CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

VIKINGS IN IRELAND

795 – 1014

PART III

The Vikings in Wales

One side effect of the strength of Irish resistance was to increase Viking interest in Wales. At its closest points, Wales was only a day’s sail away from Dublin, Waterford and Wexford, and from the Viking colony in the Isle of Man, but despite this had so far suffered relatively little from Viking raids. A combination of strong military rulers such as Rhodri Mawr (r. 844 – 78) of Gwynedd, difficult mountainous terrain, and Wales’ poverty compared to England, Ireland and Francia, seem to have deterred any major Viking invasions in the ninth century. Only a dozen Viking raids are recorded in the period 793 – 920, compared to over 130 in Ireland in the same period. This was fewer than the number of English invasions of Wales in the same period. Place-name evidence points to areas of Viking settlement in the south-west, in Pembrokeshire and Gower, but, as they are undocumented, it is not known when they were made. There was also a small area of Viking settlement in the far north-east, modern Flintshire, most probably by refugees from Dublin following its capture by the Irish in 902. This was probably overspill from the successful Viking colony a few miles away across the estuary of the River Dee in Wirral.

In the first half of the tenth century, Wales was dominated by Hywel Dda (r. 915-50), the king of Deheubarth in the south-west. During his long reign Hywel came close to uniting all of Wales under his rule but his death in 950 was followed by a civil war and the break-up of his dominion. This was a signal to Vikings based in Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Hebrides to launch a wave of attacks on Wales. The area most exposed to Viking raiding was the large and fertile island of Anglesey off the coast of North Wales, which lay only 70 miles due east of Dublin and just 45 miles south of the Isle of Man: raids are recorded in 961, 971, 972, 979, 980, 987 and 993. Another place hit hard was St David’s monastery on the Pembrokeshire coast, Wales’ most important ecclesiastical centre. Founded c. 500 by St David, the monastery became the seat of the archbishops of Wales in 519. Only 60 miles from Wexford, St David’s was first sacked by Vikings in 967, then again in 982, 988 and 998, when they killed archbishop Morgeneu. St David’s would be sacked at least another six times before the end of the eleventh century. In 989 the raids had become so bad that King Maredudd of Deheubarth paid tribute to the Vikings at the rate of one silver penny for each of his subjects. Viking raids declined quickly after 1000, perhaps because the Viking towns in Ireland had come under the control of Irish rulers, but raids from the Hebrides and Orkney continued into the twelfth century. Vikings from Ireland also continued to come to Wales, but they did so mainly as mercenaries signing on with Welsh kings to fight in their wars with one another and with the English.

The Rock of Cashel

The end of Ireland’s Viking Age is traditionally associated with the rise of the O’Brien (Ua Briain) dynasty of Munster, and of its greatest king Brian Boru (r. 976 – 1014) in particular. Brian’s career certainly had an epic quality about it. Brian was a younger son of Cennétig mac Lorcáin (d. 951), king of the Dál Cais, whose kingdom, which was roughly equivalent to modern County Clare, was subject to the kings of Munster. As a younger son Brian probably never expected to rule and his early life was spent in the shadow of his elder brother Mathgamain. Even Brian’s date of birth is uncertain. Some Irish sources claim that he was eighty-eight when he died in 1014, which would mean he was born in 926 or 927, but other sources give dates as early as 923 and as late as 942. Brian’s first experience of war came in 967 when he fought alongside his brother at the Battle of Sulcoit against Ivar, king of the Limerick Vikings. The following year the brothers captured and sacked Limerick, executing all male prisoners of fighting age. The rest were sold as slaves. Ivar, however, escaped to Britain and in 969 he returned with a new fleet and regained control of Limerick only to be expelled again by the Dal Cais in 972.

Probably in 970, Mathgamain expelled his nominal overlord, Máel Muad the king of Munster, from his stronghold on the Rock of Cashel. The rock is a natural fortress, a craggy limestone hill rising abruptly and offering a magnificent view over the fertile plains of County Tipperary. The rock is now crowned by the ruins of a medieval cathedral and one of Ireland’s tallest surviving round towers, so little evidence of earlier structures survives. In legend, Máel Muad’s ancestor Conall Corc made Cashel the capital of Munster after two swineherds told him of a vision in which an angel prophesised that whoever was the first to light a bonfire on the rock would win the kingship of Munster. Conall needed no more encouragement and had hurried to Cashel and lit a fire. This was supposed to have happened around sixty years before St Patrick visited around 453 and converted Munster’s then king Óengus to Christianity. During the baptismal ceremony the saint accidentally pierced Óengus’ foot with the sharp end of his crozier. The king, thinking it was part of the ritual, suffered in silence.

Mathgamain’s success in capturing Cashel promised to make the Dál Cais a major power as Munster was one of the most important of Ireland’s over-kingdoms, covering the whole of the south-west of the island. However, before Mathgamain could win effective control of Munster, Máel Muad murdered him and recaptured Cashel. Brian now unexpectedly found himself king of the Dál Cais and quickly proved himself to be a fine soldier. After his expulsion from Limerick in 972, Ivar established a new base on Scattery Island, close to the mouth of the Shannon, from where he could still easily threaten Dál Cais. This sort of tactic had served Vikings well since the 840s, but no more. Brian had learned the importance of naval power from the Vikings and in 977 he led a fleet to Scattery Island, surprising and killing Ivar. A year later Brian defeated and killed his brother’s murderer to regain control of Cashel. Very shortly afterwards he defeated his last serious rival for control of Munster, Donnubán of the Uí Fidgente, and the remnants of the Limerick Vikings under Ivar’s son Harald. Both Donnubán and Harald were killed. This spelled the end of Viking Limerick. The town now effectively became the capital of Dál Cais, but Brian allowed its Norse inhabitants to remain in return for their valuable military and naval support. In the years that followed, Brian also became overlord of the Viking towns of Cork, Wexford and Waterford.

Now secure in his control of Munster, Brian began to impose his authority on the neighbouring provinces of Connacht and Leinster. Brian’s ambitions inevitably brought him into conflict with Dublin’s overlord, Máel Sechnaill. Almost every year, Brian campaigned in either Leinster, Meath or Connacht. Limerick and other Viking towns provided Brian with fleets, which he sent up the River Shannon to ravage the lands of Connacht and Meath on either side. When Donchad mac Domnaill, the king of Leinster, submitted to Brian in 996 Máel Sechnaill recognised him as overlord of all of the southern half of Ireland, including Dublin. Brian almost immediately faced a rebellion by Donchad’s successor in Leinster, Máel Morda, and the king of Dublin, Sihtric Silkbeard (r. 989 – 1036). Sihtric was another son of Olaf Cuarán, by his second wife Gormflaith, who was Máel Morda’s sister. Brian’s crushing victory over the allies at the battle of Glen Mama in 999 left him unchallenged in the south. Brian dealt generously with Sihtric, allowing him to remain king, and marrying Gormflaith, so making him his son-in-law. There was a brief peace before Brian, his sights now set on the high kingship itself, went back onto the offensive against Máel Sechnaill. Sihtric played a full part in these campaigns, providing troops and warships. Finally defeated in 1002, Máel Sechnaill resigned his title in favour of Brian and accepted him as his overlord: it was the first time that anyone other than an Uí Néill had been high king. Two more years of campaigning and every kingdom in Ireland had become tributary to Brian, hence his nickname bóraime, ‘of the tributes’.

The Battle of Clontarf

Brian’s achievement was a considerable one but he did not in any meaningful sense unite Ireland: outside his own kingdom of Dál Cais, Brian exercised authority indirectly, through his tributary kings, and he created no national institutions of government. Nor was the obedience of Brian’s tributaries assured: he faced, and put down, several rebellions. The most serious of these rebellions began in 1013 when Máel Mórda of Leinster renewed his alliance with Sihtric Silkbeard, who, despite Brian’s conciliatory approach, still hoped to recover Dublin’s independence. To strengthen Dublin’s forces, Sihtric called in an army of Vikings under Sigurd the Stout, the jarl of Orkney, and Brodir, a Dane from the Isle of Man, which arrived at Dublin just before Easter 1014. Brian quickly raised an army that included several of his tributary kings, including Maél Sechnaill, and a contingent of Vikings under Brodir’s brother Óspak. The two armies met in battle at Clontarf, a few miles north of Dublin on Good Friday (23 April) 1014. Neither Brian nor Sihtric fought in the battle. Sihtric watched the battle from the walls of Dublin, where he had remained with a small garrison to defend the city if the battle was lost. Now in his seventies or eighties, Brian was too frail to take any part in the fighting and spent the battle in his tent. The exact size of the rival armies is unknown but Brian’s was probably the larger of the two.

The battle opened around daybreak in heroic style with a single combat between two champion warriors, both of whom died in a deadly embrace, their swords piercing one another’s hearts. The fighting was exceptionally fierce but Brian’s army eventually gained the upper hand and began to inflict severe casualties on the Vikings and the Leinstermen. Brian’s son and designated successor, Murchad, led the attack and was said personally to have killed 100 of the enemy, fifty holding his sword in his right hand and fifty holding his sword in his left hand, before he was himself cut down and killed. Among Murchad’s victims was jarl Sigurd. Of the Dublin Vikings fighting in the army, only twenty are said to have survived the battle and the Leinster-Dublin army as a whole suffered as many as 6,000 casualties. By evening, the Leinster-Dublin army was disintegrating in flight and many Vikings drowned as they tried desperately to reach their ships anchored in Dublin Bay. At this moment of victory, Brodir and a handful of Viking warriors broke through the enemy lines and killed Brian as he prayed in his tent. Brodir’s men were quickly killed by Brian’s bodyguards and, according to Icelandic saga traditions, Brodir was captured and put to a terrible death. His stomach was cut open and he was walked round and round a tree until all his entrails had been wound out. Máel Mórda and one of his tributary kings were also killed in the fighting, as too were two tributary kings on Brian’s side.

For the anonymous author of the Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh, Clontarf was the decisive battle of Ireland’s Viking wars, but this exaggerates its importance. The author of the Coghad was essentially a propagandist for Brian Boru’s Ua Briain dynasty and he intended, by glorifying his achievements, to bolster his descendents’ claim to the high kingship of Ireland, which they contested with the Uí Néills. The true impact of the battle was rather different. The deaths of Brian and Murchad caused a succession crisis in Dál Cais that brought the rise of the Ua Briain dynasty to a crashing halt. Brian’s hard-won hegemony immediately disintegrated, Cashel reverted to its traditional rulers, and Máel Sechnaill reclaimed the high kingship. Sihtric found himself back where he had started his reign, a sub-king to Máel Sechnaill. There could have been no clearer way to demonstrate how far gone in decline Viking power in Ireland already was. Sihtric continued to take part in Ireland’s internecine conflicts but his defeats outnumbered his successes, and Dublin’s decline into political and military irrelevance continued. Dublin continued to prosper as Ireland’s most important port, however, making Sihtric a wealthy ruler. In 1029 he ransomed his son Olaf, who had been captured by the king of Brega, for 1,200 cows, 120 Welsh ponies, 60 ounces (1.7 kg) of gold, 60 ounces of silver, hostages, and another eighty cattle for the man who had conducted the negotiations. Though he was quite willing to sack monasteries when it suited him, Sihtric was a devout Christian and in 1028 he made a pilgrimage to Rome. Such journeys were primarily penitential and, as an active Viking, Sihtric no doubt had much to be penitential about. On his return to Dublin he founded Christ Church cathedral but pointedly placed it under the authority of the Archbishopric of Canterbury in England, then ruled by the Danish King Cnut. It was not until 1152 that the diocese of Dublin became part of the Irish church. His alliance with Cnut briefly resurrected Dublin as a power in the Irish Sea, but Cnut’s death in 1035 left Sihtric in a weak position. In 1036 Echmarcach mac Ragnaill, a Norse-Gaelic king of the Hebrides, captured Dublin and forced Sihtric into exile: he died in 1042, possibly murdered during another pilgrimage to Rome.

Echmarcach never succeeded in securing his hold on Dublin and in 1052 he was expelled by Diarmait mac Máel, the king of Leinster, who ruled the city directly as an integral part of his kingdom. For the next century Dublin became a prize to be fought over by rival Irish dynasties interspersed with periods of rule by Norse kings from the Isle of Man, the Hebrides, and even Norway.

Ostman Dublin

By the eleventh century the Viking towns had become fully integrated into Irish political life, accepted for the trade they brought and the taxes they paid on it, and their fleets of warships, which made them valuable allies in the wars of the Irish kings. Pagan burial customs had died out during the second half of the tenth century so it is likely that by now the Irish Vikings were mostly converted to Christianity. It was not only kings like Sihtric Silkbeard who had taken Irish wives, and in many cases the children of these mixed marriages were Gaelic speaking. It is even possible that people of Norse descent were minorities in the Viking towns among a population of slaves, servants, labourers and craftsmen that was mostly Irish. The Irish Vikings had become sufficiently different from ‘real’ Scandinavians to have acquired a new name, the Ostmen, meaning ‘men of the east’ (of Ireland). The name seems to have been coined by the English, who by this time had had ample opportunities to learn how to distinguish between different types of Scandinavian.

In its general appearance, Ostman Dublin was probably much like other Viking towns of the period, such as York or Hedeby in Denmark. In the tenth century the site was divided up by post-and-wattle fences into long narrow plots along streets. Sub-rectangular houses built of wood, wattles, clay and thatch were built end-on to the streets, with doors at both ends. Though the houses were often rebuilt, the boundaries of the plots themselves remained unchanged for centuries. Irish kings used these plots as the basic unit for levying tribute on Dublin, as Máel Sechnaill did in 989 when he levied an ounce (28 g) of gold for every plot. Paths around the houses were covered with split logs, or gravel and paving slabs. The streets of Ostman Dublin lie under the modern streets, so it is not known what they were surfaced with, but split logs were used in other Viking towns like York. Different quarters of the town were assigned to different activities. Comb-makers and cobblers were concentrated in the area of High Street, while wood-carvers and merchants occupied Fishamble Street, for example. Other crafts, like blacksmithing and shipbuilding, were probably carried out outside the town. The wreck of a Viking longship discovered at Skuldelev near Roskilde in Denmark proved to have been built of oak felled near Glendalough, 22 miles south of Dublin, in 1042.

The town was surrounded by an earth rampart, which was probably surmounted by a wooden palisade. By 1000, Dublin had begun to spread outside its walls and a new rampart was built to protect the new suburbs. By 1100 it had proved necessary to extend the defences again, this time with a stone wall that was up to 12 feet high. This was such a novelty that a poem of 1120 considered Dublin to be one of the wonders of Ireland. Dublin probably lacked any impressive public buildings – even the cathedral founded by Sihtric Silkbeard was built of wood and it would not be rebuilt in stone until the end of the twelfth century. Dublin’s four other known churches were probably also wooden structures. The basic institution of Dublin’s government, as in all Viking Age Scandinavian communities, was the thing, the meeting of all freemen. The thing met at the 40-foot (12 m) high thingmote (‘thing mound’), which was sited near the medieval castle. This survived until 1685, when it was levelled to make way for new buildings. Of the other Ostman towns, only Waterford has seen extensive archaeological investigations. Like Dublin it was a town of wooden buildings laid out in orderly plots within stout defences.

The end of Viking Dublin

Viking Dublin was finally brought to an end not by the Irish but by the Anglo-Normans. In 1167, Diarmait MacMurchada, exiled to England from his kingdom of Leinster, recruited a band of Anglo-Norman mercenaries to help him win back his kingdom. Reinforcements arrived in Leinster in 1169 and, with their help, Diarmait captured the Ostman town of Wexford. In 1170, Richard Fitzgilbert de Clare, popularly known as Strongbow, the earl of Pembroke, brought an army of 200 knights and 1,000 archers to support Diarmait, and within days he had captured another Ostman town, Waterford. On 21 September in the same year, Diarmait and Strongbow captured Dublin. The city’s last Norse king Asculf Ragnaldsson (r. 1160 – 71) fled to Orkney where he raised an army to help him win it back. In June 1171, Asculf returned with a fleet of sixty ships and attempted to storm Dublin’s east gate. The Norman garrison sallied out on horseback and scattered Asculf’s men. Asculf was captured as he fled back to his ships. The Normans generously offered to release Asculf if he paid a ransom, but when he foolishly boasted that he would return next time with a much larger army, they thought better of it and chopped his head off instead. Cork was the last Ostman town to fall to the Anglo-Normans, following the defeat of its fleet in 1173.

The Anglo-Norman conquest was a far more decisive event in Irish history than the advent of the Vikings. Despite their long presence in the country, the Viking impact on Ireland was surprisingly slight. Viking art styles influenced Irish art styles, and the Irish adopted Viking weapons and shipbuilding methods, and borrowed many Norse words relating to ships and seafaring into the Gaelic language, but that was about it. The Vikings certainly drew Ireland more closely into European trade networks and by the tenth century this had stimulated the development of regular trade fairs at the monastic towns. However, on the eve of the Anglo-Norman conquest, the Viking towns were still Ireland’s only fully developed urban communities. In contrast over fifty new towns were founded in the century after the Anglo-Norman conquest. Sihtric Silkbeard was the first ruler in Ireland to issue coinage in c. 997, but no native Irish ruler imitated his example: coinage only came into common use in Ireland after the Anglo-Norman conquest. The impact of Viking raiding did accelerate the slow process of political centralisation in Ireland, but even in 1169 the country still lacked any national government institutions. The high kings still exercised authority outside their personal domains indirectly through their tributary kings (though there were many fewer of them than when the Vikings had first arrived). A true national kingship would likely have emerged eventually, but the Anglo-Norman conquest brought this internal process to a sudden end. English governmental institutions were imposed in those areas controlled by the Anglo-Normans, while in those areas still controlled by the Irish, kingship degenerated into warlordism. There were no more high kings.

Dublin prospered after the Anglo-Norman conquest, becoming the centre of English rule in Ireland. England’s King Henry II (r. 1154 – 89) granted Dublin a charter of liberties based on those of the important English West Country port of Bristol. This gave Dublin privileged access to Henry’s vast British and French lands, spurring a period of rapid growth. One of Henry’s edicts took the Ostmen of Dublin and the other Norse towns under royal protection: their skills as merchants and seafarers made them far too useful to expel (though some chose to leave voluntarily). An influx of English settlers gradually made the Ostmen a minority in the city, however. The Ostmen also found that they did not always receive the privileges they had been granted because of the difficulty in distinguishing so many of them from the native Irish. In 1263, the dissatisfied Ostmen appealed to the Norwegian king Håkon IV to help them expel the English, but the collapse of Norse power that followed his death later that year ended any possibility that Dublin would recover its independence. Norse names soon fell out of use and by c. 1300, the Ostmen had been completely assimilated with either the native Irish or the immigrant English communities. A last vestige of the Viking domination of the city survives in the suburb of Oxmantown, a corruption of Ostmantown.

Preserving Our Past, Recording Our Present, Informing Our Future

Ancient and Honorable Carruthers Clan Int Society LLC

carrothersclan@gmail.com CARRUTHERSCLAN1@GMAIL.COM

You can find us on facebook at :

https://www.facebook.com/carrutherscarrothers.pat.9

https://www.facebook.com/CarruthersClan/

https://www.facebook.com/CarruthersClanLLC

Disclaimer Ancient and Honorable Carruthers Clan International Society CCIS LLC

The Viking Age, Uncategorized

CLAN CARRUTHERS – THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND – PART II

April 15, 2020April 15, 2020 ClanCarruthers

CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND

795 – 1014

PART II

The Viking slave trade

Archaeological evidence indicates that by 902 Dublin had begun to outgrow the longphort and become a true town rather than an armed camp. Significantly, following the Irish conquest in that year, Dublin was not abandoned: there is clear evidence of continuity of settlement through to its recapture by the Norse in 917. That there was an exodus of Scandinavians from Ireland at that time is not in doubt, so this is probably evidence that Dublin had a significant Irish population living alongside the Norse and that they were allowed to remain: they may even have been the majority because genetic studies have found scant evidence of Scandinavian DNA in the modern Irish population.

Dublin owed its transformation to a town to trade. Pre-Viking Ireland did not play a large part in international trade so it had no trading towns to compare with the likes of Dorestad or York. Coinage was not used either. Ireland was not poor, however. The hoards of magnificent gold and silver liturgical vessels from Ardagh and Derrynaflan stand testimony to the wealth of Ireland’s monasteries in the early Middle Ages. Major Irish monasteries like Armagh or Clonmacnoise were much more than communities of monks, they were also centres of political power and economic activity. Secular communities of craftsmen and merchants grew up around the more important monasteries and by the eighth century a few were becoming small towns. Kings, seeking the authority and safety that close association with the saints was believed to confer, often had residences, treasuries and garrisons in these monastic towns. All of this was more than enough to justify the Vikings’ attentions, but their main interest was in Ireland’s people.

Crude estimates based on a count of known settlements suggest that Ireland’s population was about half a million when the Viking Age began. Thanks to the country’s mild winters, cool summers and reliable rainfall, grass grew all year round so cattle and sheep did not have to be kept inside during the winter. The Irish did not bother to gather hay in the summer as it was so rarely necessary. Despite occasional famines caused by cattle epidemics and severe weather, the Irish population was generally well nourished and very few people were desperately poor. The Vikings rounded up these people in their thousands to be ransomed or sold as slaves according to their wealth and status. Slavery was rare in pre-Viking Ireland – it was used mainly as a form of debt bondage – so there was no slave trade. Plundering in wars between the Irish was usually confined to cattle rustling, so Viking slaving added a new form of suffering to the experience of warfare. Perhaps inevitably, Irish kings soon began to take captives during their wars and sell them to the Vikings. Irish captives who were not lucky enough to be ransomed by their relatives could expect to be sold abroad. Anglo-Saxon England and the Frankish kingdoms both had active slave trades but most Irish captives probably finished up in Scandinavia or the Moorish kingdoms in Spain and North Africa. Through developing the slave trade, the Vikings drew Ireland into fuller participation in the international trade networks. This is usually presented as one of the positive impacts that the Vikings had on Ireland, but it is unlikely that their victims were quite so sanguine about it.

*** OUR THEORY ON FEMALE SLAVES THAT WERE TAKEN AS WIVES IS, OUR GOTLANDER ANCESTORS ONLY TOOK THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN FOR THEIR WIVES. THAT IS WHY TODAY, THE CARRUTHERS WOMEN ARE BEAUTIFUL. IF NOT, THEY MAY NOT BE A CARRUTHERS***

We know enough about the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade of the eighteenth century to guess at the human misery Viking slaving must have caused. Its economic impact is harder to estimate but it is likely that Vikings targeted the young and healthy rather than infants and the elderly. The kidnapping and breaking-up of communities of learned monks must have had a far more serious impact on Ireland’s flourishing monastic culture than ever the destruction of books, sacred vessels and buildings did. As mere commodities, the voices of slaves are rarely heard in the historical record, but two remarkable accounts have survived about the experiences of Irishmen who were captured by Viking slavers. One relates to a Leinsterman called Findan whose sister was captured by Viking raiders some time around the middle of the ninth century. Findan’s father sent him to the Vikings to arrange his sister’s ransom, but they immediately clapped him in irons and carried him off to their ship too. After keeping him without food and water for two days, the Vikings discussed what to do with him. Luckily, his captors decided that it was wrong to capture people who had come to pay ransom, no doubt because it would discourage others from doing so, and they let him, and presumably his sister, go. A short time afterwards Findan got caught up in another Viking raid but evaded capture by hiding behind the door of a hut. For Findan it was third time unlucky, because in his next encounter with the Vikings he was taken prisoner and sold into slavery. After changing hands several times, Findan finished up on a ship bound for Scandinavia. Findan gained his owner’s confidence by helping the crew fight off some pirates and he was released from his leg irons. When his owner made a stop-over in Orkney, Findan seized the opportunity to jump ship and escape. Findan eventually made his way to Rome as a pilgrim and ended his life as a monk at the monastery of Rheinau in Switzerland: one of his fellow monks recorded his life story shortly after he died.

The second story concerns an Irishman called Murchad, a married man with a daughter, who was captured by Vikings and taken to Northumbria, where he was sold as a slave to a nunnery, with comical consequences. After he had seduced several of the nuns and turned the nunnery into a brothel, Murchad was expelled and cast adrift on the sea in a boat without oars or a sail as a punishment for his impiety. Murchad was rescued by Vikings, who took him to Germany and sold him to a roguish widow, who paid for him with counterfeit money. Murchad seduced her too, of course. After many more adventures, Murchad eventually returned to Ireland, was reunited with his family, and took up a career teaching Latin grammar. How much real history there is in this tale is hard to tell; perhaps it is really about making the best of hard times. It is unlikely that many captives were as lucky as Findan and Murchad but neither is it likely that all came to bad ends: most of the thousands of Irish slaves who were taken to Iceland later in the ninth century were eventually freed and became tenant farmers, for example.

Division is strength

By the early tenth century, Vikings had conquered and colonised substantial parts of England, Scotland and Francia, as well as the uninhabited Faeroe Islands and Iceland. Yet for all the fury of their onslaught, in Ireland the Vikings had not even been able to retain a toehold. Appearances can be deceptive. Ireland’s divisions might have been a handicap in combating plundering raids but they also made it all but impossible for the Vikings to conquer and hold territory. On the face of it, it would have seemed that Ireland’s disunity should have made it more vulnerable to conquest by the Vikings than England, which was divided into only four powerful centralised kingdoms. In fact the opposite was true. In early medieval Europe it was always the centralised kingdoms that got conquered most easily. After the ‘Great Army’ of Danish Vikings invaded England in 865, the kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia both collapsed as soon as their kings had been killed in battle. Mercia too collapsed when its king decided he would prefer not to get killed and fled the country. Only Wessex survived to prevent England becoming Daneland. The centralised nature of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms meant that it was relatively easy for the Vikings to destroy the small ruling class and take over; just one battle might do the trick, as it did, more or less, in 1066. Little trouble would then be expected from the leaderless peasantry. Ireland, however, had dozens of kings and even more lineages from which new kings could be chosen. No victory, therefore, could ever have the decisive knockout effect it could in a country like England. Nor was there much chance of a lasting peace agreement with so many kings to negotiate with because what one agreed was not binding on the others.

The military resources of the Irish should not be underestimated either. Most Irish local kingdoms could raise armies of around 300 men. This was inadequate to deal with anything but a small Viking raiding party, but there were a great many local kingdoms. Local kings owed military service to their over-kings, so an over-king who could enforce the obedience of his vassals could raise a very large army indeed. However, in a clash of shield walls an Irish warrior was no match for a well-equipped Viking. The Irish fought almost naked without armour or iron helmets, armed with spears and using only bucklers (small round shields) for protection. The Irish recognised the superiority of the Viking warrior and they usually avoided formal battle in favour of irregular tactics, harassing raiding parties and wearing them down with sudden ambushes before melting away into the woods and bogs. In this kind of fighting, their lack of armour was an advantage to the Irish, making them more agile than a mail-clad Viking. A weary Viking raiding party returning home burdened with loot, captives and stolen cattle would have been particularly vulnerable to these tactics.

The Irish countryside was scattered with as many as 50,000 ringforts, but these were probably less of a hindrance to Viking raiders than Ireland’s warriors. Ringforts varied in size according to the status of their inhabitants. An over-king might have a substantial stone structure like the Grianán of Aileach in Donegal, a stronghold of the Northern Uí Néill dynasty. Built in the eighth century, the Grianán’s 15 foot (4.5 m) thick stone walls enclose an area 75 feet (23 m) in diameter. But although it is an impressive structure, modern experiments have shown that it would not have been at all easy to defend so it may have been built mainly as a ceremonial centre rather than to withstand a siege. Local kings and aristocrats had more modest forts, sometimes as little as 30 feet (9 m) in diameter, with earth ramparts and a palisade, containing its owner’s house and ancillary buildings. The ramparts of these small forts were primarily markers of status, for they were barely adequate for keeping livestock in, never mind keeping raiders out. More secure were crannogs, high status dwellings built on artificial islands in the middle of lakes. Communal fortifications like the English burhs, intended to provide refuges for the general population, were unknown.

During the course of the Viking Age, monks began to provide their monasteries with tall, slender, stone round towers. These were primarily used as bell towers and treasuries but they were also refuges against Viking raids. Over eighty round towers are known to have been built: the tallest surviving round tower, at Kilmacduagh in Galway, is 113 feet (34.5 m) tall. The towers’ entrances were set well above ground level so that they could only be entered with a ladder. The entrances of some towers show signs of fire damage, which is likely a result of Viking attacks. Having no source of water, or battlements from which to fight off attackers, round towers could not withstand a long siege but a small Viking raiding party could not really afford any delay.

The Vikings return

During Ireland’s ‘Forty Years’ Rest’, the bulk of Viking forces were busying themselves plundering England and Francia. By the first decade of the tenth century, the English and Franks were finally getting the measure of the Vikings so Ireland once more began to look attractive to them. In 914 Ragnald, a grandson of Ivar I, appeared in the Irish Sea and defeated a rival Viking leader in a sea battle off the coast of the Isle of Man before going to set up a longphort at Waterford in south-east Ireland. The Vikings were back and with a vengeance. In 917, Ragnald’s brother Sihtric Cáech (‘squinty’) recaptured Dublin and in 919 smashed an Irish counter-attack at Islandbridge, killing the Úi Néill High King Niall Glúndubh and five other kings. In 922, Tomar mac Ailche (Thormódr Helgason) re-established Viking occupation at Limerick and around the same time other Viking leaders established themselves at Cork and Wexford. As was the case in the ninth century, the Vikings made no extensive territorial conquests or settlements outside their heavily fortified towns. Dublin came to control the most extensive territory: known as Dyflinnarskíri or ‘Dublinshire’, it extended along the coast from Wicklow (Vikinglo) in the south to Skerries (from Old Norse sker meaning a ‘reef’) in the north, and as far inland as Leixlip (Old Norse lax hlaup meaning ‘salmon leap’) on the River Liffey. A dearth of Norse place-names in the countryside of Dublinshire supports the conclusion that there was little or no Viking settlement outside Dublin and its immediate environs.

The history of the revived Viking kingdom of Dublin is frequently entangled with that of the Viking kingdom of York across the Irish Sea. While the Norse had been exiled from Ireland, Ragnald had briefly held power in York and now he wanted it back. Using Dublin as a base to campaign in northern England, Ragnald recaptured York in 919. York must have seemed a greater prize than Dublin because when Ragnald died in 921, Sihtric gave up the kingship of Dublin to another brother, Guthfrith, and took up the kingship of York. An aggressive ruler, Guthfrith immediately launched a furious campaign of plundering and slaving raids against the Irish, culminating in a curiously respectful sack of Armagh in November. Guthfrith spared the monks, the sick and the monastic buildings, ‘save for a few dwellings which were burned through carelessness.’ It may be that Guthfrith was a Christian. If so, Guthfrith’s show of respect for St Patrick did him no good because he was intercepted on his way home by Muirchertach of the Leather Cloaks (r. 919 – 43), the king of the Northern Uí Néill, and heavily defeated. This set the tone for Ireland’s second Viking Age: the days when Vikings might criss-cross Ireland without meeting serious opposition were gone. Muirchertach won another victory over the Dublin Vikings at Carlingford Lough in 925, when 200 of them were captured and beheaded, and the following year he killed Guthfrith’s son Alpthann (Halfdan) in another battle at Linn Duchaill. Muirchertach besieged the survivors in the longphort there until Guthfrith brought an army north from Dublin to rescue them. The longphort was afterwards permanently abandoned.

What had changed since Ireland’s first Viking Age? The shock of Viking raiding had forced change upon the Irish. Irish society became increasingly militarised and those kings who offered the most effective military leadership against the Vikings enhanced their status and power and, as they tightened their grip over their sub-kings, they could raise larger armies and enhance their power even more. It was the same virtuous circle of success that was driving political centralisation and state formation in contemporary Scandinavia. Irish kingship was gradually becoming more territorial and many local kings found themselves reduced to the status of local chieftains. At the same time, the Irish had learned from the Vikings, making greater use of swords and axes in battle. Though they still lacked armour, this went some way to evening the odds on the battlefield. War was also waged with a new ruthlessness, against both the Vikings and other Irish kingdoms. Ravaging and burning had been rare before the Viking Age, but now Irish kings used it routinely as a weapon against their foes irrespective of whether they were Irish or Norse.

After Sihtric’s death in 927, Guthfrith went to York, whether to claim the throne for himself or to support his brother’s son Olaf Cuarán is not known. Both were quickly expelled by Æthelstan of Wessex. Guthfrith returned to lay siege to York, but was forced to surrender to Æthelstan, who allowed him to return to Dublin, which he ruled until his death in 934. Guthfrith’s son and successor, Olaf Guthfrithsson, established dominance over all the Norse in Ireland when he defeated the Limerick Vikings in a naval battle on Lough Ree in 937. It was in the same year that he allied with the Scots and the Welsh of Strathclyde in another attempt to win the kingdom of York only to be defeated by Æthelstan at the Battle of Brunanburh (see p. 124). Muirchertach sacked Dublin the following year, taking advantage of its weakness after Olaf’s defeat in England. However, Æthelstan’s death in 939 finally gave Olaf the chance to seize York and unite it with Dublin in a single kingdom. Olaf did not enjoy his success for long: he died shortly after raiding the Northumbrian monasteries at Tyninghame and Auldhame in 941, a victim, it was said, of divine displeasure. A tenth-century Viking burial discovered in the monastic cemetery at Auldhame almost certainly belongs to a high-status Viking who was involved in these raids. It has been speculated that the burial was even that of Olaf himself. As Olaf was married to the daughter of King Constantine II of Scotland he must have been at least a nominal Christian. The king might therefore have been buried on consecrated ground as a posthumous act of penance. Following Olaf’s death his cousin Olaf Cuarán became king of York, while his brother Blácaire succeeded him at Dublin.

Blácaire was an active raider. On 26 February 943 he defeated and killed Muirchertach at the Battle of Glas Liatháin and five days later sacked Armagh. Muirchertach’s death was mourned by the Irish, the Annals of Ulster described him as ‘the Hector of the western world’ and lamented that his death had left the ‘land of the Irish orphaned’. Irish retaliation was swift. The following year, the newly acknowledged High King Congalach Cnogba captured and burned Dublin, carrying away a vast amount of booty. Four hundred Vikings were said to have been killed in the fighting and Blácaire fled into exile. In his absence, Congalach installed Olaf Cuarán, recently expelled from York by the English, as king of Dublin. Olaf’s dependence on Congalach was such that when the pair were defeated by a rival for the high kingship in 947, Blácaire was able to depose him and reclaim his throne. After his death in battle against Congalach in 948, Blácaire was succeeded by his cousin Godfred, another son of Sihtric Cáech. In 951 Godfred led an enormously successful expedition in the Irish midlands, plundering half a dozen monasteries including Kells. According to the Annals of Ulster, ‘three thousand men or more were taken captive and a great spoil of cattle and horses and gold and silver was taken away’. Divine vengeance followed swiftly, of course. A severe epidemic, described in the annals as dysentery and leprosy, broke out in Dublin on Godfred’s return and the king was one of its victims.

While Godfred had been plundering in Ireland his brother Olaf had briefly regained control of York before being expelled by the Norwegian Erik Bloodaxe in 952. Olaf now succeeded as king of Dublin but the dream of uniting Dublin and York was dead. The Dublin Vikings would never be a power in England again. It is doubtful that a Dublin-York axis was ever really viable in the long term. York is much more remote from Dublin than a casual glance at a map would suggest. As York could only be reached by ship from the North Sea, sailing there from Dublin involved a long, dangerous and time-consuming voyage around the north of Britain. The only alternative would have been to sail from Dublin to north-west England and then trek across the Pennine Hills to York. However, it is far from clear how much, if any, control the kings of York actually exercised west of the Pennines. And, fighting off the English and the Irish at the same time must have been way beyond the resources of the Dublin Vikings.

Olaf was not a peaceable king but neither was he a traditional freebooting Viking, as he rarely raided unless he was acting in alliance with an Irish king. Olaf was also closely linked to Irish dynasties by marriage – made possible by his baptism in England as part of a peace deal with king Edmund in 943. Olaf’s first wife was Dúnlaith, the sister of the high king Domnall ua Néill (r. 956 – 80) and, after her death, he married Gormflaith, daughter of Murchad mac Finn, king of Leinster.

** GENEALOGICALLY THE CARRUTHES ARE LINKED TO KING DONMALL UA NEILL. **

Olaf seems to have gained little, if any, political advantage from his marriages because his reign was dominated by conflicts with Domnall and with successive kings of Leinster (some of whom Olaf held hostage in Dublin). On Domnall’s death in 980, Dúnlaith’s son by an earlier marriage, Máel Sechnaill mac Domnall, the king of Meath, succeeded his uncle as high king. Máel Sechnaill clearly had no love lost for his stepfather as he had begun his reign as king of Meath in 975 with an attack on Dublin, in which he burned ‘Thor’s Wood’ (a pagan sacred grove) outside the city. Shortly after becoming high king, Máel Sechnaill heavily defeated a force of Vikings from Dublin, Man and the Hebrides in battle at the Hill of Tara, the traditional inauguration place of the high kings. Máel Sechnaill followed up his victory by laying siege to Dublin, which surrendered after three days. Máel Sechnaill imposed a heavy tribute on the citizens and deposed Olaf, who went into retirement as a monk on Iona, where he died soon afterwards. In his place, Máel Sechnaill appointed his half-brother Jarnkné (‘iron knee’) (r. 980 – 9), Olaf’s son by Dúnlaith, as tributary king. There was no disguising Dublin’s loss of independence.

Preserving Our Past, Recording Our Present, Informing Our Future

Ancient and Honorable Carruthers Clan Int Society LLC

carrothersclan@gmail.com CARRUTHERSCLAN1@GMAIL.COM

You can find us on facebook at :

https://www.facebook.com/carrutherscarrothers.pat.9

https://www.facebook.com/CarruthersClan/

https://www.facebook.com/CarruthersClanLLC

Disclaimer Ancient and Honorable Carruthers Clan International Society CCIS LLC

The Viking Age, Uncategorized

CLAN CARRUTHERS – THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND – PART I

April 15, 2020 ClanCarruthers

CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND

795 – 1014

PART I

Few places suffered more at the hands of the Vikings than Ireland. For the best part of 200 years the Vikings systematically milked Ireland of its people to supply the slave trade, yet, for all their military success they failed to conquer and settle in any territory besides a few fortified coastal enclaves. This is the conundrum of Viking Age Ireland; it was a land that looked weak but was in reality strong and resilient.

Superficially, Ireland must have looked to the Vikings like an easy target. There is no doubt that in England and Francia internal divisions worked to the Vikings’ advantage, and if there, why not even more so in Ireland, which was the most divided country in western Europe? Early medieval Ireland was a complex mosaic of around 150 local kingdoms and a dozen over-kingdoms. The local kingdoms or túatha were usually very small – often less than 100 square miles with populations of only a few thousand – and were defined as a ‘people’ or ‘community’, rather than as territorial units. The people of a túath were, in theory at least, an extended kinship group, or clan, and the king was the head of the senior lineage. The king (rí túathe) was responsible to his people for the fertility of their land and cattle, hence their prosperity: this was a legacy of pagan times when a king who failed to deliver would be sacrificed to the gods. Kings also had duties of lawmaking, judgement and leadership in war. In return all the free families of the túath owed the king taxes (paid in kind) and military service. Local kings might themselves owe tribute (usually in cattle), hospitality and military service to an over-king (ruirí), who in turn might owe it to a high king (rí ruirech). Over-kings, therefore, did not exercise direct rule outside their own túath, their power rested upon their ability to call on the resources and services of their client kings. The most powerful over-king of the day might be described as High King of Ireland (rí Érenn), but this was not really a formal institution with defined rules of succession. The relationships between kingdoms were not fixed. A local king with military ability and ambition could build a strong war band and use it to make himself an over-king by forcing other local kings to become his tributaries. Nevertheless, by the eighth century some stable dynasties of over-kings had emerged, the most powerful of which were the Northern and Southern Uí Néill dynasties of north-east Ulster and Meath respectively. To an outsider, early medieval Ireland would have appeared to be a chaotic and deeply divided country and, indeed, small-scale warfare between its kingdoms was endemic. Yet this highly decentralised political structure was to prove incredibly resilient, well able to absorb the shock of Viking invasions and constantly renew resistance.

In contrast to England and Francia where the Danes dominated, these raids were mainly the work of Norwegians, sailing to Ireland via the Northern Isles and the Hebrides. Viking activity in Ireland developed at first in much the same way as it did in England and Francia, beginning with small-scale hit-and-run raids on exposed coastal monasteries gradually escalating until the Vikings founded permanent bases and became a year-round presence plundering and captive-taking across the whole country. The first recorded Viking raids in Ireland took place in 795 when the same Viking band that sacked Iona sacked a monastery on Rechru, which may either be Lambay Island north of Dublin, or Rathlin Island off the northern Irish coast. In the 830s, larger fleets, numbering around sixty ships, began to arrive. Once its island monasteries had been plundered, Ireland’s wild and mountainous west coast, so similar to the west coast of Scotland, was generally shunned by the Vikings because of its poverty. The Vikings concentrated their efforts on the more fertile and densely populated east coast and the great midland plain. In 836, a fleet sailed for the first time far inland along Ireland’s longest river, the Shannon, and sacked the wealthy monasteries of Clonmacnoise and Clonfert. The following year, a Viking fleet sailed from Donegal Bay into Lough Erne to plunder monasteries around its shores. Another sacked the monastery of Áth Cliath – on the site of modern Dublin – while a third army ravaged on the Boyne, and a fourth was on the Shannon again. Nowhere was safe: ‘the sea cast floods of foreigners into Ireland, so there was not a point thereof that was without a fleet’, wrote one chronicler.

Although the Irish often fought fiercely, the Vikings’ advantage of mobility meant that they often escaped unchallenged: the saints slept and did not protect their monasteries. Monks trembled in their cells and prayed for bad weather to keep the Vikings off the seas. As kings were rarely inclined to help their rivals, the Vikings often benefited from the divisions between the Irish kingdoms. Indeed, most kings took a thoroughly pragmatic view of the Vikings, treating them as just another element in their country’s complex political geography, often welcoming them as allies who could help weaken a rival kingdom. Some bands of Irishmen took advantage of the disorder created by the Vikings to go plundering themselves ‘in the manner of the heathens’. One such band was destroyed by Máel Sechnaill mac Máele Ruanaid (r. 845 – 62), the powerful Southern Uí Néill high king of Meath, in 847.

The first longphuirt

In 839 there was a step-change in Viking activity. A Viking fleet sailed up the River Bann into Lough Neagh. Instead of plundering and leaving, the Vikings built a fortified ship camp on the lakeshore, which they used as a base to plunder the heart of Ulster for three successive summers. This was the first of many such bases – known as longphuirt by the Irish – that Viking armies were to build in Ireland over the next few years as they intensified their raids. The foundation of the longphuirt subtly changed the dynamics of Viking activity in Ireland. The Vikings were now a permanent presence in Ireland and could raid all year round, but at the same time, they lost some of their mobility, making them more vulnerable to Irish counterattack.

The leader of the fleet on Lough Neagh was a warlord who the Irish called Turgeis, that is probably Thórgestr or Thórgils in Old Norse. Turgeis’ origins are not known, but he may have come from the Hebrides as he had as his allies the Gall-Gaedhil, those ‘foreign Gaels’ who were the product of marriages between Norse settlers and the local Gaelic-speaking population. Turgeis’ greatest coup was plundering St Patrick’s monastery at Armagh three times in 840: after his final attack he burned it down for good measure. Armagh was an especially rich prize; apart from its precious reliquaries and sacred vessels, many Irish kings had their royal treasuries there, hoping that they would enjoy the protection of its powerful patron saint. It would not only have been monks who suffered in these attacks. Armagh was surrounded by a small town of craftsmen, merchants, estate managers and others who serviced the needs of this most prestigious of all Irish ecclesiastical centres. Turgeis’ activities are uncertain for the next few years, but he is thought by some historians to have been the leader of the Vikings who in 841 founded what would become the most successful of all the longphuirt at Dublin. In 844, Turgeis led his fleet up the River Shannon as far as Lough Ree, where he built another longphort from which he plundered widely in the midlands. The following year, in the first serious reverse suffered by the Vikings in Ireland, he was captured by Máel Sechnaill, who drowned him in Lough Owel in County Westmeath.

Turgeis’ reputation grew with the telling and after his death he became a symbol of everything that was wicked about the Vikings. In the colourful but unreliable twelfth-century history of Ireland’s Viking wars, Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh (‘The War of the Irish with the Foreigners’), Turgeis has become the king of all the Vikings in Ireland, bent on conquering the whole island. This Turgeis is a militant pagan who expels the abbot from Armagh and sets himself up as a pagan high priest. His wife Ota (probably Auðr) is just as bad, performing acts of witchcraft on the altar of the abbey at Clonmacnoise. This story might not be wholly improbable as Ota may have been a völva, a Viking seeress with powers to predict the future. According to the Welsh churchman Gerald of Wales, who travelled in Ireland during the 1180s, Turgeis actually conquered Ireland but was lured to his death by his weakness for women. Turgeis took a fancy to Máel Sechnaill’s daughter. The king, ‘hiding his hatred in his heart’, agreed to hand her over to Turgeis on an island in Lough Owel along with fifteen other beautiful girls. Turgeis was delighted and went to the rendezvous with fifteen of his leading warriors, all of them expecting amorous encounters. But Máel Sechnaill had laid a trap for them. His daughter was waiting for Turgeis on the island not with fifteen girls but with fifteen hand-picked young men, all clean shaven and dressed in women’s clothing, under which they carried knives. Turgeis and his unsuspecting warriors were stabbed to death ‘in the midst of their embraces’. Gerald probably recorded the story not to flatter the Irish for their cunning but because it chimed comfortably with his own prejudices: he regarded the Irish as a thoroughly deceitful and untrustworthy bunch who always negotiated in bad faith.

More reverses for the Vikings followed. In 848 the Irish won four major battles against the Vikings, killing over 2,000 of them in the process, according the Annals of Ulster. Irish annalists described these battle casualties as ‘heads’: Irish warriors still practiced the ancient Celtic custom of taking enemy heads as war trophies and rarely took prisoners. Then, in 849, Máel Sechnaill captured and plundered Dublin. Discouraged by their defeats, many Vikings left to seek easier pickings in Francia. The Norwegians suffered another blow in 851when a large force of Danish Vikings expelled them from Dublin. The following year the Norwegians suffered another crushing defeat by the Danes in a three-day battle at Carlingford Lough in County Down. The Danish intervention in Ireland was short-lived. In 853 two brothers, Olaf and Ivar, recaptured Dublin for the Norwegians and expelled the Danes.

The kingdom of Dublin

The arrival of Olaf and Ivar at Dublin in 853 was a decisive moment in Ireland’s Viking Age. Olaf and Ivar (who are called Amláib and Ímhar in Irish annals) became the first kings of Dublin and under their rule it developed from a rough ship-camp into the dominant Viking power centre of the whole Irish Sea area. Irish sources describe Olaf and Ivar as sons of King Gofraid of Lochlann, which is the usual Gaelic name for Norway, but their origins remain uncertain. Most modern historians identify Olaf with Olaf the White, a king of Dublin who features in Icelandic saga traditions. Attempts to identify Ivar with the legendary Viking Ivar the Boneless are unconvincing: Ivar the Boneless’s father was the equally legendary Viking Ragnar Lodbrok who, if he existed at all, was most likely a Dane. What is more certain is that the descendants of Olaf and Ivar, known to the Irish as the Uí Ímair, would dominate the Irish Sea for the next 200 years.

There is not enough evidence about the careers of Turgeis and Tomrair to be sure of their motives: did they aspire to found Viking states in Ireland or were they really just out for the plunder? It is clear, however, that Olaf and Ivar were trying to create a kingdom for themselves because their first actions were to impose tribute on all the Viking armies operating in Ireland. It is hard to work out from the Irish annals exactly how many of these there were but there must have been at least three or four. In their efforts to build a secure power base, the brothers took full advantage of the complex political rivalries of the Irish kingdoms. In 859 Olaf and Ivar allied with Cerball mac Dúnlainge (r. 842 – 880), king of Osraige, against his overlord Máel Sechnaill. According to saga traditions, the alliance was sealed by a marriage between Olaf and one of Cerball’s daughters. A Christian king is unlikely to have married his daughters to pagans, so, if the tradition is true, it is likely that Olaf had at least been baptised. In 858, Ivar and Cerball campaigned together in Leinster, and in Munster against the Gall-Gaedhil. The next year Olaf, Ivar and Cerball together invaded Máel Sechnaill’s kingdom of Meath. After Cerball came to terms with Máel Sechnaill, he dropped his Norse allies. Olaf and Ivar soon found a new ally in Áed Finnliath (c. 855 – 79), the northern Uí Néill king of Ulster. Together they plundered Máel Sechnaill’s kingdom in 861 and 862. After Máel Sechnaill’s death in 862, Olaf and Ivar switched to supporting his successor Lorcán against Áed. The brothers did Lorcán’s standing no good at all when, in 863, they dug open the great Neolithic burial mounds at Knowth on the River Boyne to look for treasure. Although pagan in origin, these ancient mounds were rich in mythological significance for the Irish and this desecration was thought to be shocking behaviour even by the Viking’s low standards. The following year Áed captured the discredited Lorcán, blinded him and forced him to abdicate.

Olaf and his brothers had now run out of willing allies in Ireland and, in 866, they took their fleet across the Irish Sea to raid Pictland in alliance with the Gall-Gaedhil. Áed, now high king, took advantage of their absence to plunder and destroy all the Viking longphuirt in Ulster. After a victory over the Vikings on Lough Foyle, Áed took 240 heads home as trophies. The limited extent of Viking territorial control was starkly demonstrated in 867 when Áed’s ally Cennétig king of Loigis, destroyed Olaf’s border fortress at Clondalkin just 5 miles from Dublin, which he then went on to plunder. Olaf now allied with the southern Uí Néill and Leinster against Áed. Áed crushed the alliance at the Battle of Killineer (Co. Louth) in 868: among the dead was one of Olaf’s sons. Olaf struck back at Áed in 869, brutally sacking Armagh and leading off 1,000 captives for the slave markets. This was a severe blow to Áed’s prestige – he was supposed to be the monastery’s protector. After this success, Olaf and Ivar crossed the Irish Sea to Strathclyde and laid siege to its capital, Alt Clut, on the summit of Dumbarton Rock, overlooking the River Clyde. Alt Clut fell after four months and the brothers returned to Dublin with a hoard of treasure. They went back to Strathclyde for more the following year and this time returned ‘with a great prey of Angles, Britons and Picts’. Olaf and Ivar were back plundering in Meath in 872, but in the next year Ivar died of ‘a sudden, horrible disease’. Olaf survived until 874 or 875: he was killed in battle with Constantine I of Scotland at Dollar in Clackmannanshire.

**** We do have DNA evidence, not genealogical, that the Carruthers ancestors from Gotland, landed in Winchester or Cinchester first around 400 AD. They later were welcomed at Dumbarton Castle on the Clyde River, by Hael Ryddech. King Hael gave them land across the River Clyde from the castle, and it was call Cair-muir. ***

We also have DNA evidence of various times of our Gotland ancestors landing on the east coat of Scotland and the Northern islands. *****

The deaths of Ivar and Olaf began what the Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh dubbed the ‘Forty Years’ Rest’, a long period of reduced Viking activity in Ireland that lasted until 914. Deprived of the strong military leadership provided by Olaf and Ivar, Dublin became politically unstable under a succession of short-lived successors. Olaf’s first successor as king of Dublin, his son Oystín (Eystein), lasted barely a year: he was killed when Dublin was captured by a Danish Viking who Irish annalists called Alband. Alband is most likely to have been Halfdan, the Danish king of York. Áed Finnliath came to the rescue of his Viking allies, quickly expelling Alband and placing Ivar’s son Bárðr on the throne. Alband returned to Ireland in 877, but was killed fighting the Dublin Vikings at Strangford Lough. However, his dream of uniting Dublin and York into a trans-Irish Sea kingdom survived. Bárðr died in 881 and was followed by six short-lived kings, none of whom was able to arrest the kingdom’s decline. In 902, Cerball mac Muirecáin, king of Leinster and Máel Finnia of Brega launched a co-ordinated pincer attack on Dublin from the north and south, forcing the Norse to flee for their ships after a fierce battle. The refugees fled mainly to North Wales and north-west England. Ireland’s first Viking Age was over.

From longphort to town

Most of the Vikings’ longphuirt were either abandoned, or were destroyed by the Irish, after relatively short periods of occupation. Dublin was one of a small group of longphuirt, which also included Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, which developed into permanent towns. These longphuirt all had in common good tidal harbours. The exact location of the original Viking longphort at Dublin now lies buried beneath later buildings. This has necessarily limited archaeological investigation of the city’s origins to rescue excavations on sites that have been temporarily cleared for redevelopment. Evidence for early Viking occupation, including warrior burials, buildings, ship rivets and a possible defensive rampart, excavated from sites at Ship Street Great and South Great George’s Street, suggest that the longphort was probably in the area where Dublin Castle now stands, close to the Dubhlinn, the ‘black pool’ from which the city got its English name. This was a now-vanished tidal pool at the confluence of the River Liffey and its small tributary the Poddle. Dublin was already a place of some importance before the longphort was built as a monastic centre and the site of the lowest ford across the River Liffey: its Gaelic name Áth Cliath means ‘the ford of the hurdles’. This ford made Dublin a natural focus of overland routes and, with its good harbour and short sailing distances to Wales, north-west England, Galloway and the Isle of Man, it was ideally situated to become a successful port and trading centre. The same geographical advantages also made Dublin an ideal base for raiding, not only in eastern Ireland but around the whole Irish Sea region. No other longphort in Ireland had the same combination of advantages: it was almost inevitable that Dublin would become Ireland’s dominant Viking centre.

Early Dublin was probably similar to the well-preserved longphort at Linn Duchaill, about 40 miles further north, near the village of Annagassan in County Louth. Founded in the same year as Dublin, this longphort was built on the site of a minor monastery on the banks of the River Glyde, close to its estuary into the Irish Sea. The Vikings occupied the longphort until 891, when the Irish expelled them. Vikings reoccupied the site c. 914 only for it to be abandoned for good in 927. The site has been open farmland ever since so, unlike Dublin, this longphort’s remains have seen little disturbance. Covering about 40 acres (16 hectares), the longphort at Linn Duachaill was large enough to accommodate an army that was several thousand strong. A rampart and ditch, ¾ of a mile long, protected the landward side of the fort and there was a small citadel on higher ground within the fort. Excavations yielded large numbers of ships’ rivets, testifying to ship repair and perhaps shipbuilding on the site. Pieces of hacksilver and the remains of scales show that loot was divided up here and an iron slave chain dredged from the river is evidence of slave raiding. A shuttle and spindle whorl provide evidence of spinning and weaving in the fort. As these were not occupations for Viking warriors, women must have lived there. Geophysical surveys suggest that the waterfront was densely built-up but this has not yet been confirmed by excavations. Linn Duachaill did not have the good harbour that Dublin had, and it was that which probably prevented it ever developing into a permanent town.

The first longphuirt

The kingdom of Dublin

From longphort to town

Preserving Our Past, Recording Our Present, Informing Our Future

Ancient and Honorable Carruthers Clan Int Society LLC

carrothersclan@gmail.com CARRUTHERSCLAN1@GMAIL.COM

You can find us on facebook at :

https://www.facebook.com/carrutherscarrothers.pat.9

https://www.facebook.com/CarruthersClan/

https://www.facebook.com/CarruthersClanLLC

Disclaimer Ancient and Honorable Carruthers Clan International Society CCIS LLC

Gutland / Gotland, Uncategorized

CLAN CARRUTHERS-ENGLISH TREASURE ON GOTLAND

April 4, 2020April 8, 2020 ClanCarruthers

CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

English Treasure on Gotland

And Irish treasure And Frankish treasure. And German treasure. And Arabic – most especially Arabic.

Through the Carruthers DNA studies, the Genetic Genealogist have shown us that our CTS DNA genome has shown up in two large waves of coming ashore in England and Scotland. We are sure there have been more, but it takes a lot of money for testing. One wave was in the middle to late 450 AD, in Winchester or Cinchester, Dunbarton and along the Clyde River, and on the east coast of Scotland, around 850 AD.

The Carruthers Historians along with Mark Stewart, and Douglas Stewart, have shown possible travel routes between Scotland and Ireland for these same time periods.

Gotland coat of arms; sheep, called
on Gotland “lamm” have always
been important to the local economy

More than 700 purposefully assembled collections, or hoards, of silver treasure have been found on the Baltic island of Gotland, most deposited in the ground for safe keeping during the Viking age (9th through mid-11th centuries).

A few of these hoards are of unequalled size, including the largest ever found. The Spillings Hoard, unearthed by a farmer in his field in north-eastern Gotland in July 1999, contains more than 14,300 silver coins, and much silver jewellery: hundreds of armlets, and numerous finger rings, as well as silver ingots, coils of rolled silver, and hack-silver, pieces of broken jewellery and cut-up coinage.

The Spillings Hoard was buried under the floorboards of a farmhouse about 881 CE, as the latest coin is dated to then. The house quite possibly was that belonging to a metalsmith – always a prosperous member of society in medieval times – judging by the other metal remains found on site. The earliest coins in the hoard are 6th c Sasanian. The vast majority of the coins are Arabic dirhams, not brought to the island as plunder but rather through the extensive trade around the Baltic basin that connected Gotland with the Silk Road and its fabled riches of silk, furs, and spices. The area where the Spillings Hoard was found abounded in well-to-do savers; a hoard was found in the same field in 1883 and numbered 5,922 coins.

Gotland is an island 109 miles long and 32 miles wide in the Baltic sea, and today is home to some 58,000 residents. An independent nation until captured by the Danish King Valdemar Atterdag in 1361, Gotland did not become part of Sweden until 1645.

The walled capital city of Visby, on the eastern coast, grew immensely rich in the later middle ages as part of the Hanseatic League, leaving it and all of Gotland dotted with impressive medieval buildings, including the 94 parish churches it is justly famed for.

It is a place of exceptional beauty, its extensive coast and many inlets dotted with rauk – wind- and water-swept limestone rock formations – and blessed with the sunniest location of all Sweden. The name “Gotland” – Gutland in Gutnish, the original language of the settlers, is “Goth-land”, land of the Goths. Although the official language politically is Swedish, Gutnish is still spoken amongst some residents, although sadly barely survives in written form. Swedish friends living and studying on Gotland tell me that when they overhear Gutnish it is unintelligible to them, so distinct a language it is.

Nearly 200,000 old coins have been found on Gotland, including more late Anglo-Saxon coins than have been found in Britain itself. Yes: more late Anglo-Saxon coins have been found on this small distant island than in England itself. Many of these English coins were almost certainly plunder, and from the payment of thousands of pounds of danegeld (the payments paid by Anglo-Saxon rulers to stave off the predations of the Vikings). But the Gotlanders themselves were not “Vikings” – they were prosperous and peaceful farmers and traders, highly independent, pragmatic, and successful. Gotland’s location in the Baltic Sea made it perfect for trading runs across to the eastern and southern shores, where tribes such as the Polanie, Pomerani, and Prus ran Summer trading posts. These connected to trade routes heading further East deep into Russia, South to present day Iraq and Uzbekistan, and West to the great trading towns of the Svear (Swedes) such as Birka, and Aros (Aarhus) of the Danes.

The Spillings Hoard, along with much more treasure and examples of Gotland’s famed standing memorial stones, are on view in Visby at the Gotlands Museum. An excellent book is available on the Hoard: The Spillings Hoard: Gotland’s Role in Viking Age World Trade, Visby, Gotlands Museum, 2009.

Preserving Our Past, Recording Our Present, Informing Our Future

Ancient and Honorable Clan Carruthers Int Society CCIS LLc

carruthersclan1@gmail.com carrothersclan@gmail.com

Octavia Randolph

You can find us on facebook at :

https://www.facebook.com/carrutherscarrothers.pat.9

https://www.facebook.com/CarruthersClan/

https://www.facebook.com/CarruthersClanLLC

Disclaimer Ancient and Honorable Carruthers Clan International Society CCI

The Viking Age, Uncategorized

CLAN CARRUTHERS – DUBLINIA

February 4, 2020April 8, 2020 ClanCarruthers

Clan Carruthers Int Society CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

Dublinia

EXPERIENCE VIKING AND MEDIEVAL DUBLIN

Dublinia is a historical recreation (or living history) museum and visitor attraction in Dublin, Ireland, focusing on the Viking and Medieval history of the city. Dublinia is located in a part of Dublin’s Christ Church Cathedral, known as the Synod hall.

Dublinia features historical reenactment, with actors playing the roles of Vikings and Medieval Dubliners (in full costume) and encourages visitors to join in. It has recreations of Viking and Medieval era buildings (houses, etc) and street scenes.

The exhibition was opened in 1993, and was redeveloped in 2010 at a cost of €2 million. The museum attracts over 125,000 visitors per annum.

Dublinia, located at the crossroads of the medieval city at Christchurch, is where Viking and Medieval history is brought to life.

There are four exciting exhibitions at Dublinia:

Viking Dublin

In the Viking Dublin exhibition, take a trip back to Viking times. What was life really like on board a Viking warship? See the weaponry and the skills of being a Viking warrior. Try on Viking clothes, become a slave and stroll down a noisy street. Visit a smokey and cramped Viking house. Learn of the myths and the mysteries surrounding the Vikings and their legacy. Also, new to Dublinia, find out what really happened during the Battle for Clontarf and the eventual decline of Viking power in Dublin.

Medieval Dublin

Visit the Medieval Dublin exhibition and witness the sights, sounds and smells of this busy city. Learn about crime and punishment, death and disease and even toothache remedies of 700 years ago. Enjoy the spicy aromas and so much more in the medieval fair – learn to play medieval games, visit a rich merchant’s kitchen and walk along a bustling medieval street.

History Hunters

See how archaeologists dig deep to uncover Dublin’s past in the History Hunters exhibition. Find out how archaeology works with history and other sciences to piece together the jigsaws of the Dubliners’ ancestors’ lives. See Viking and medieval artefacts including a medieval skeleton (courtesy of the National Museum of Ireland). Visit the lab and learn how bugs and dirt can be the history hunter’s gold. See how the past has influenced who you are today. Finally, see how people are influenced by the Viking and medieval era in today’s books, movies, fashion and architecture.

St Michael’s Tower

Lastly, visit St Michael’s Tower – an original medieval tower with a 96-step climb to the top, where you can see spectacular views of the city. Learn all about the history of the tower and the surrounding parish in the new exhibition at the Tower base.

At Dublinia, see Dublin from a new perspective and come away knowing more about its citizens throughout the ages!

Preserving Our Past, Recording Our Present, Informing Our Future

Ancient and Honorable Clan Carruthes Int Society CCIS LLc

carruthersclan1@gmail.com carrothersclan@gmail.com

St Michael’s Hill, Christchurch, Dublin 8, Ireland

You can find us on facebook at :

https://www.facebook.com/carrutherscarrothers.pat.9

https://www.facebook.com/CarruthersClan/

https://www.facebook.com/CarruthersClanLLC

Disclaimer Ancient and Honorable Carruthers Clan International Society CCIS LL

Gutland / Gotland, The Viking Age, Uncategorized

CLAN CARRUTHERS -THE VIKINGS IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND IN THE NINTH CENTURY

January 28, 2020April 8, 2020 ClanCarruthers

Clan Carruthers Int Society CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

THE VIKINGS IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND IN THE NINTH CENTURY

This study attempts to provide a new framework for ninth-century Irish
and Scottish history. Viking Scotland, known as Lothlend, Laithlinn, Lochlainn and
comprising the Northern and Western Isles and parts of the mainland, especially
Caithness, Sutherland and Inverness, and Scotland Lowlands, was settled by Norse Vikings in the early ninth century. By the mid-century it was ruled by an effective royal dynasty that was not connected to Norwegian/Norse Vestfold. In the second half of the century it made Dublin its headquarters, engaged in warfare with Irish kings, controlled most Viking activity in Ireland, and imposed its overlordship and its tribute on Pictland and
Strathclyde. When expelled from Dublin in 902 it returned to Scotland and from there
it conquered York and re-founded the kingdom of Dublin in 917.

I propose to reconsider the Viking attack on Scotland and Ireland
and I argue that the most plausible and economical interpretation of the historical
record is as follows. A substantial part of Scotland—the Northern and Western Isles
and large areas of the coastal mainland from Caithness and Sutherland to Argyle—
was conquered by the Vikings in the first quarter of the ninth century and a Viking
kingdom was set up there earlier than the middle of the century. The occupation of
this part of Scotland corresponds chronologically to what I call the prelude to the
Viking wars in Ireland (from c.795 to c.825). This involved raids on Ireland directly
from south-western Norway and, very likely, some from settlements in Scotland in the
later part of that period. The main thrust of the ninth-century Viking attack on Ireland
(c.825 to c.850) was mounted from Scotland, Laithlinn was the name of Viking
Scotland, and the dynasty that imposed itself on Dublin, and that later dominated
York and threatened to dominate England, originated in Viking Scotland. This, it
itself, is not a novel idea. It has been suggested in a somewhat vague way, amongst others, by R. H. M. Dolley, but he was thinking mainly of the tenth century.
Professor Peter Sawyer largely concurs and he has explicitly rejected the notion (put forward, for example, by N. K. Chadwick) that the ninth-century attack on Ireland was planned and implemented from south-western Norway by the king of Lochlainn.

Professor A. A. M. Duncan pushes the Scottish argument much further and surmises that the Olaf who came to Dublin in 853 was `the son of Hebridean chief’, but he cites no
evidence. That evidence is complex and will bear re-examination.

The first thing that must be done is to detach the Viking dynasty of Scotland and
Ireland from Norway itself. Historians, for over a century and a half—perhaps
longer—have been keen to attach the Viking kings whose names are mentioned in the
ninth-century Irish annals to the genealogy of the kings of Vestfold in Norway. The
Vestfold genealogies that historians in the past have compiled are based on
the Ynglingasaga, but they tend to flesh them out by adding materials
from ( f) :Íslendingabók, Landnámabók and Heimskringla, Old-Norse historical and
literary works of the twelfth century and later. Effectively, since the days of
Todd, the hypothesis had been advanced that Amlaíb, called Amlaíb Conung, from
Old Norse konungr `king’ in F, is identical with Óláfr in hvíti of Íslendingabók and
Óláfr Guðrøðarson of Ynglingasaga. This view is expressed eloquently (and with
complicated genealogical tables) by Professor A. P. Smyth and he
cites Landnámabók as the source that gives the fullest account of him.
I quote Smyth’s translation of Landnámabók: Óláfr inn hvíti harried in the Western Seas and he won Dublin in Ireland and the district of Dublin, and there he established himself as king. He married Auðr inn djúpauðga, the daughter of Ketill flatnefr. Their son was called Þhosteinn rauðr. Óláfr fell in battle in Ireland, but Auðr and Þorsteinn went to the Hebrides. … Þorsteinn became a warrior-king. He entered into an alliance with jarl Sigurðr inn ríki [of Orkney] the son of Eysteinn glumra. They won Caithness and Sutherland, Ross and Moray, and more than half of Scotland. Þorsteinn became king over that region, but the Scots soon slew him and he fell there in battle.

This narrative may appear legendary—even fantastic—but if Óláfr’s descent is
historical the Dublin dynasty was directly descended from the Norwegian Vestfold
kings, and the direct connection with Norwegian/Norse royalty is genuine. However, as
Smyth and others admit, there are formidable chronological problems about this.
Nonetheless, he affirms that `there can be no doubt that the so-called Óláfr inn hvíti of
Icelandic sources was the same king as Amlaíbh, the ninth-century ruler of Dublin’ 104
.
Jón Steffensen examined these genealogies in careful detail and he concluded that
they are a chronological morass. Nonetheless, he still tried—in vain, I think—to save them for history. The link between the Old-Norse genealogies and the Irish annals is
provided by an annal in ( F) Fragmentary Irish Annals, but it is not reliable. This sole
connection, the genealogy found in F §401—Iomhar mc. Gothfraidh mc. Ragnaill mc.
Gothfraidh Conung mc Gofraidh—has no independent value: it is merely another
variant of the Icelandic material, and this is not the only fragment of its kind in F. It is
likely that the father of Amlaíb (Óláfr) and Ímar (Ívarr) is Gothfraidh (Guðrøðr) and
that he is a historical person and dynastic ancestor (see table 1), but his genealogical
ascent is a construct without historical value.
In the matter of possible dynastic connections between the dynasty of Dublin and
Norwegian dynasties important historiographical progress was made in the early
nineties, and this provides a new critical context for the analysis of the problem. Dr
Claus Krag has shown that the Ynglingatal (once believed to have been composed a
little before AD 900, and thus early and intrinsically valuable) is not much older or
more authoritative than Ynglingasaga, that it reflects concepts current in the twelfth
century, that the genealogies are qualitative rather than chronological, and that they
come in 14-generation sequences like the Anglo-Saxon ones (both based formally on
the structure of Matthew’s genealogy of Christ). In his view, these are `products of the
imagination, the extant texts are remnants of the historical literature of the 12th and
13th centuries, concerning what were held to be the ancestors of what was then the
Norwegian royal house … the idea that the Norwegian kings descend from Harald
hárfagri and the monarchy was held to the property of his dynasty, is no more than a
construction … the conclusion is that the Yngling tradition is entirely a part of the
historicising method, partly cast in artistic form, which Icelandic learned men
developed’.

Peter Sawyer has argued convincingly that Ynglingasaga is fiction, not
history, but a fiction whose learned creators drew on what they knew (or thought they
knew) of Scandinavian history in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Kings who may
originally have ruled Norwegian Oppland are transformed into kings of Vestfold and
dubious king-lists are turned into genealogies. We find the historian Ari Þorgilsson
doing just this in early twelfth century: he derives his own descent from a variant of
this very genealogy.14 So much for the Dublin dynasty’s genealogical background in
Vestfold.
The early raids on Ireland seem to have been aristocratic free enterprise, and named
leaders appear in the Irish annals—Saxolb (So[hook]xulfr) in 837, Turges (Þurgestr,
not Þorgisl or ÞorgeRR) in 845, Agonn (Hákon) in 847. Only towards the middle of
the ninth century was there any attempt by any Viking kings to coordinate attacks and
settlement in Ireland, and these kings appear to belong in the Viking settlements in
Scotland.
Three important annalistic entries record the activity of Viking royals in Ireland in
848, 849 and 853. All three have connections with a kingdom
called Lothlend, Laithlind, Laithlinn, later Lochlainn. The first occurs in the Annals of
Ulster: U 848. Bellum re nOlcobur, ri Muman, & re Lorggan m. Cellaig co Laighniu for
gennti ecc Sciaith Nechtain in quo ceciderunt Tomrair erell, tanise righ Laithlinne, &
da cet dec imbi `A battle was won by Ólchobar king of Munster and Lorcán m.
Cellaig with the Leinstermen against the pagans at Sciath Nechtain in which fell
Tomrair (Þórir) the earl, heir-designate of the king of Laithlind and 1200 about him’.
This took place at a strategic place, Castledermot, Co Kildare, not far from Dublin
where a Viking settlement had been established in 841-42. The Irish leaders were
amongst the most powerful provincial kings in the country, the troops involved were
numerous, and the slaughter was immense. Þórir the earl17 was evidently a very
important person, even if the identity of the king whose heir-designate he was remains
unclear . He was leading a large army. This was a battle of major
significance, even if we take the annalist’s estimate of the slain (as we ought) to be
merely a conventional expression for a very large number.

The next entry that has reference to an overseas `king of the Foreigners’ occurs in
849: Muirf[.]echt .uii.xx. long di muinntir righ Gall du thiachtain du tabairt
greamma forsna Gaillu ro badur ara ciunn co commascsat hErinn n-uile iarum `A
sea-going expedition of 140 ships of the people of the king of the Foreigners came to
exercise authority over the Foreigners who were in Ireland before them and they upset
all Ireland afterwards’.
Evidently, this was a violent attempt by a King/Chief of the Vikings, using large forces, to
compel the independent Vikings in Ireland to submit to royal authority, and it was
fiercely resisted.
The next and final entry in this series occurs four years later: U 853.2. Amhlaim m. righ Laithlinde do tuidhecht a nErinn coro giallsat Gaill Erenn
dó & cis o Goidhelaib `Amlaíb (Óláfr) son of the king of Laithlind came to Ireland
and the Foreigners of Ireland gave him hostages and he got tribute from the Irish’.
The differing treatment of Irish and Viking as tribute payers and hostage givers
respectively may be significant. Within the conventions of Irish politics, the Viking
settlers are treated as free, the Irish as a subject population.It is likely that only a
small number of Irish kingdoms submitted to Viking overlordship.
An entry in F evidently refers to these same events and contains some
supplementary information. This appears well-founded and the source of F may be
taken to be reliable on the whole in regard to these events.
F §239. Isin mbliadain-si bhéos .i. in sexto anni regni Maoil Seaclainn, tainig
Amhlaoibh Conung .i. mac rígh Lochlainne i nEirinn & tug leis erfhuagra cíosa &
canadh n-imdha ó a athair & a fagbhail-sidhe go h-obann. Tainig dno Iomhar an
brathair ba sóo ‘na deaghaidh-sidhe do thobhach na ccios ceadna `Also in this year,
i.e. the sixth year of the reign of Mael Sechnaill, Amlaíb Conung (Óláfr konungr), son
of the king of Lochlainn, came to Ireland, and he brought with him a proclamation
imposing many tributes and taxes from his father, and he left suddenly. Then his
younger brother Ímar (Ívarr), came after him to levy the same tributes.

The expression `also in this year’ could be taken to refer back to F §238 which is
firmly dated to 849. However, this does not fit well with `the sixth year of the reign of
Mael Sechnaill’. His predecessor Niall Caille died in 846 and certainly by 847 (if not
by 846) Mael Sechnaill was recognised as king of Tara—and this would tend to place
these events in 852/53. This dating fits well with U and is to be preferred.
11. All these entries refer to major expeditions to Ireland by leaders who were
recognized as royal by the Irish annalists. Very large numbers of troops and ships
were involved and their purpose was conquest, control of the Vikings already settled
in Ireland, and the imposition of taxes on Irish kingdoms. All are associated with the
kingdom of Lothlend, Laithlind or Lochlainn whose king appears to be directing the
operations.
There are other references to Lothlend/Laithlind. One that belongs certainly to the
ninth century occurs in a well-known poem—quoted so often that it has become
trite—preserved uniquely as a marginal entry in Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, MS
904, a copy of Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae, heavily glossed in Old Irish.
According to Bruno Güterbock, this manuscript was written in Ireland in the midninth century: he dates it by reference to marginal notes that he thinks were written in
845 or 856.22 Robin Flower dated it more closely to the years 845-46

Professor David Dumville has recently re-examined the dating criteria and, whilst he is agnostic about many things, the central ninth-century date stands: he thinks that it was written after the death of St Diarmait ua Aeda Róin of Castledermot in 825 and before its
appearance in Cologne some time anterior to 859, and he holds with Traube and
Gerard Murphy that the book is to be associated with the circle of Sedulius Scottus
who was active on the Continent between the 840s and the 860s.

However, his suggestion, on slight palaeographical grounds, that the manuscript was written on the Continent `where its associations might be with Liège or Cologne, with Sankt Gallen, or even with northern Italy’ is speculative and the quatrain must be located in an Irish context unless more convincing evidence to the contrary can be produced.
Is acher in gaíth in-nocht
fu-fúasna fairggæ findf[.]olt;
ní ágor réimm mora minn
dond láechraid lainn úa Lothlind27
The wind is fierce to-night
it tosses the sea’s white mane
I do not fear the coursing of a quiet sea
by the fierce warriors of Lothlend.
A second example occurs in a verse appended to the entry in the Annals of the Four
Masters on the battle of Cell Ua nDaigri (Killineer, at Drogheda on the Boyne) in 868.
Here the king of Tara, Aed Finnliath mac Néill (r. 862-79), defeated the kings of
Brega and Leinster and a large Viking force (of which one of the leaders was Carlus,
son of Amlaíb of Dublin).28
Dos-fail dar Findabhair find
fiallach grinn dond Laithlind luind—
as ar chédaibh rimhter Goill—
do cath fri righ nEtair n-uill.29
There comes over fair Findabair
a keen host from fierce Laithlind—
the Foreigners are counted in hundreds—
to do battle against the king of great Étar.
Whether this quatrain had to with this battle originally may, one could argue, be a
little uncertain. However, one can read rí Étair as a kenning for king of Tara (i.e. Aed
Finnliath) and Findabair is probably Findabair na n-Ingen, now Fennor in the parish of
Donore at Drogheda and quite near to Killineer. For what it is worth, F states that the Vikings had arrived at the mouth of the Boyne with a great fleet and they were
induced by the king of Brega to join in the attack on the king of Tara.
Where, then, is Lothlend, Laithlinn, later Lochlainn? Heinrich Zimmer thought it
was Lolland (Låland), the Danish island, but Alexander Bugge decisively disproved
that unlikely hypothesis in 1900. A decade or so later, Carl Marstrander suggested
that it derived from Rogaland, the district about Stavanger in Norway—and we know
from good archaeological evidence that the early Viking raids on Ireland originated
here.

For phonological reasons he had to posit that the forms Lothlend and Lochlann existed side by side, though only the first is attested for the ninth century.33 By 1915 he had come to have serious reservations about this, but the distinguished Norwegian linguist Alf Sommerfelt continued to accept it as late as 1950.

There are two main objections to this etymology: there is no other example of
inital r becoming l in an Irish borrowing from Old Norse, and loth- not loch- is the
earliest form. It was left to David Greene to reject Marstrander’s etymology firmly,
but his suggestion that loth/lath is from the Irish word meaning `quagmire, marsh’, is
to say least weak, as Greene freely admits. One should, perhaps, posit an Old-Norse
rather than an Old-Irish name. The second element is likely to be -land`land’ (which
would develop regularly into -lann and -lainn). Is it possible that the first element
is loð- (which would regularly give Irish *loth) `shaggy, woolly, covered with or thick
with long grass and that the term is, in origin, simply a geographical descriptive,
appropriate to the fertile Orkneys and north-eastern Scottish mainland?

In time, folk etymology may have replaced loth-, laith- with loch-, and Lochlainn may have been understood as `land of sea-loughs’, a fair description of the Western and Northern Isles and west coast of Scotland. There may have been no Irish name for
Scandinavia or its parts. In Greene’s view, `We must conclude that the Irish had no
specific word for Norway until the eleventh century when Lochlann comes to be
specialised in that meaning. … For the first two centuries of contact with the Vikings,
there is no strong evidence that the Irish learned much about Scandinavia proper; this
need not surprise us, since the connections of the Vikings of Ireland were
predominantly with the Atlantic area rather than with the homeland’.
Lothlend/Laithlind is Viking Scotland (and probably includes Man) and I believe
one can deduce this from a close reading of a reliable and dated Irish source: the
account of the battle of Clontarf in the Annals of Ulster.
U 1014. Sloghud la Brian m. Cenneitigh m. Lorcain, la righ n-Erenn, & la Mael
Sechlainn m. Domnaill, la righ Temhrach, co h-Ath Cliath. Laighin uile do leir i tinol
ar a cinn & Gaill Atha Cliath & a coimlin do Ghallaib Lochlainne leó. .i. x.c. luirech.
Gnithir cath crodha etorra … In quo bello cecidit ex adhuersa caterua Gallorum Mael Mordha m. Murchada ri Laigen, & Domnall m. Fergaile rí na Fortuath: cecidit
uero a Gallis Dubghall m. Amlaim, Siuchraidh m. Loduir iarla Innsi Orcc, & Gilla
Ciarain m. Gluin Iairnn rigdomna Gall, & Oittir Dub, & Suartgair, & Donnchad h.
Eruilb, & Grisene, & Luimne, & Amlaim m. Laghmaind, & Brotor qui occidit Brian,
.i. toisech na loingsi Lochlannaighi, & .ui. mile iter marbad & bathad `Brian son of
Cennétig son of Lorcán, king of Ireland, and Mael Sechnaill son of Domnall, king of
Tara, led an army to Dublin. All the Leinstermen were assembled to meet them and
the Foreigners of Dublin and an equal number of the Foreigners of Lochlainn i.e. 1000
mail-clad men. A valiant battle was fought between them … In this battle there fell on
the side of the opposing troop of the Foreigners Mael Mórda son of Murchad king of
Leinster and Domnall son of Fergal king of the Fortuatha; of the Foreigners there fell
Dubgall son of Amlaíb, Sigurðr son of Hlo[hook]ðver jarl of the Orkneys, and Gilla
Ciaráin son of Glún Iairn heir-designate of the Foreigners, and Ottir Dub and
Suartgair and Donnchad ua Eruilb and Griséne and Luimne and Amlaíb son of
Lagmann and Broðar who killed Brian, commander of the fleet of the Lochlannaig,
and 6000 who were killed and drowned’.
The argument turns on the identification of leading persons killed on the Viking side
(other than those who were self-evidently Irish kings). Dubgall m. Amlaim was the
son of Amlaíb Cuarán, king of Dublin. Amlaíb Cuarán, otherwise Óláfr Sigtriggson
Kváran, ruled as king of Dublin from 945 to his abdication after the battle of Tara in
980. He died in religious retirement in Iona in 981. Dubgall was brother of Sitric
Silkenbeard, otherwise Sigtryggr Óláfsson Silkiskeggi, king of Dublin from 989 until
his deposition in 1036. Siuchraidh m. Loduir iarla Innsi Orcc is Sigurðr digri son of
Hlo[hook]ðver, earl of Orkney—the first earl for whom we have a precise date (that
of his death)—and of whom there are detailed accounts in the sagas (though these are
probably not reliable). Gilla Ciarain m. Gluin Iairnn rígdomna Gall is son of Glún
Iairn (otherwise Járnkné Óláfsson, king of Dublin, who ruled from 980 to 989),
grandson of Amlaíb Cuarán, and nephew of Sitric Silkenbeard. In Brjáns
saga (which survives in Njáls saga, dates to within a few years of 1100, and belongs
to Viking Dublin) the associations of Brotor, otherwise Bróðir, the commander of
the loinges Lochlannach `the Viking fleet’ (Lochlannach is simply an adjective
fromLochlainn) are with the Isle of Man.Cogad (which also dates to c.1100) links
him with Amlaíb mac ri Locland `son of the king of Lochlainn’, and states that both
were earls of York and of all the north of England—and though this is wildly
anachronistic it firmly connects both with the British Isles while retaining some vague
memory of the Dublin-Viking kingship of York in the early tenth century.
Donnchad ua Eruilb is probably not Viking. Marstrander derived Erulb from Old
Norse Heriulfr rather than Hio[hook]rulfr or Hiorulfr. There is, however, a
historical objection to this derivation: the eponymous Erulb belonged to Cenél Eogain and he was grandson of Mael Dúin (ÿar788), king of Ailech, and son of Murchad,
king of Ailech, who was deposed in 823. He was born, then, in the early ninth
century, far too to early to bear an Old-Norse name. Meyer suggests that the name is
derived from Old English Herewulf, Herulf and the implication is that it had been
borrowed before the Viking wars began. Suartgair derives from Old Norse *Suartgeirr, *Suartgarr which corresponds to Old English Sweartgar.
In Cogad Suartgair (miswritten Snadgair) is represented as one
of the four king’s deputies and admirals of the Vikings (cetri irrig Gall & cetri toisig
longsi)—the others being Oittir Dub, Grisene and Luimne. If these are `king’s
deputies’, they are likely to be deputies of the king of Dublin—no other Viking king is
known to have been involved. Oittir, a name well attested in the Irish annals in the
tenth century, derives from Old Norse Óttarr.

His Irish soubriquet Dub `the Black’ points to an Irish or Scottish background. Grisine, better Grísín(e) is the Old Norse personal name Gríss with the Irish diminutive ending -ín, -íne -éne, and this indicates that he belonged to Gaelic-speaking Ireland or Scotland. In Marstrander’s view, the use of such diminutives is `a fact that throws an extraordinary light on the close linguistic and social connections between Norsemen and Irishmen at the outset of the eleventh century’. The provenance of Luimne (Lummin, Luiminin in Cogad) is uncertain: Marstrander and Stokes do not suggest an Old Norse etymology and it may be Irish Lommíne.
Amlaim mac Laghmaind belongs to the Hiberno-Norse world of the Isles and
Man. Lagmann is derived from Old-Norse lo[hook]gmaðr `lawman’. This name of a
profession became a personal name in the Orkneys (and, as we know from the Irish
annals, in the Hebrides), but not in Scandinavia proper.It is attested (in the
plural, Lagmainn) as the name of an aristocratic kindred or group in the Hebrides in
962 who engaged in late Viking attacks on Ireland. The same Lagmainn, led by
Magnus mac Arailt, lord of the Isles, again appeared as raiders in Ireland in 974. It
must, therefore, have become a personal name some generations earlier. It also occurs
as a personal name among the descendants of Godred Crovan, king of Man and the
Isles. And it is attested in the twelfth century amongst the Uí Duib Dírma, a minor
branch of the Northern Uí Néill, who were lords of a petty kingdom called In Brétach
in Inis Eogain. The Scottish surnames Lamont and MacLamond derive from it..

Not one of the leaders of `the Foreigners of Lochlainn’ can be shown to have come
from Scandinavia. They all belong in the Northern and Western Isles, Scotland, Man
and Ireland, yet all have Norse names. This is precisely what the Annals of Inisfallen say of Brian’s opponents slain in the battle: ocus ar Gall Iarthair Domain isin chath chetna `and the Foreigners of the Western World were slaughtered in the same battle’ at 1014 AD.

In the usage of the Irish annalists, the term `Western World’ refers to the Gaelic world and does not extend in any case beyond the British Isles. It has long been recognised that Cogad adds names from much later and indeed fictional literary sources but
when we weed out a few of the more improbable ones we have the following as the
principal foreign confederate forces at Clontarf:
Ro tochured cucu dna Siucraid mac Lotair, iarla Insi Orc & na nInnsi archena, &
comtionol sloig buirb barbarda dicheillid dochisc dochomaind do Gallaib Insi Orc &
Insi Cat, a Manaind & a Sci & a Leodus, a Cind Tiri agus a hAirer Goedel … `They
invited to them also Sigurðr son of Hlo[hook]ðver, earl of Orkney and the Hebrides as
well, and an assembled host of uncouth, barbarous, berserk, stubborn, treacherous
Foreigners from Orkney, Shetland, Man, Skye, Lewis, Kintyre and Argyle …’
This fits well with what we know of the leadership from U and confirms one in the
impression that, for the contemporary annalist, Laithlinn/Lochlainn meant no more
than the Norse Viking settlements in the British Isles, and more particularly
those in Scotland and Man.
This conclusion is supported by two literary texts. The first is Cath Maige
Tuired, a text dated in essentials to the ninth century, and very probably to the
second half. The surviving text is not unitary. There is general agreement that §§1-7,
9-13 are late and derive from the historicist text, Lebor Gabála;
fragment §8 is not the beginning of an independent tale and is hardly integral to the text; and the tale breaks off imperfectly.66 No evidence cited here is taken from these interpolations.
Some difficulties about dating and interpretation remain. T. F. O’Rahilly argued that
`the extant text of Cath Maige Tuired, though doubtless based on and incorporating
the earlier account, is comparatively late, for it contains some loan-words from Norse
and applies the name Insi Gall to the Hebrides’—late enough to indicate that its author
may have belonged to the late tenth century. This date may have been suggested to
O’Rahilly by the first contemporary annalistic attestation of Insi Gall as a term for the
Hebrides in 989,68 and buttressed by the Norse/English borrowings in the text. Of
these, there is one clear Old-Norse borrowing: fuindeóc (§133) `window’, from OldNorse vindauga.
Two other borrowed words, scildei, scitle, scilte(§§28-30) `coins’
(<scill) and bossán (§28) `purse’ (<púse) derive from Old English, not Old
Norse, and while one cannot say that they had not been borrowed into Irish before
the Viking period they fit well with the expanding commercial activity of Viking
Ireland and the increased circulation of coin. The linguistic evidence and the historical
references to Insi Gall and Lochlainn indicate that the text was written at a point when
the Vikings had made a serious impression on Ireland. A terminus ante quem is
provided by Cormac’s Glossary, which excerpted the text and which dates to
c.900. Incidentally, the paganism of the Vikings and its treatment in a fictional
manner enabled the creator of the text to make full use of what he knew (or thought he
knew) of mythology and pagan practices. However, while using the Tuatha Dé in a
subtly allusive way to represent the Irish and while presenting their magic as benevolently defensive, he expressly distances himself from pagan mythology by
depicting the Dagda as a gross figure of fun, a scandalous and unsavoury Father of the
Gods, whose licentious behaviour is offensive to good christians—and this contains
a conscious christian programmatic aspect that may be read as ridicule of paganism in
general, and of that of the Vikings in particular.
As Dr Gray has pointed out, `the Fomorian threat is described as if it were a vast
alliance among various Scandinavian forces, all bent upon the conquest of
Ireland’. Dr Carey has argued cogently that the text was written in the second half of
the ninth century—possibly in the reigns of Mael Sechnaill (r. 846-62) and Aed
Finnliath (r. 862-79)—and that it represents (amongst other things) a reaction,
expressed in symbolic literary terms, to the Viking attack and he sees no need to take
the references to Insi Gall as the work of a later interpolator.

I agree. One might add hat the sea-inlets, lakes, and rivers of Ireland, whose waters the cupbearers of the Tuatha Dé promise to hide from the Fomoire, have (with few exceptions) a clear contemporary reference—the Shannon and its lakes and estuary, the Bann and Lough Neagh, the Boyne, the Liffey, the Munster Blackwater, and Strangford, Belfast Lough and Lough Foyle were amongst the principal areas of ninth-century Viking activity.
However, the important passage for our purposes is:
Faíthius íar sin cusan trénfer, co Balor húa Néitt, co rígh na n-Innsi, & co hIndech
mac Dé Domnand, co ríg Fomoire; & nos-taireclamsat-side do neoch buí ó Lochlainn
síar do slúag doqum n-Érenn, do astad a císa & a rígi ar éigin foruib, gur’ba
háondroichet long ó Insdib Gallad co hÉirinn leo. Ní tánic doqum n-Érenn drem bud
mó gráin nó adhúath indá in slóg-sin na Fomoiridhi. Ba combág ogond fir o Sgiathia
Lochlaindi & a hInnsib Gall immon slógad-sin `Thereafter he sent him to the
champion, to Balor grandson of Nét, the king of the Hebrides and to Indech son of Dé
Domnand, the king of the Fomoire and these gathered all the forces
from Lochlainn westwards into Ireland to impose their tribute and their rule over them
[i.e. Tuatha Dé] by force, so that they made one bridge of ships from the Hebrides to
Ireland. No host ever came to Ireland that was more hateful or more terrifying than
that host of the Fomuire. The man from Skye of Lochlainn and the man from Insi
Gall were rivals over that expedition.
The text artfully merges the Fomuire and the Vikings, and places the Fomuire in the
Scottish territories of the Vikings, as ninth-century Ireland knew them. Sciathia of the
text is a learned latinisation of Scí `Skye’ (nom. Scí, gen. Sceth, Old-Norse Skíð), and
it is clear that it is part of Lochlainn. The final sentence conveys that there was rivalry
between the king of Skye (who would have controlled the Inner Hebrides) and the
king of Insi Gall, which we can read as the Outer Hebrides in the present context. It is,
of course, quite uncertain whether there is anything historical in this, perhaps a reference to rivalry amongst Viking sub-kings in Scandinavian Scotland that would
have made good sense to contemporaries, but historicity cannot be ruled out.
The literary reflexes of the battle of Clontarf and of other aspects of Viking history
in Ireland in the saga Cath Ruis na Ríg bear out the equation of Lochlainn with
Scandinavian Scotland. We owe the first thorough discussion of this text, and an
edition and translation of the relevant passage, to the pioneering work of Heinrich
Zimmer.

Thurneysen dated it to the first third of the twelfth century and would
attribute the Book of Leinster Táin bó Cúailgne and Mesca Ulad to the same author.
Áine de Paor reached like conclusions about authorship. However, Dr Uaitéar Mac
Gearailt argues convincingly against common authorship and dates the text `possibly
mid way through the second half of the twelfth century’. The opening of the tale is as
follows: after the overthrow of the Ulaid in Táin bó Cuailgne, king Conchobar fell
into a decline and languished because of his defeat. His druid urged him to send for
his absent friends to help him, and to resume the struggle. His overseas friends divide
into two groups: the Ulster warrior Conall Cernach who is levying tribute abroad, and
the Viking forces of Scotland.

Acus faítti fessa & tecta uaitsiu chena cot chairdib écmaissi .i. co Conall crúaid
coscorach commaidmech cathbuadach claidebderg co airm i fail ac tobuch a chisa &
a chanad i crichaib Leódús i n-insib Cadd & i n-Insib Or[c]. & i críchaib Scithia &
Dacia & Gothia & Northmannia ac tastel Mara Ict & Mara Torrián & ic slataigecht
sliged Saxan. & faítte fessa & tecta uait no cot chairddib écmaisse co iathaib
Gallecda co Gallíathaib na nGall .i. co Amlaíb uel Ólaib hua Inscoa rig Lochlainne,
co Findmór mac Rofhir co ríg sechtmad rainne de Lochlainn, co Báre na Sciggire co
dunud na Piscarcarla, co Brodor Roth & co Brodor Fiúit, & co Siugraid Soga [co]
ríg Súdiam, co Sortabud Sort co ríg Insi Orc. Co secht maccaib Romrach (co hIl, co
hÍle, co Mael, co Muile, co Abram mac Romrach, co Cet mac Romrach, co Celg mac
Romrach), co Mod mac Herling, co Conchobar coscarach mac Artuir meic Bruide
meic Dungail, co mac ríg Alban `Let tidings and messages be sent from you forthwith
to your absent friends, namely, to Conall, the stern, the triumphant, the exultant, the
victorious, the red-sworded, to where he is raising his tax and tribute in the territories
of Lewis, in the Shetlands and in the Orkneys, and in the lands of Scythia, Dacia,
Gothia, and Northmannia, voyaging the Ictian Sea and the Tyrrhenian Sea, and
plundering the ways of the Saxons. Let tidings and messages be sent from you, too, to
your absent friends to the lands of the Foreigners, to the foreign lands of the
Foreigners, namely, to Amlaíb (or Ólaib) ua Inscoa, king of Lochlainn, to Findmór
son of Hróarr, king of the seventh part of Lochlainn, to Báre of the Faroe Islands, that
is, to the fortress of the Piscarcarla, to Brotor Roth and Brotor Fiúit, and to Siugraid
Soga, king of the Hebrides, to Sortabud Sort, king of the Orkneys, to the seven sons of
Romra (to Il, to Íle, to Mael, to Muile, to Abram mac Romrach, to Cet mac Romrach,to Celg mac Romrach), to Mod mac Herling, to Concobar the Victorious son of
Arthur, son of Brude, son of Dúngal, the son of the king of Scotland’.
The heroic Conall Cernach is levying tribute, firstly in Viking Scotland (Lewis,
Shetlands, and Orkneys), and secondly, in more distant parts of Europe (Scythia,
Dacia, Gothia, and Northmannia).

One may take Scythia to be Svealand (Sweden), Dacia to be Denmark, Gothia to be Gotland and Northmannia to be Norway: they are listed with the English Channel and the Mediterranean and the author is concerned to represent Conall Cernach as putting the most remote lands under tribute. If these are to be understood as continental Scandinavia, it is interesting that Latin-derived learned names are used for these regions and, evidently, in the mind of the writer, they are quite different from the Lochlainn of which Amlaíb ua Inscoa is king.

The Viking allies, with the exception of Báre of the Faroes, all belong
in Lochlainn or in places identifiable as being in Scotland. Siugraid Soga, Old
Norse Sigrøðr sugga (`big, strong man’), a clear reflex of Sigurðr digri `the Stout’
son of Hlo[hoook]ðver, is called rí Súdiam, a place name that derives from OldNorse Suðrøyjom, the dative plural of Suðrøyjar, the normal name for the Hebrides,
usually called Inse Gall in Irish. The historical Sigurðr was earl of Orkney and
apparently was overlord of the Hebrides as well. Sortadbud Sort, in Old
Norse Suarthofuð86 suartr, is represented as king of Orkney—and this personage
seems unhistorical. Brotor Roth (Old Norse Bróðir rauðr) and Brotor Fiúit (Old
Norse Bróðir hvítr) are a duplicated reflex of the historical Brotor who slew king
Brian.

The seven sons of Romra (Il, Íle, Mael, Muile, Abram, Cet and Celg) are
puzzling, and appear to have place-name aetiologies: Trácht Romra is said to be the
Solway Firth and some of them seem to be eponyms of places (Islay, Mull of
Kintire) in Scotland. Findmór son of Rofher, king of the seventh part of Lochlainn,
looks odd but this term may reflect the division of Scotland into sevenths in De situ
Albanie and may refer to Viking Caithness: Septima enim pars est Cathanesia citra
montem et ultra montem; quia mons Mound diuidit Katanesiam per medium `The
seventh part is Caithness, to this side of the mountain and beyond the mountain;
because the mountain of Mound divides Caithness through the middle’.88 Caithness
was, of course, heavily settled by the Vikings. The most important figure in this text,
however, is Amlaíb uel Ólaib hua Inscoa rí Lochlainne who is a literary reflex of
Amlaíb Cuarán. Inscoa is a rendering of Old-Norse Skórinn `the shoe’ (with postposed
article) and corresponds to Irish cúarán `shoe, slipper’, the by-name of Amlaíb
Cuarán, father of Sitric Silkenbeard. Amlaíb Cuarán was well-known by his Irish
name in Norse-speaking circles (see, for example, `er var með Óláfi kvarán í
Dyflinni’ in Landnámabók) but the Old-Norse form Skór, Skórinn can be readily
reconstructed from the Irish and therefore was used by speakers of Old Norse.

It passed from them to the author of Cath Ruis na Ríg, who turned it to literary purposes, and the name recurs in the twelfth-century Acallam na senórach: Aiffi ingen
Ailb (vl. Alaib) meic Scoa, ingen rig Lochlainn atuaid. The historical Amlaíb
Cuarán was king of York for a brief period c.943 before his reign as king of Dublin
(945-80), and has a direct connection with Gotland. All the associations of the
derived literary persona constructed from the historical figure are with Viking
Scotland, and rí Lochlainne in Cath Ruis na Ríg must mean, for its author, king of
Viking Scotland. One notes, too, that when Conall Cernach musters the troops of
this alliance, he does so at Lewis in the Hebrides. Furthermore, as Sophus Bugge
suggests, on the basis of the Old-Norse forms of names of people and places in the
mustering of the Viking fleet, it is very likely that the author of Cath Ruis na Ríg is
drawing on a pre-existing historical tale in Old Norse, inspired by Irish-Viking history
and the battle of Clontarf, and circulating in Dublin and in Viking Scotland in the
twelfth century. And it is likely that this Old-Norse tale existed in written form.

The earliest precisely datable historical example of Lochlainn meaning `Norway or Norse’ occurs in a chronological poem of 58 quatrains by Gilla Cóemáin mac Gilla
Samthainde, `Annálad anall uile’.

This poem was written in 1072: the author gives
the date of writing in quatrains 6-7, 56-57—and he gives the ferial for the year twice.
§55
Dá bliadain—ní bréc i ngliaid—
ó éc Donnchada meic Briain
cath Saxan—seól co nglaine—
i torchair rí Lochlainne.
`Two years—it is no falsehood in battle—
from the death of Donnchad son of Brian
to the battle of the Saxons—pure course—
in which fell the king of Lochlainn.

Donnchad mac Briain, king of Munster and claimant to the kingship of Ireland, went
on pilgrimage to Rome in 1064 and died there in that year. The `battle of the Saxons
… in which fell the king of Lochlainn’ refers, of course, to the victory of Harold II
Godewinesson at Stamford Bridge, on 25 September 1066 and the death in that battle
of Harald harðráði, king of Norway, whom Marianus Scottus called `rex
Normanndorum’.
The next example is provided by the Annals of Ulster: 1102.7: Maghnus ri Lochlainni co longais moir do thuidhecht i Manainn & sith mbliadhna do denum doibh & do feraib Erenn `Magnus king of Lochlainn came with a
great fleet to Man and a year’s peace was made by them and the men of Ireland’. A third example occurs in Magnus’s death notice in the same annals:
1103.6: Maghnus ri Lochlainni do marbad for creich i nUlltaib `Magnus, king of
Lochlainn, was killed on a raid in Ulster’.
These entries refer to Magnus III berfœttr, king of Norway (r. 1093-1103) and his
famous expeditions to the West.97 Magnus was son of Óláfr kyrri and grandson of
Harald harðráði. In 1098, perhaps profiting from several years of disorder in Man and
the Isles, which included intervention by Muirchertach Ua Briain, king of
Ireland, Magnus came west and established his overlordship there—over the
Orkneys, and perhaps over Kintyre, Galloway and, briefly, Gwynedd. He harried the
Ulster coast and not altogether successfully, for he apparently lost three ships and
about 120 men. Magnus left his son Sigurðr in Orkney, and returned to Norway in
the spring. He came back to the west, perhaps in 1101, certainly by 1102, and he
caused a great deal of anxiety.

The Irish annals report that he had come to capture Ireland, and here they agree with such later sources as Ordericus Vitalis and the Norse sagas. Magnus occupied Man and meddled in Irish and Norman politics. The Annals of the Four Masters state that `the men of Ireland made a hosting to Dublin against Magnus’. `Men of Ireland’ refers to Ua Briain and his supporters, and the context suggests that Ua Briain felt under serious threat. Soon after that a truce was agreed. Magnus and Muirchertach exchanged hostages and a marriage alliance was arranged.
The peace with Magnus looks very much like a holding operation on Ua Briain’s part
until he decided how to cope with this emergency. I believe that Cogad Gáedel re
Gallaib, an eloquent historicist assertion of Ua Briain power, addressed to the
Dubliners and to other political opponents, including Mac Lochlainn who was king of
the North and Ua Briain’s chief rival, belongs to this period of crisis.
It is evident that Laithlind/Lochlainn took on the new meaning `Norway’ only
when there were kings of Norway and when these posed a serious military threat in
the British Isles. Effective control of the Northern and Western Isles would inevitably
be a pre-condition of that threat, and the change of meaning evidently took place in
that context.

We now return to the ninth century. The evidence of the Irish annals is that there
was a king of Viking Scotland whose heir-designate, Tomrair or Thórir, was in
Ireland with a very large army in 848, and he fell battling against two of the most
powerful Irish provincial kings. In 849 this king sent a fleet of 140 ships to establish
his authority over the Vikings in Ireland, and upset the whole country. In 851 the Irish
annals report another dramatic development: Danish Vikings came to Dublin,
slaughtered the Vikings of Dublin and plundered their fortress. They tried to do the
same to the Viking settlement at Annagassan, but they were heavily defeated and
many of them were killed.102 According to the Welsh annals, Anglesey was plundered by Danes (perhaps the same force) in 853 or so.103 What may be a reply from Viking
Scotland to the Danish attacks in Ireland came in 852: 160 ships and their crews came
to Carlingford Lough to do battle with the Danes but the Danes won, and their
opponents abandoned their ships to them.

Two Norse Viking leaders are mentioned: Stain who fled and Iercne who was beheaded. And next year, Amlaíb, `son of the king of Laithlind’, came to Ireland and got the submission of the Vikings of Ireland and he received taxes from the Irish. From now on, Amlaíb and Ímar (with their brother, Auisle (Auisl), first mentioned in 863, and murdered by his brothers in 867) evidently ruled in Dublin and engaged in significant wars with the Irish kings.
We now need to consider the homeland and origins of these kings. The written
sources reveal little. In 795 Skye and Iona were attacked, in 798 there were `great
incursions both in Ireland and in Alba’. However, as far as Scotland is concerned,
there is no indigenous record for the early ninth century—silence only. Apart from the
raids on Iona (802, 806 and the final reported raid in 825, when Blathmac was
martyred) nothing much is known of any Viking raids on any Scottish churches in
the early ninth century, apart from a raid by Danari (probably Danes, hardly
Norwegian Vikings from the Western Isles) as far as Dunkeld in the reign of Cináed
mac Ailpín or Kenneth I (r. 843-58), reported in the Scottish Chronicle.
That is not to say that such raids did not take place. Evidently, Iona came to an early
understanding with the new power in the Western and Northern Isles: the only
untoward ecclesiastical incident reported for the rest of the ninth century is that the
shrine and halidoms of Columba were brought to Ireland `in flight before the Vikings’
in 878. Only for Ireland are there details of the early years of Viking raiding. We can
only guess that northern Britain had similar experiences. Hardly anything is known
about raids on England from the plundering of a Northumbrian monastery in
794 and the churches of Hartness and Tynemouth in 800 until the raid on
Sheppey in 835.

( Viking settlement on Orkney, Scotland)

When and how the Vikings conquered and occupied the Isles is unknown, perhaps
unknowable. To my mind, occupation and colonization are different (if often
sequential) processes. The first involves the establishment of lordly or royal control
over a subject population and very often the imposition of a new aristocracy. The
second involves settlement of the land and the dispossession or part dispossession of
the previous occupiers. Some areas may have been occupied, others (for example the
Shetlands and the Orkneys) were colonised. Dr Myhre has re-opened the question
of possible settlement (and here colonisation seems to be in question) of
Scandinavians in the Northern and Western Isles in the eighth century and, indeed, the
much disputed matter of early settlement as a whole.
Sommerfelt cites linguistic evidence for contact between the Picts and the Scandinavians before AD 700, but this is no evidence for settlement or indeed for the kind of raiding that is characteristic of the Viking Age. This problem is perhaps beyond satisfactory solution. Given the lack of written records, scholars must depend mainly on archaeology, but archaeology cannot give dates as refined as decades, unless one is lucky with dendrochronology or writing in the form of coin hoards. The other fall-back is toponomy, but toponomy is a surly, inarticulate and ambiguous witness, even in the hands of the best counsel. Add to this the rebarbative Scottish indigenous written sources for the ninth century and chronology becomes very difficult. Given the evidence of the few contemporary Irish annals and inferences one can make from the pattern of raiding on Ireland, the likeliest course of events is that the Isles—Northern and Western—and their
contiguous mainland territories were occupied between 790 and 825 (towards the
earlier part of this time-span).

This period corresponds to the prelude to the Viking wars in Ireland. One detailed annalistic entry in U points to a significant development n Scotland: in 839 the Vikings inflicted a crushing defeat on Fortriu and killed the most important Scottish leaders.What Fortriu was at this time is the subject of some recent discussion, but it is likely that it is identical with Southern Pictland, Pictland south of the Mounth. One possible interpretation of the defeat of 839 is that the Vikings were by now fully in possession of the Northern and Western Isles, and were attacking South Pictland because they had already established themselves over North Pictland or, at least, had placed it under tribute. I believe the attacking Vikings were the Norse Vikings of the Isles, and not Danes. And this lone annalistic entry is likely to be a mere pointer to long-term and intense Viking pressure on the central lowlands of Scotland.
Meanwhile, in Ireland, the prelude to the Viking attack proper is marked by
desultory coastal raiding that slowly becomes more frequent. The annals do not, of
course, report all raids and acts of violence, nor does anyone expect them to do so, but
it is probably right to take the annals to be a reliable general indication of what
happened. First came the attacks on Rathlin and Skye in 795. These were followed in
798 by the burning of the church on St Patrick’s Island (off Skerries), and the bórime
na crích `cattle-tribute of the territories’ taken by the Vikings must refer to a forced
levy for provisions on the mainland nearby. In the same entry the annalist refers in a
general way to great incursions in Ireland and in Britain. In 807, raiders rounded the
north coast of Ireland and attacked western coastal monasteries—Inishmurray off the
Sligo coast and Roscam in the inner waters of Galway Bay. For the first time, the
annals begin to report fighting between the Irish and the Vikings—skirmishes rather
than battles: 811 (a defeat of the Vikings by the Ulaid), 812 (their defeat by the
Éoganacht Locha Léin in the south-west), later in 812 (their defeat by Fir Umaill, near
Clew Bay), followed by a slaughter of Conmaicne of west Galway by the Vikings.
Small groups of two or three ships apiece may have been active on the west coast.
They were back in 813 when they slaughtered Fir Umaill on the west coast and killed
their king.

By now, the Vikings had learned all they needed to know about most of Ireland’s
coastline and its possibilities for plunder, occupation or colonization, but suddenly
there is silence. There are no reports of activities on the west coast or anywhere else in
Ireland for eight years. Attacks begin to be reported again in 821 in the Irish Sea
(raids on Howth and on the churches in the islets of Wexford Harbour) and on the
south coast, Cork and Inis Doimle in 822. In the distant south-west, Vikings raided the
remote monastery of Skellig, 14 kilometres off the Kerry coast and so ill-treated its
superior that he died as their prisoner. In the north-east, there were concerted attacks
on coastal monasteries of the Ulaid: Bangor was struck in 823 and savagely plundered
in 824. In 825 Down and Moville were hit, and the Ulaid defeated those who had
attacked the most prestigious of their monasteries. From this point, there are terse
annalistic reports of severe attacks along the east coast on churches and local coastal
kingdoms and significant engagements with local kings. The prelude was over: the
first Viking Age proper had begun. It is possible that the earliest raids, those that
occur up to the second decade of the ninth century, were mounted from south-west
Norway. The more vigorous and destructive attacks in 821 and later, evidently made
by larger and better organised forces, are a different matter. Because of the logistical
problem of bringing large fleets from Norway and because of the large numbers one
can infer from their activities, these probably came from nearby, and the Viking
settlements in the Northern and Western Isles of Scotland are the most likely bases. It
is possible that the time of calm in Ireland between 813 and 821 corresponds to a
period of intense activity in Scotland.

In the 830s, the raids on Ireland became more ominous and from 836 large-scale
attacks began with `the first prey of the pagans from Southern Brega [south Co
Meath] … and they carried off many prisoners and killed many and took very many
captives’. In the autumn, the annalist reports `a most cruel devastation of all the lands
of Connacht by the pagans’. Clonmore, Co Carlow—a monastery patronised by the
dynasty of south Leinster—was burned on Christmas Eve, and many captives were
taken. Mid-winter raiding for slaves proves that the Vikings were already overwintering, possibly on islands, and could hold numerous prisoners. The Life of St Fintan of Rheinau indicates that they were already slaving, and taking captives for
sale in mid-century.

In 837, a fleet of sixty ships appeared on the Boyne and another on the Liffey—
very likely from the Scottish settlements—each bringing about 1500 men. They
ravaged the east-coast kingdoms. Though the Uí Néill kings routed them at first, they
were soon defeated `in a countless slaughter’. The Vikings now began to appear
regularly on the inland waterways—the Shannon, Lough Derg, the Erne, the Boyne,
Lough Neagh and the Bann. They overwintered on Lough Neagh for the first time in
840-41. They now began to build longphoirt, fortresses that protected them and their ships, and some of these became permanent. There was one at Linn Dúachaill
(Annagassan, Co Louth) by 841 and another at Duiblinn (on the Liffey at or near
Dublin). From Annagassan they raided deep into the midlands, from Dublin they
attacked Leinster and Uí Néill. They first overwintered in Dublin in 841-42.
These large-scale raids—the beginning of the occupation of the Irish east
midlands—were mounted from Scandinavian Scotland, apparently by aristocratic
freebooters and adventurers, some of whom (as we have seen) are named in the Irish
annals. This may be a re-run of what one infers happened in Scotland a generation
earlier. First, small exploratory raids, then heavy plundering and slaving to break the
resistance of the population, and finally occupation and colonization. However,
sometime before the mid-ninth century, a kingship of Viking Scotland had come into
being and, as we have seen, that kingdom began to exercise authority over the Vikings
and their settlements in Ireland, though not of course over all, for the annals continue
to report the activities of freewheeling adventurers. And this brings us back to Amlaíb
and Ímar, who took control of the kingdom of Dublin, certainly from 853.
Some time in the 850s or early 860s the dynasty moved its main operations to
Dublin. We find Amlaíb, Ímar and their brother Auisle (he is first mentioned in the
Irish annals in 863), extremely active in Ireland, engaging in warfare and politics with
the major Irish kings. Only two aspect of their activities will be considered here:
their dealings with the Gall-Goídil `Foreigner-Irish’ and their impact on monastic
raiding.
The Gall-Goídil `Viking-Irish’ make their appearance in the Irish annals in the
period 856-58, and then disappear from the record just as suddenly. It is likely that
they originated in Viking Scotland, and were war bands aristocratically led by men of
mixed Scottish and Viking descent, operating independently of the dynasty and
adventuring on their own account in Ireland. By the middle of the ninth century, a
generation (and perhaps a second generation) of such aristocrats would have come to
military age in Scotland. The interpolator of F is particularly interested in them, and
his preoccupations—and his views—have been ill-advisedly shared by some modern
historians. The interpolator is extremely hostile to them:
… Scuit íad, & daltai do Normainnoibh íad, & tan ann adbearar cid Normainnigh
friú. Maidhidh forra ré nd-Aodh, & cuirthear a ndeargár na nGall-Ghaoidheal, &
cinn imdha do bhreith do Aodh leis; & ra dhlighsiot na hEireannaigh an marbhadh
soin, uair amhail do-nidis na Lochlannaig, do-nidis-siomh `… they are Gaels and
foster-children of the Vikings, and sometimes they are even called Vikings. Aed
defeated them and slaughtered the Gall-Goídil, and Aed brought many heads away
with him; and the Irish were entitled to do that killing for as the Vikings did, so also
did they [the Gall-Goídil]’.

Elsewhere, in an addition to the account of the expedition of Mael Sechnaill, king of
Tara, to Munster in 858, he accuses them of being apostates and of being much more
hostile to the church than the Vikings themselves:
Gen go ttíosadh Maol Seachlainn an turus so do ghabháil ríghe Mumhan do fén, ro
bo thuidheachta do mharbadh an ro marbadh do Ghall-Ghaoidhealaibh ann, úair
daoíne ar ttregadh a mbaiste iad-saidhe, & ad-bertais Normannaigh friú, uair bés
Normannach aca, & a n-altrum forra, & ger bó olc na Normannaigh bunaidh dona heaglaisibh, bá measa go mór iad-saidhe, .i. an lucht sa, gach conair fo Eirinn a
mbidís `Although Mael Sechnaill did not make this expedition to take the kingship of
Munster for himself, it was worth coming to kill what he killed of Gall-Goídil there,
for these were people who had forsaken their baptism, and they were called Vikings
because they behaved like Vikings and they had been fostered by them; and though
the real Vikings were evil towards the churches, these were much worse wherever
they were in Ireland’.

None of this moralising occurs in the uninterpolated annals. Here the Gall-Goídil first
appear as the allies of Mael Sechnaill, king of Tara, against the Vikings, evidently
those led by Ímar and Amlaíb, kings of Dublin: Cocadh mor etir gennti & Mael
Sechlainn co nGall-Goidhelaibh lais `Great warfare between the Vikings and Mael
Sechnaill, who was supported by the Gall-Goídil’. In the same year, they were in
the north, where Aed Finnliath mac Néill, king of Ailech, heavily defeated them far
inland at Glenn Foichle (Glenelly, in the barony of Upper Strabane). They may
have come from Lough Neagh and the Bann. In 857, a leader of theirs, Caitill Find
(whose name is appropriately partly Old Norse, partly Old Irish), is mentioned: he
was routed in battle by Ímar and Amlaíb in Munster.This enmity continued into the
next year. The Gall-Goídil allied with Cenél Fiachach (a sub-kingdom of Southern Uí
Néill) and both were defeated by Ímar of Dublin and Cerball, king of Osraige in Araid
Tíre (to the east of Lough Derg and the Shannon in Co Tipperary). Evidently, the
kings of Dublin did not like free-wheeling Vikings (or look-alikes) in their space.
36. In fact, they made serious attempts to exercise royal control. This appears in a new
pattern in the Viking plundering of Irish monasteries. This change has often been
noted and has been the subject of a recent study that seeks to show that the fall off
in monastic plundering in the second half of the ninth century is due, in large part, to a
marked decline in annalistic recording, though some real decrease in raiding may have
occurred. However, a more plausible explanation suggests itself. The large-scale
plundering of monasteries stops quite suddenly about the time that the dynasty
established itself in Dublin. In the fifteen years between 855 and the end of 870 the
annals report ten incidents that can be regarded as attacks on monasteries (Lusk and
Slane 856, Leighlin c.864, Clonfert 866, Lismore 867, Armagh and Castledermot 869,
the islands of Lough Ree and the surrounding lands, where there were many monasteries c.873, Kilmore near Armagh 874, and the capture of the superior and
lector of Armagh in 879, which is not conclusive evidence for a raid).

Of these, at east three were carried out by the royal dynasty itself: the assault on Lismore in 867, Amlaíb’s major attack on Armagh in 869 (which can be understood as revenge on the Northern Uí Néill, the patrons of Armagh, for the death of his son at the battle of Cell
Ua nDaigri the year before), and Barid’s plundering of Lough Ree and its
surroundings. Between 881 and 902, the annals report some fourteen attacks on
monasteries. Of these, three were certainly done by the royal dynasty: Duleek 881,
Lismore 883 and Armagh 895. Nine others are likely, given their nearness to Dublin:
Kildare (886), Ardbracken, Donaghpatrick, Dulane and Glendalough (all in 890) and
Kildare and Clonard in 891. Some monastic raiding by Vikings evidently not under
the control of Dublin occurs mainly in the periphery, for example, the attack on
Cloyne in 888. And there is another consideration: plundering monasteries is a crude
and cost-inefficient method of generating income from rich and politically subservient
institutions: regular payments of fixed tribute are much more effective and suit both
sides better, but this will occur only if the dynasty exercises real control. This appears
to be the case, and monastic plundering by the dynasty occurs as political punishment
(for example Armagh in 869), or when arrangements for the payment of tribute broke
down (perhaps Lismore in 867), or when there is strife amongst the branches of the
dynasty as happened towards the end of the ninth century.

The annalistic record is, of course, partial and incomplete; there are changes over time in its nature, and some diminution in its extent. However, it does indicate a general trend that fits well with the emergence of kingly power amongst the Vikings in Ireland. Kings and their henchmen do not like professional trouble-makers competing for the same scarce resources in their area of jurisdiction and causing general disorder and loss. Evidently the dynasty kept good control for the most part and was usually (though not always) able to exclude independent operators in the later ninth century, certainly from its own central areas of interest.
Important evidence for the move of the dynastic centre to Ireland is to be found in
Dublin’s dealings with Scotland, as reported in the Irish annals. And this evidence is
corroborated by the Scottish Chronicle.
U 866.1: Amlaiph & Auisle do dul i Fortrenn co nGallaib Erenn & Alban cor innriset
Cruithentuaith n-uile & tucsat a ngiallo `Amlaíb and Auisle went to Fortriu with the
Foreigners of Ireland and Scotland and they ravaged the whole of Pictland and took
their hostages’.
The meaning of this entry is clear enough. The Dublin dynasty, commanding the
Vikings of Ireland and Scotland, invaded Southern Pictland, ( Southern Lowlands )then plundered the whole of Pictland, and took hostages as overkings should when enforcing their political authority over other kings. This leaves no room for independent kings: Constantine I (r. 862-76), called `rex Pictorum’ in his obit, will have given hostages
with the rest. One infers that, as part of this operation, they imposed a tribute on
Pictland-and this inference is supported by F §328: `they took many hostages with
them as a pledge for tribute; for a long time afterwards they continued to pay them
tribute’. This attack is recorded independently and accurately in the annals in
the Scottish Chronicle:
ac post duos annos uastauít Amlaib cum gentibus suis Pictauíam et habitauit eam a
kl’. Ianuar’ usque ad festum sancti Patricíí `And two years later Amlaíb and his
gentiles plundered Pictland and occupied it from the first of January to the feast of St
Patrick’.
It is clear from the annals that they returned to Dublin, and for the next four years
there is a fairly detailed account of their activities-enough to show that Dublin was
their base of operations. In 866 Aed Finnliath, king of Tara, destroyed
the longphoirt of the Vikings all along the north coast of Ireland and defeated them in
battle at Lough Foyle-and here he may have taken advantage of the absence of much
of the Viking manpower in Scotland. The annals tell us nothing of the relationship
of these settlements to the Dublin dynasty but, given their strategic position in the
direct line of communication between the Western Isles and Ireland and their location
on the littoral of the most powerful kingdoms in the north, it is likely that they were
under the direct control of Dublin. In 867 there was a struggle within the dynasty:
Auisle was murdered by his brothers and this conflict may have been the occasion for
an Irish attack. A force led by Cennétig mac Gaíthéne, king of Loígis, burned the
fortress of Amlaíb at Clondalkin near Dublin (it was within the monastic enclosure)
and killed 100 of his followers. They followed this up with a successful attack on
Dublin itself. Some time in the same year, Amlaíb committed (in the words of the
annalist) `treachery on Lismore’137—as if he had broken an agreement of immunity in
return for tribute. As we have seen, the Dublin dynasty played a role in the battle of
Cell Ua nDaigri in 868 in which Aed Finnliath king of Tara defeated the Uí Néill of
Brega and killed their king who had the Leinstermen and the Vikings of Dublin as
allies. Carlus, son of Amlaíb of Dublin, was amongst the slain. In reply, Amlaíb
raided Armagh in 869 and burned its oratories; a great deal of plunder was taken and
1000 of its inhabitants were either killed or taken prisoner. In effect, this was a
proxy attack on Aed Finnliath whose dynasty saw itself as the protector of Armagh.

However, in 870-71 the Dublin leadership turned again to Scotland.
U 870.6. Obsesio Ailech Cluathe a Norddmannis .i. Amlaiph & Imhar, duo reges
Norddmannorum obsederunt arcem illum & distruxerunt in fine .iiii. mensium arcem
& praedauerunt `The siege of Dumbarton by the Nordmanni i.e. Amlaíb and Ímar the two kings of the Nordmanni besieged that fortress and at the end of four months they
destroyed the fortress and plundered it’.
U 871.2. Amhlaiph & Ímar do thuidecht afrithisi du Ath Cliath a Albain dibh cetaibh
long & praeda maxima hominum Anglorum & Britonum & Pictorum deducta est
secum ad Hiberniam in captiuitate `Amlaíb and Ímar came back to Dublin from
Scotland with 200 ships and they brought with them in captivity to Ireland a great
prey of Angles, Britons and Picts’.
In any reckoning, this was a major military and political event. A siege of four months
was a most unusual undertaking in the ninth century, and the plunder taken from
Scotland was vast. The Dublin kings smashed the power of the Strathclyde Britons
and established their authority over them. Given the captives they took, they may also
have re-asserted their authority over Pictland as a whole and, if the Anglian captives
were taken in their homeland, they may have been raiding some of Lothian as well.
Effectively, this was the beginning of the end for the Strathclyde dynasty.

In 872 Artgal, king of the Stathclyde Britons, was killed at the instigation of Constantine I
who, whatever about his own precarious position as king of South Pictland under
Viking overlordship, clearly took advantage of the defeat of Strathclyde to further his
own interests. Artgal’s son, Rhun, is the last name in the genealogy of the Strathclyde
dynasty. This Rhun was married to a daughter of Constantine and their son Eochaid
was joint king of the Scots from 878 to 889, at a period of segmentary dislocation
brought on by the Viking attack and at a time when Scotland was still under Viking
tribute. After him, the Strathclyde dynasty disappears from the record and rulers of
the sub-kingdom of Strathclyde in the tenth century belong to the Scottish royal
dynasty.
A plausible account of the events leading to the further involvement of Amlaíb
with Scotland and his death can be pieced together if one reads Lochlainn as Viking
Scotland.
F §400. Amhlaoibh do dhol a hEirinn i Lochlainn do chogadh ar Lochland-achaibh &
do cognamh rá a athair, .i. Gofridh, uair ra bhattar na Loch-lannaigh ag cogadh ‘na
cheann-saidhe, ar ttiachtain ó a athair ara cheann `Amlaíb went from Ireland to
Lochlainn to fight the Vikings and to help his father, Gofraidh, for the the Vikings
were warring against him, his father having sent for him’.
This entry is undated in F. However, an approximate date can be worked out. Amlaíb
had returned after the sacking of Dumbarton in 871, and probably early in that year if
we may judge by the position of the annal in U. The entry (§401) immediately
following the one in F cited above states that `in the tenth year of the reign of Aed
Finnliath, Ímar … and the son of the man who left Ireland (i.e. Amlaíb) plundered Ireland from east to west and from north to south’. The `son of Amlaíb’ in question
here is almost certainly Oistin who was killed in 875. The tenth year of Aed
Finnliath’s reign is 871 (counting inclusively) or 872. In fact, the annals report a good
deal of Viking activity in Ireland in 871-72. It is likely, then, that Amlaíb had left
Ireland by 872, summoned by his father to Viking Scotland to help put down a revolt
against himself. This entry has led to many speculations, some wilder than others but
since nearly all depend on equating Lochlainn with Norway and linking the kings of
Dublin to the Vestfold dynasty, there is no great need to discuss them in detail here.
Amlaíb is next and finally mentioned in the Scottish Chronicle in an entry that
appears to be corrupt:
Tercio iterum anno Amlaíb trahens centum a Constantino occisus est.
There are several difficulties with this. For tercio one may read tercio decimo on the
assumption that the scribe dropped .x. from the .xiii. of his exemplar—the third year
of Constantine is 865/66 and Amlaíb was certainly alive long after that. If one may
accept this emendation and count inclusively (as the writer certainly does in the next
entry in the Scottish Chronicle) one arrives at the very likely date 874. The
expression trahens centum seems corrupt and the emendation trahens censum,
`levying tribute’, while apt is uncertain. One may possibly interpret the entry as
follows: Amlaíb was killed by Constantine I in 874, very likely whilst levying or reimposing tribute on Southern Pictland/ Lowlands of Scotland. The next entry in the Scottish Chronicle is firmly dated to 875: the battle of Dollar between the Danish Vikings and the Scots, in which the Scots were driven in defeat to Atholl. The date is confirmed by an independent entry in U for 875:Congressio Pictorum fri Dubghallu & strages magna
Pictorum facta est `An encounter of the Picts and the Danish Vikings and there was a
great slaughter of the Picts’ (despite the terminology of U, the Scots are here intended
and both entries refer to the same event). Now the Norwegian Vikings of the West
evidently took a hand in events and profited from the Danish victory: Normanni
annum integrum degerunt in Píctavía `the Norwegian Vikings spent a whole year in
Pictland’. This fits well into the year 875/76 and one may infer that their activities
in Scotland led to the death of Constantine I in 876 (the date is that of U), as reported
in regnal list D: Constantinus mac Kynat. xv a. reg. et interemptus est a
Noruagensibus in bello de Merdo fatha et sepultus est in Iona insula `Constantine
mac Cináeda ruled for fifteen years and he was killed by the Norwegian Vikings in
the battle of de Merdo fatha and he was buried in the island of Iona’.One other
unique entry in F appears to bear on the death of Gøðrøðr:
F §409. Ég righ Lochlainne .i. Gothfraid do tedmaimm grána opond. Sic quod placuit
Deo `The death of the king of Lochlainn i.e. Gothfraid of a sudden and horrible fit. So
it pleased God’.

This entry has caused a great deal of trouble for historians: for example, Radner
suggests that the text is in error, and Ímar (a873) of Dublin is meant; and Hunter
Blair thinks that the entry is seriously misplaced and refers to Gothfrid ua hÍmair
(a934). First, the date. The marginal date of 873 is an editorial conjecture but
probably a sound one. It follows two entries that are dated in more or less satisfactory
ways. The first (§407) recounts a successful Viking expedition to Slieve Bloom, and a
virtually identical text of this entry occurs in M which dates it to 872. The second
(§408) is an account of the placing of a fleet on Loch Ree on the Shannon by the
Viking leader Barith and his plundering of that area. It is dated to the eleventh year of
Aed Finnliath, that is, 872 (counting inclusively) or 873, but since the entry is unique
there is no independent confirmation of these precise events from other annals.
However, there is some contextual support for a dating to 873: M records `the
plundering of Munster by the Vikings of Dublin’ in 873 and I relates that `Barid went
with a great fleet from Dublin westwards by sea and plundered Ciarraige
Luachra’. His activities on Lough Ree may have been an extension of his expedition
to Ciarraige Luachra into the Shannon and its lakes. The year 873 looks plausible
enough, though the case is not helped by the fact that the entry is followed in F by a
short undated entry (§410) that could at a pinch be taken to refer to events in Wales in
876-77 and then a large chasm in the text. This much-emended entry appears to be
the death notice of Gøðrøðr, king of the Vikings in Scotland, and father of Ímar and
Amlaíb. This is no chronological impossibility: his sons first appeared in Ireland 25
years before, very likely in their twenties or younger, and we may infer from this that
he may have been in his sixties when he died.

Ímar had continued to rule in Dublin and when he died in 873, his annalistic death
notice is as follows:
U 873.3. Imhar rex Nordmannorum totius Hibernie[hook] & Brittanie uitam
finiuit `Ímar king of the Norwegians/ Norse of the whole of Ireland and Britain ended his life.
There is no good reason why this entry cannot be taken literally as meaning that Ímar
was overking of all the Norwegian/Norse Vikings in Ireland and Britain. Though one cannot be absolutely certain what `Brittania’ meant for the annalist, the examples in U
indicate that it meant the island of Britain as a whole. His brother, Amlaíb, had
returned to the homeland in Scotland and was now involved in local events there. One
may infer from the terms used in this obit that Dublin had come to be regarded as the
dynastic caput. The evidence suggests that Dublin was the capital of a sea-kingdom:
Man and Viking Scotland in the narrower sense-the Orkneys, Caithness, Sutherland,
the Western Isles and Argyle and the coastline of Inverness and Ross and Cromarty. It
also included overlordship of Pictland and of the Strathclyde Britons. It is probable
that Galloway and Cumbria from the Solway Firth to the Mersey formed part of the
same overlordship. Generally, the extent of Norse settlement in Galloway is disputed;the evidence of place-names is, as usual, ambiguous, and it is best to think that the
area was British in population with strong Irish, Hebridean and Anglian influences
and probably Dublin-Norse overlordship. The connection between Galloway and
the Gall-Goídil (Old-Norse Gaddgeðlar) is uncertain: the word is the same, the people
need not be. The role of the Dublin Vikings as colonists in Cumbria is obscure, but it
is likely that many settlers in the Wirrall came from Dublin, its hinterland and
dependencies. Wainwright thought there was a great colonising movement that led
to intense and largely peaceful settlement from the Dee to the Solway and beyond,
and eastwards towards Yorkshire north of the Humber. The problem is chronology, and only a vague answer can be given.
When Dublin was fell to Irish attack in 902 and when its dynasty was expelled,
some of the Dubliners went to Anglesea, and from there to Chester. They may
have been going to their own kinsmen. If so, the settlement in Cumbria must be at
least as early as the later ninth century.
The members of the dynasty went to Scotland, back to where they started from
and to territories that had long been their dependencies. In 903 we next find them not
in the Isles and in the west of Scotland (where, one assumes, their control remained
effective), but engaged in warfare in Southern Pictland. As the Scottish
Chronicle relates:
Constantinus filius Edii tenuit regnum .xl. annos. Cujus tertio anno Normanni
predaverunt Duncalden, omnemque Albaniam. In sequenti utique anno occisi sunt in
Sraithherni Normanni … `Constantine son of Aed ruled for 40 years. In his third year
[903], the Norwegian/Norse Vikings plundered Dunkeld and the whole of Albania. In the
following year [904] the Norwegian Vikings were slaughtered at Strathearn’.

The attack on Dunkeld is nothing less than an attack on the king of South Pictland,
Constantine II (r. 900-43), the most important ruler in Scotland. Very likely, he had
been considered a dependent king by the dynasty of Dublin, and the fall of Dublin was
the signal for his revolt. The presence of the Dublin dynasty in Scotland is confirmed
by the Irish records. In 904 Ímar grandson of Ímar, the king of Dublin until his
expulsion, was killed by the men of South Pictland with great slaughter, but this
setback did not halt the Dublin dynasty. In the same year, Ead, whom the annalist
calls rí Cruithentuaithe `king of Pictland’, was killed by two grandsons of Ímar and
one Ketill with a loss of 500 men. Evidently, the Dublin dynasty was fighting for
control of South Pictland. Some time between 904 and about 914 (when historical
sources again become available), the exiled Dublin dynasty reached what one could
call critical mass in North Britain and embarked on another career of conquest, in
northern England and Ireland. Professor Alfred P. Smyth has thrown a flood of light
on these and subsequent events that led to the re-establishment of the Viking kingdom of Dublin, the taking of York by the same dynasty, and the establishment of close
relationships between Dublin, York and northern England generally.
In Ireland, the second Viking age began suddenly with `the arrival of a great seafleet of pagans in Waterford Harbour’ in 914. In 917 two leaders of the exiled Dublin
dynasty joined in the renewed attack and, though their relationship to the Waterford
fleets of 914-15 is not clear, they took control of Viking activities in Ireland. Ragnall
grandson of Ímar who is called rí Dubgall `king of the Danes’ because he had made
himself king of Danish Northumbria, came with a fleet to Waterford. His kinsman,
Sitric Caech, defeated the Leinstermen in 917, re-captured Dublin, and re-established
the Viking kingdom. In 918 Ragnall led his Waterford fleet to North Britain and made
himself king of York and ruler of Northumbria and probably of Cumbria. He died in
921 and in his obit he is called ri Finngall & Dubgall `king of the Norse and the
Danes’—an accurate description of his mixed Scandinavian kingdom. The DublinYork axis that was to have such influence in Ireland and England for over half a
century, had been established, and the dynasty of Dublin was now more powerful than
ever.
Viking Scotland, known variously as Lothlend, Laithlind, Laithlinn, Lochlainn in
Irish literary and historical sources, played a major if unsung role in the history of
Britain and Ireland in the ninth and tenth centuries. While Norwegian/Norse in origin, its dynasty cannot be convincing attached to any Norwegian/Norse royal line. The sagas and genealogies that do so belong to twelfth century or later, and have little value for the
early Viking age. Much of the raiding on Ireland in the first half of the ninth century
was mounted from Viking Scotland, and in the middle of that century the kings that
controlled Viking Scotland made Dublin their headquarters. Though they had limited
success in winning land in Ireland, they were overlords of far-flung dependencies in
Scotland , Wales and England, some of which they ruled indirectly through dependent
kings. From these they extracted tribute and military service. When the kings of
Dublin were expelled in 902 they returned to Scotland where they engaged in the reconquest of Southern Pictland and the taking of Northumbria. From here, they again
attacked Ireland and re-established the kingdom of Dublin.

Preserving Our Past, Recording Our Present, Informing Our Future

Ancient and Honorable Clan Carruthes Int Society CCIS LLc

carruthersclan1@gmail.com carrothersclan@gmail.com

Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Department of History, University College, Cork , Ireland

Clan Carruthers Int Society CCIS

You can find us on facebook at :

https://www.facebook.com/carrutherscarrothers.pat.9

https://www.facebook.com/CarruthersClan/

https://www.facebook.com/CarruthersClanLLC

Disclaimer Ancient and Honorable Carruthers Clan International Society CCIS LL