the nominal kingship at Tara. But other figures were eyeing the glittering prizes too: in particular, the Dalcassian clan of central Ireland, which possessed the great virtue of straddling the river Shannon. The river was the country’s communications highway and the key to the expanding seaport of Limerick; and the Dalcassians, observing the Viking control of Ireland’s waterways, had in the process absorbed important lessons. The tide was running in favour of the clan: the Uí Néill were expending their strength in a bitter internal power struggle; and in the south, the Norse of Dublin had engaged the Danes of Limerick on Lough Ree in 937, destroying their fleet and capturing their king. Weakened by this defeat, the city was now fair game.

  In 976 the Dalcassian leader Mathgamain was assassinated by the Danes, and in retaliation the Dalcassians immediately stormed Limerick. Ímar, the leader of the city, and his sons sought sanctuary in the monastery at Scattery Island, but Mathgamain’s brother Brian broke into the church (violating all the laws of sanctuary in the process) and slaughtered them all. Túath after túath now yielded to Brian’s might: within four years he had seized control not only of Limerick but of the entire province of Munster, and was pus
hing his men into Leinster and Connacht. He had become a legend in the process, taking to himself the name Brian Bóruma – Brian Boru, the lord of cattle tributes. Such tribute was an indication of social status: it was now evident to all observers that Brian was making a bid for even greater dominion.

  Certainly, to the watching Uí Néill and their leader Máel Seachnaill, the Dalcassian move was a naked land grab and the most serious threat in centuries to the authority of their clan. The two power blocs fought each other to a standstill; finally they realized that there was little to be done but to tread water and conclude a fragile peace, to last only until both sides could renew their strength. The Treaty of Clonfert in 997 declared the Dalcassian leader King of Munster and Leinster, while the Uí Néill retained control of their traditional lands in the north and west. Both blocs would cooperate against the dominance of the Norse at Dublin.

  This outcome was deeply disagreeable to the leaders of Leinster, in whose eyes Brian was no more than a provincial upstart with intolerable pretensions to the kingship. A year after the treaty, Maelmordha MacMurchada seized the kingship of Leinster from the Dalcassians and launched an open rebellion against this new political order. Brian’s response was rapid and decisive: he gathered his forces and made for Dublin, which was ruled by Sitric Silkbeard, Maelmordha’s Norse ally and also his cousin – a sign of the mingling of cultures that was now standard across the east and south of Ireland. Rather than risk a siege, Maelmordha and Sitric decided to march out and fight at Glenn Máma, in what is now County Wicklow: it would be a ferocious and bloody battle, but once again Brian proved the better strategist. Centuries later, the Annals of the Four Masters would describe the engagement:

  From the victorious overthrow they shall retreat,