Norse Settlement

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Norse Settlement

In 795 the first recorded raid on Ireland by the Vikings occurred when Reachrú (possibly Lambay Island off the coast of Dublin) was attacked. For the next forty-six years the Vikings continued to attack monasteries and other centers of wealth until in 841 they founded their first permanent settlements, called longphorts, at Dublin and Annagassan, Co. Louth. These were defended fortresses where the Vikings could protect their warships and, if necessary, overwinter in Ireland. (Longphorts were also established in other places, such as Cork, but they have yet to be located archaeologically.) To the immediate west of Viking-age Dublin, the largest Viking cemetery outside of Scandinavia was found in the nineteenth century and has been dated to the ninth century. Until recently, scholars have debated whether the original longphort was located here in 841, and then the urban settlement was established in 917 at the site where it is now, closer to the mouth of the River Liffey, but recent archaeological excavations have produced radiocarbon dates that indicate ninth-century settlement in the center of present-day Dublin at Temple Bar.

The Vikings established the major port towns on the east coast such as Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Limerick, and Cork, which were all used as trading centers for their widespread economic empire that dominated much of western Europe. The excavations in the heart of Dublin, more than anywhere else in Ireland, have revealed the wealth and sophistication of the trade and industry concentrated in these ports in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Dublin was famous for the production of fine metalwork, especially the ring pins that secured garments in the Viking period. Excavations have also produced much evidence of the layout of Viking Age Dublin. The remains of many structures, such as post-and-wattle sub-rectangular houses, and their associated artifacts reveal the intermixture of Gaelic-Irish and Scandinavian culture that made up the rich Hiberno-Norse artistic tradition that dominated Irish urban life, especially in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Archaeological evidence from the Wood Quay site in Dublin in the late 1970s also showed that a stone town wall was constructed around the core of the nucleated settlement in about 1100 c.e. This replaced a large earthen embankment with a wooden palisade on top, which had encircled the town from the tenth century. Along the southern edge of the river, docking facilities and buildings were also being constructed as the river silted up, with nine successive stages being identified archaeologically, dating from 900 to 1300.

Excavations within the walled city of Waterford have uncovered about 20 percent of the Viking and medieval occupation layers there, and have been especially valuable in putting the finds from Hiberno-Norse Dublin into a broader socioeconomic context. Although the range and quality of the Viking Age finds from Dublin are arguably more impressive than those of Waterford, the discovery of five sunken buildings in Waterford represents the greatest number yet found in any Irish urban center. To date, no archaeological evidence for the Vikings from a secure context has been found in Cork, but explorations in Limerick have provided traces of Hiberno-Norse constructions and occupation layers on the southwestern portion of King's Island, at the lowest fording point across the River Shannon.

This archaeological evidence from these Hiberno-Norse ports has provided a counterweight to the anti-Viking propaganda forcefully advanced by the contemporary annalistic sources, such as the Annals of Ulster and the Annals of Inisfallen, that have clouded historical judgment on the Norse until the last decade or so. As these written sources were largely compiled by the monks whose monasteries bore the brunt of the Viking raids, it is scarcely surprising that all of the ills of the church—such as pluralism and lay abbots—and indeed of Irish society generally, were laid at the feet of these invaders. Archaeology has emphasized the significant role that the Norse settlers played in the establishment of urban life in Ireland, and in bringing the island into the wider trading network established by the Vikings in Western Europe.

In popular mythology the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, which ended with the victory of the forces of the Irish high king Brian Boru over the Vikings of Dublin, marked the end of Norse dominance in Ireland. But the historical reality is more complex, because Vikings fought on both sides of the battle, and Dublin retained some political independence until 1052, when they had to accept Murchad, the son of King Diarmaid mac Maél na mBó of Leinster, as their ruler. Even after the Anglo-Normans captured these port towns at the end of the twelfth century, their Hiberno-Norse populations were segregated into areas called (for instance, in Dublin) the villa Ostmanorrum—"town of the Norsemen"—but they arguably ceased to have any distinctive identity by the fourteenth century. One of the major challenges facing future scholars will be to try to establish the true extent of Viking rural settlement. There is place-name evidence of such settlement outside the major urban settlements, including Dublin, where the term Dyflinarskiri was used to denote its rural hinterland, and Waterford, where the names Ballygunner and Ballytruckle probably refer to medieval inhabitants with the Scandinavian names Gunner and Thorkell.

Indeed, among the few reminders of this long period of Norse settlement in Ireland are some place-names that are Old Norse in origin, such as the fishing village Howth, which is located on a rocky promontory at the northern tip of Dublin Bay, whose named is derived from höfuth (headland). Waterford is probably the largest settlement in Ireland that has retained its Old Norsederived place-name, originally Vedrarfjordr, which has been identified as meaning either "windy fjord" or "fjord of the ram" (i.e., where they were loaded for transport by sea). Recently it has been suggested that the first element of the place-name is derived from the Old Norse Vedr (wind or weather), referring to the fact that this inlet (or fjord, to the Scandinavians) of the River Suir was often exposed to the wind, and that this settlement offered a safe haven in any storm.