CHAPTER XXX

THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND

THE history of the Viking period, which began in the eighth century and lasted for about four hundred years, reads like a fairy tale. There were two impelling motives which led to the emigration of the Vikings, or "men of the bays," for such is the meaning of the name by which they have made themselves famous. These were the inadequate economic resources of their country, due to over-population, and a desire to seek warmer and more fruitful lands. Coupled with this was a spirit of adventure.

At first the Vikings confined themselves to their native fiords whence, in their long open boats, they would dart out and pounce upon some passing vessel. But they soon extended the field of their operations and undertook expeditions to more remote and less known regions, which they laid waste and plundered. Piracy in those days was not regarded as an ignoble profession. About the year 850, they made their way over the stormy north sea to Iceland, where, intrepid sailors as they were, they learned that Irish monks had been there before them. Thence they sailed to Greenland, to Vinland the Good and even reached the coasts of North America. In the east and south, they were no less enterprising and successful.

In the tenth century we find these adventurous sea-rovers making permanent settlements on the continent of Europe. Bands of them sailed down the coast and forced the king of France to yield to them the fair province ever afterwards known by their name, the Duchy of Normandy. More of them went up the Rhine, the Loire, and the Gironde, and fought the Moors on the banks of the Guadalquivir. Others of them pushed on past the Pillars of Hercules into the Mediterranean and built a powerful kingdom in Italy. Still others even found their way to Greece and the Black Sea. They planted colonies on the coast of Prussia, rounded the North Cape and discovered a route by water to the White Sea. By way of the Dnieper, the Dniester, the Volga and the northern stretches of the Dvina, their enterprising hucksters and freebooters

penetrated into the interior of Russia, and in the year 862 laid the foundations, at Novgorod, of the kingdom out of which has grown the modern Russia. Still more of them sailed down the Volga to the Caspian and, by the Dnieper, entered the Bosphorus and nearly succeeded in capturing the capital of the Sultan.

At the other extreme end of Europe more than half of Britain was already in their power. The kingdom of Alfred the Great was threatened and shaken to its foundation, and the outlying islands were entirely occupied by them. They placed a Danish sovereign on the throne of England. Indeed at one time, that is about the middle of the ninth century, it looked as if the Vikings were on the point of becoming masters of the greater part of northern and western Europe. But their victorious career was stopped for all time and the western world saved from becoming Norse by the final defeat which they met with in Ireland.

Intercourse between the northern lands and Ireland must have begun at a very early date. It was only a few days' journey, and, as the Viking vessels were galleys propelled by oars as well as by sails, they were independent of the weather. The Irish traded and married with them a century before the invasion. Even in the old Irish epic of the heroic period, there is mention of warriors from Norway, "the Northern Way," and of Irish chieftains who were levying tribute on the Shetlands, the Orkneys, and the Faroes. The first acceptedly correct information of the Norsemen in "the Isles of the Foreigners," as the western islands were called, dates from the early part of the seventh century. In the year 617 they burned the cloister of Eig, slew the Abbot Donnan and fifty-two of his companions, and, using the western islands as stepping stones, they robbed and ravaged their way down as far as the Isle of Man. It was perhaps in the same year that they laid waste Tory Island off the coast of Donegal. These attacks lasted some four or five years, and were followed by more than a century and a half of peace, during which the Norse and Irish mingled and settled down on friendly terms.

In the year 794 occurred the first powerful Norse attacks in Irish waters, when the sea-robbers landed on Rechru, now Lambay, off Howth, which they devastated, and some other small islands north of Dublin, and simultaneously they launched attacks at such distant points as the Isle of Skye and Glamorganshire in South Wales. These Vikings had no difficulty in landing, plundering, and getting away to their ships, but they brought away what was still more valuable to those who followed them in their profession, namely, tales of bright green fields, of rich fertile soil,

in a word, of a land that was well worth fighting for. Such reports brought Vikings in more frequent bands and in greater and greater numbers to Ireland. As yet, however, they were only reconnoitring parties who confined themselves to the islands and forelands and did not interfere with the internal affairs of the country. Sometimes they showed poor judgment in choosing their points of attack, as in the year 823 when they scaled the almost inaccessible Scelic Michil (the Skelligs), far out in the Atlantic. and carried off the hermit Etgal, perhaps in spite at finding no treasure on that barren, wind-swept rock. During the next two or three years, among other misdeeds, they burned Bangor, an easy prey because of its proximity to the sea, murdered its monks and scholars and violated the sanctuary.

At the confluence of the Liffey and a small stream called the Poddle, was a village which the Irish had founded at least two centuries earlier and which they called, and still call, Ath Cliath, "the Ford of the Hurdles." It was also named Dubhlinn, "Blackpool," from the dark colour of the water under the bog. The Norsemen were struck by the excellent location of the village and, consequently, about the year 837, they threw up a strong earthen fort on the hill where now stands the Castle, and for nearly two hundred years Dublin remained an exclusively Norwegian or Danish city and the capital and headquarters of the Vikings in western Europe. The Irish, however, still regarded Armagh as their national capital.

When, about the year 832, the Norse felt ready to make their first great attack on Ireland in force, they had the advantage of having as their leader one of the most extraordinary and capable figures in Nordic history. This was the famous Norwegian warrior Tuirgeis. Tuirgeis, like most of his race who came after him, was filled with ambition to establish a great pagan empire and to make himself lord of Ireland, as his countrymen had made themselves masters of England and Normandy. He came with a great fleet of 120 ships, which held some ten thousand or twelve thousand picked men, and which he divided into two divisions. One squadron of sixty ships entered the Liffey, while Turgeis himself with the other sailed up the Boyne. From these points small bands of invaders entered into the interior of the country, carrying their boats overland with them when necessary, spread here and there and made the first permanent Norse settlements in Ireland. Turgeis confined his operations to the north. He pitched his headquarters at the southern extremity of Lough Ree, near where Athlone now stands, and threw up earthworks along the

upper courses of the Shannon and a line of forts across the country from Carlingford Bay to Connacht. He even got some support from the Irish and for a time it looked as if the whole northern portion of the island might speedily fall under his sway.

His design included the supplanting of Christianity by the heathenism of his own country. With that end in view he took possession, some years previously, of Armagh, Ireland's Holy City, which contained the staff which Christ himself was said to have given to St. Patrick, and where the Abbot, who was regarded as the spiritual head of Ireland, resided. Turgeis drove away "the Follower of St. Patrick," converted the church into a pagan temple and made himself high priest of the new religion. As if that sacrilege was not sufficient to arouse the special anger of the Irish, he is said to have enthroned his wife Otta upon the high altar of the principal church at Clonmacnois, the next most holy place in Ireland, situated on the eastern bank of the Shannon in the midst of the meadows. From that sacred seat Otta, who seems to have been a sibyl as well as a priestess, delivered oracles in magic strains to the people.

These things took place in or about the year 845, and for some years all the foreigners in Ireland recognised Turgeis as their sovereign, though it could hardly be said that he had founded a kingdom. His ablest opponent among the native chieftains was Niall, provincial king of Ulster. Shortly afterwards, or about the year 845, he was, somehow, taken prisoner by Maelsechlainn (Malachy) king of Meath, and drowned in Loch Owel, either as a criminal or by the miracles of the saints, or, according to the legends, through a stratagem of Maelsechlainn's daughter who, accompanied by fifteen young Irish warriors disguised as maidens, kept tryst with him, and fifteen of his captains. After his death, the Norsemen abandoned their settlements on Lough Ree, moved up the Shannon and fought their way along the rivers and lakes to the Sligo coast where a fleet had assembled to carry them home.

Thereafter the tide of victory turned for a while in favour of the Irish, and a new epoch began in the history of the Scandinavian invasion of Ireland. Hitherto the Vikings, like their great leader Turgeis, were all of Norwegian stock, but with a few Danes and Swedes among them. During the tenth and eleventh centuries, however, the Danes, a people of distinct origin, who at that time were ravaging the southern and western coasts of England, took the lead in Viking activities. They were better organised than the Norse and had a more centralised government, and they could always fall back on their kingdom in Northumbria,

with its capital at York. They were jealous of the successes which the Norwegians had met with in Ireland and they soon proceeded to deprive them of the fruits of their victories, so that it was not primarily owing to a desire to attack the Irish but purely by accident that the Danes came to Ireland and made it the battleground on which to settle their differences with their cousins from Norway. In the words of the annalist (847), "they disturbed Ireland between them." At first the Irish called all these northern raiders indiscriminately Genti, "the heathen," or Gaill "the strangers," or Lochlannaigh. Later, however, when Irish writers. felt the need of making a clear distinction between the two waves of invasion, they either limited the name Lochlannaigh to the Norwegians and applied the name Danair to the Danes, or, more commonly, they called the Vikings of Norwegian descent white heathens, while those of Danish descent they called black heathens.1

The year 847 marks the first sudden descent of the Danes, "in seven score ships," upon the eastern shores of Ireland. They at once proceeded to attack the Norwegians and to contest the possession of the coast settlements with them. In that year the Norwegian chieftain Earl Tomar was slain in the battle of SciathNechtin. In 1850 the "Blacks" seized and plundered Dublin and in the following year they defeated the "Whites" decisively at Carlingford Lough. The battle was a fierce one and is said to have continued three days and three nights. At first the Norwegians were successful, but finally the Danes, it is said, by calling upon St. Patrick for help, were victorious. After the battle they remembered their promise and sent a huge vat filled with silver and gold to the shrine of the Apostle. Maélsechlainn (Malachy) I, who was king of Ireland at that time, dispatched an embassy to

1 This was not due to the colour of the hair or complexion, for the overwhelming mass of the foreigners, whether Norwegians or Danes, must have been all fair and ruddy. It is to be found only in the fact that the Danes were clad in body armour. The Irish themselves fought in their ordinary dress and mantles, except in combats of special danger when they donned breastplates and aprons of leather. They used light javelins for throwing and longer and stouter spears for thrusting, and swords, and carried a shield of wicker work to defend the body. The first comers among the Norwegians likewise wore only a tunic of leather, but the Danes wore dark metal coats of mail, helmets and vizors, and were partial to the battle-axe. As they were the first mail-clad warriors the Irish had ever seen, it is no wonder if they seemed to them to be "dark blue" or "blue-green," as they called them. There are many references in the old Irish chronicles and sagas to the mail-clad armour and battle-axes of the foreigners and to the black ships in which they came to Ireland. "For the bodies and skins and hearts of the bright champions of Munster were quickly pierced through the fine linen garments, and their very sharp blades took no effect." This advantage which the Danes possessed helps to explain the successes which they met with in the early years of their invasions. But the Irish soon learned in the hard school of experience how to imitate the superior weapons, armour and science of warfare of the enemy.