THE SCANDINAVIAN ELEMENT.
[Sidenote: First appearance of the Northmen, 795.]
Norwegian ships began to appear on the Irish coast in 795, one year after
the destruction of the church at Lindisfarne. The islands were harried,
Lambay being perhaps the first to suffer; everything of value was taken,
and the hermits and anchorites were killed or carried away. Iona, where
the greatest of Irish saints had founded a new Church, was burned or
plundered in 802 and 806. About twelve years after their first visit the
Scandinavians began to venture inland, sacking the monasteries, which
contained such wealth as Ireland then possessed, and slaughtering the
monks. The famous religious community at Bangor, in Down, was thus
destroyed about 824. The first permanent settlement of the northern
invaders was perhaps in the neighbourhood of Limerick. They had a fort at
Cork before 848, and at Dublin before 852. There were also forts on Lough
Foyle and at Waterford. The flat coast between Dublin and the borders of
Meath lay open to a floating enemy, and early obtained the name of
Fingal, or the land of the stranger.
[Sidenote: Turgesius, 830.]
In or about 830 a chief arrived who pursued a more ambitious policy. He
is called Turgeis or Turgesius by the Irish, and by the Irish only: this
may be a form of Thorkils or Trygve, and may perhaps be a name applied to
the mysterious hero whom the Scandinavians call Ragnar Lodbrok. Turgesius
landed in Ulster, and planned the complete subjugation of Ireland. He
burned Armagh and drove out St. Patrick's successor, and then took up a
central position near Athlone, whence his flotillas could act on Lough
Ree and Lough Dearg. We know that the Northmen dragged ships or boats
overland to Loch Lomond, and similar feats may have been performed in
Ireland. There was another plundering station on Lough Neagh about the
same time.
Turgeis mastered the northern half of Ireland, and made frequent
incursions into the other half. Against the Church he showed peculiar
animosity, and his wife used the high altar at Clonmacnoise as a throne
when she gave audience; perhaps she uttered oracular responses from it.
In the south Turgeis was less powerful, for the dispossessed abbot of
Armagh took refuge at Emly in Tipperary. But the whole coast was attacked
by innumerable corsairs, who sometimes made raids far into the central
districts. Dublin was fortified by the Norwegians about 840, and became
the chief seat of the Scandinavian power. Turgeis did not live to unite
the various bands, but fell into the hands of Malachi, King of Meath, in
845, and was drowned in Lough Owel. The Northmen of Limerick were
defeated in the same year at Roscrea, and their earl, Olfin, was
slain.[16]
[Sidenote: A.D. 852.
The Black and White Gentiles.]
Seven years after the death of Turgeis came the Black Gentiles, who are
generally supposed to have been Danes, as the White Gentiles were
certainly Norwegians. Whether the colour of their armour or their
complexion was referred to is doubtful. The new-comers made themselves
masters of Dublin, and of the plunder which the first invaders had
accumulated from all the Irish churches. Before one of the battles fought
to decide whether Black or White Pagans were to enjoy this property,
Horm, or Gorm, the Danish chief, is said to have invoked St. Patrick, a
singular confusion of ideas, which may have resulted from intercourse
with Christians in England. Victory followed. The Black Gentiles seem to
have retained their supremacy; but the distinction becomes partly
obliterated, and the Danes, of whom we read later, were probably
intermingled with Norwegians. It is recorded that Amlaf, son of the King
of Norway, came to Ireland in 852 or 853, that all the foreigners of Erin
submitted to him, and that the Irish also paid tribute. The name of the
Black Gentiles is believed to be preserved in the little town of
Baldoyle.
[Sidenote: Forty years' peace.]
Amlaf and his sons were not satisfied with the spoils of thrice plundered
churches, but everywhere violated tombs in search of gold ornaments.
Another great chief was Ivar, who appears to have been Ivar Beinlaus, son
of Ragnar Lodbrok, and founder of the Northumbrian kingdom, which was
afterwards closely connected with the Irish Danes. To the Norwegians who
fled to Ireland from the iron rule of Harold Harfager, the King of Dublin
was one of the chief sovereigns on earth. Carrol, lord of Ossory, was in
alliance with Amlaf and Ivar, and ruled Dublin after their deaths; but he
died about 885, and a Norse dynasty was then re-established by force. A
dozen years later another Carrol drove the foreigners across the Channel,
but Sitric, king of Northumberland, regained the fortress in 919, and the
Celts do not appear to have recaptured it. For a period of some forty
years, ending about 916, Ireland is said to have had a little rest. The
enemy may have had enough to do elsewhere, but their predatory
expeditions did not entirely cease. There were perhaps no fresh invasions
in force, but former settlers held their own against the Irish, with whom
they were generally at war.
[Sidenote: Renewed invasions, 916.]
[Sidenote: Severe treatment of the natives.]
Whatever may have caused the period of comparative rest, the Danish
incursions began again with renewed vigour. A great host came to
Waterford in 916, defeated the men of Leinster, and harried all the south
of Ireland; churches, as usual, attracting their special attention.
Ragnal, Ivar's grandson, represented by the Ulster annalists as king of
all the Irish Scandinavians, was the chief leader, and he afterwards led
his men to Scotland, where the great but indecisive battle of Tynemoor
was fought.[17] Sitric, Ragnal's brother, took Dublin from the Irish, who
had, perhaps, held it since 902, and on Ragnal's death succeeded to the
royal title. The natives had occasional successes, but on the whole they
were conspicuously inferior in the field, and Nial Glundubh, King of
Ireland, who headed a great confederacy, fell in the attempt to recover
Dublin. Twelve chiefs or kings of northern and central tribes are said to
have died at the same time. After this reverse all serious attempt to
check the invaders seems to have been given up, and fleet after fleet
brought hordes of oppressors to the ill-fated island. Munster suffered
especially, and the general nature of a Danish invasion cannot be better
apprehended than by transcribing the chronicler's words:--'And assuredly
the evil which Erin had hitherto suffered was as nothing compared to the
evil inflicted by these parties. All Munster was plundered by them on all
sides and devastated, and they spread themselves over Munster and built
earth-works and towers and landing-places over all Erin, so that there
was no place in Erin without numerous fleets of Danes and pirates; so
that they made spoil-land and sword-land and conquered-land of her
throughout her breadth and generally; and they ravaged her chieftainries,
privileged churches, and sanctuaries, and demolished her shrines,
reliquaries, and books. They wrecked her beautiful ornamental temples:
for neither veneration, nor honour, nor mercy for holy ground, nor
protection for church or sanctuary, for God or man, was felt by this
furious, ferocious, pagan, ruthless, wrathful people. In short, until the
sand of the sea, the grass of the field, or the stars of heaven are
counted it will not be easy to recount or enumerate or relate what the
Gaedhil, all, without distinction, suffered from; whether men or women,
boys or girls, laics or clerics, freemen or serfs, young or old;
indignity, outrage, injury, and oppression. In a word, they killed the
kings and the chieftains, the heirs to the crown, and the royal princes
of Erin. They killed the brave and the valiant, the stout knights,
champions, soldiers, and young lords, and most of the heroes and warriors
of all Ireland; they brought them under tribute and reduced them to
bondage and slavery. Many were the blooming, lively women; the modest,
mild, comely maidens; the pleasant, noble, stately, blue-eyed young
women; the gentle, well-brought-up youths; and the intelligent, valiant
champions, whom they carried to oppression and bondage over the broad
green sea. Alas! many and frequent were the bright eyes that were
suffused with tears and dimmed with grief and despair at the separation
of son from father, and daughter from mother, and brother from brother,
and relatives from their race and from their tribe.'[18]
[Sidenote: The Northmen fail to found a permanent kingdom.]
The Irish Danes became strong enough to interfere with effect in English
politics, and Olaf Cuaran, or Sitricson, King of Dublin, was a general of
the great Scandinavian army which Athelstane overthrew at Brunanburgh.
The Danes were much fewer than the Irish, but their general superiority
during the tenth century was incontestable; and had the invaded people
been of kin to them the kingdom of Canute might have had a counterpart in
Ireland. Irish Celts were only too ready to call in Scandinavian allies
in their internal quarrels, but they could never amalgamate with them.
Occasionally a confederation of tribes would gain a great success, as at
the battle of Tara, where King Malachi defeated the Dublin Danes under
Athelstane's old opponent, Olaf Cuaran. After great slaughter on both
sides the Dublin men had the worst, and were forced to release Donnell,
King of Leinster, who was then in their hands. A great part of Ireland
was at this time subject to the Danes, and the battle of Tara has been
called the end of the 'Babylonish captivity of Ireland, inferior only to
the captivity of hell.' King Olaf went on a pilgrimage to Iona, where he
died in the following year. Thirty-seven years had passed since his
acceptance of Christianity, at least in name; yet the Danes plundered the
sacred isle only five years later, in 986, and killed the abbot and
fifteen of his monks. It is to be noted that the Scandinavian treatment
of churches reacted on the Irish, and that many native warriors came to
regard saints and sanctuaries with as little respect as Turgesius
himself.
[Sidenote: Their strongest power in Munster.]
Munster seems to have been more completely subdued than any other part of
Ireland. The Danish stations at Waterford, Cork, and Limerick made
invasion at all times easy, and the sons of Ivar bid fair to found a
lasting dynasty at the latter place. There was a tax-gatherer in every
petty district, a receiver to intercept the dues of every church, a
soldier billeted in every house, 'so that none of the men of Erin ... had
power to give even the milk of his cow, nor as much as the clutch of eggs
of one hen in succour or in kindness to an aged man, or to a friend, but
was forced to preserve them for the foreign steward, or bailiff, or
soldier. And though there were but one milk-giving cow in the house she
durst not be milked for an infant of one night, nor for a sick person,
but must be kept for the steward, or bailiff, or soldier of the
foreigners. And however long he might be absent from his house, his share
or his supply durst not be lessened; although there was in the house but
one cow, it must be killed for the meal of the night, if the means of a
supply could not be otherwise procured.'[19]
[Sidenote: Succession to the kingdom of Cashel.]
At last a deliverer arose. According to the will of Olioll Olum, King of
Munster in the third century--such is the theory--the sovereignty of
Cashel, that is of Munster, was to belong alternately to the races of his
two sons, Eoghan Mor and Cormac Cas. The Eoghanachts and Dal Cais are
generally Anglicised as the Eugenians and Dalcassians; the strength of
the former and much stronger tribe being in Cork, Limerick, and
Kerry--that of the latter in Clare. The Eugenian Fergraidh was king in
967, when he was murdered by his own people. Mahon the Dalcassian then
became king, in compliance with the constitutional theory, but not
without a struggle. Urged on by his brother Brian, he attacked the Danish
settlements up and down the country, and became master of Cashel, when
Ivar, finding his supremacy threatened, summoned all that would obey him
to root out utterly the whole Dalcassian race.
[Sidenote: Molloy, Mahon, and Brian.]
The tribes of Western Munster generally were disposed to follow Mahon,
but Molloy, King of Desmond, and some others, adhered to the Dane rather
than admit the supremacy of a local rival. A pitched battle took place at
Solloghead, near Tipperary, in which the foreigners and their allies were
totally defeated. Molloy and other chiefs who had taken the losing side
were forced to give hostages to the victor. Mahon burned Limerick and
drove away Ivar, who returned after a year with a great fleet, and fixed
his head-quarters on Scattery Island, where St. Senanus had so sternly
resisted the blandishments of a female saint.
[Sidenote: Murder of Mahon. Brian succeeds him.]
For some years Mahon reigned undisputed King of Munster, but his
successes only stimulated the jealousies of Molloy and the other Eugenian
chiefs, who saw their race reduced to play an inferior part. They
accordingly conspired with Ivar, and Molloy procured the treacherous
murder of Mahon. The crime was useless, for Brian was left, and he
immediately succeeded both to the leadership of his own tribe and to the
kingdom of Munster, Molloy having certainly forfeited all moral claim to
the alternate succession. Brian pursued the Danes to their strongholds,
slew Ivar and his sons, and carried off the women and the treasure. There
was, however, still a Scandinavian settlement at Limerick, and we find a
grandson of Ivar afterwards in Brian's service as one of the ten Danish
stewards whom he employed. He was ambitious, and he had experience of the
skill of such officers in extorting contributions from unwilling
subjects. Molloy and his chief allies were slain; and Brian, having
reduced the Limerick Danes to insignificance, turned his arm against
those of Waterford, whose territory he ravaged, and whose Celtic allies,
inhabiting the modern county of Waterford, he easily subdued. Brian was
acknowledged as supreme in Munster, and took security from the principal
churches not to give sanctuary to thieves or rebels. As the consequence
of further expeditions Leinster also became tributary; and thus, in eight
years after his brother's death, Brian was admitted to be supreme in the
southern half of Ireland.
[Sidenote: Brian aims at being King of all Ireland.]
In his further expeditions, undertaken with a view of becoming King of
all Ireland, the Danes of Waterford sometimes accompanied Brian; but his
progress towards the desired goal was arrested for a while by a prudent
treaty with Malachi II., head King of Ireland, whom he acknowledged as
undisputed sovereign of the northern half, and by a revolt of the
Leinster men, who were allied with the Danes of Dublin, the united forces
of Brian and Malachi having overthrown the Leinster Danes at Glenmama,
near Dunlavin, Dublin fell an easy prey. The spoils taken are
represented as enormous, and the mention of carbuncles and other precious
stones, of buffalo-horns, goblets, and many-coloured vestures, betoken
some degree of luxury and much commercial activity among the Danes. It is
to be observed that Brian and his followers, though Christians, had no
scruple about making slaves. His panegyrists simply say that the Danes by
their cruelty and oppression had deserved no better treatment. Threshing
and other rough work was done by the male prisoners. Menial work,
including the severe labour of the hand-mill, was done by the women.
'There was not,' we are told, 'a winnowing sheet from Howth to the
furthest point of Kerry that had not a foreigner in bondage on it, nor
was there a quern without a foreign woman.' The fairer and more
accomplished of the Danish women of course underwent the fate of
Chryseis.
[Sidenote: Brian and the Danes, Gormflaith.]
Having in vain sought a refuge with the northern Irish, Sitric was forced
to submit to Brian, who reinstated him at Dublin as a tributary king.
Sitric's mother, Gormflaith, or Kormlada, was sister to Maelmordha, King
of Leinster, and her husband, King Olaf, having been dead many years, she
was free to marry Brian, which she did soon after, while Brian's daughter
married Sitric. Wielding thus the whole force of southern Ireland, Brian
called upon Malachi to acknowledge his supremacy. The King of Ireland
sought aid in vain from his kinsmen, the northern Hy Neill, whose king
Aedh, or Hugh, sarcastically remarked that when his clan had held the
chief kingship they had known how to defend their own. No help coming
from Connaught either, Malachi was forced to submit to Brian's power, and
though no formal cession took place the King of Ireland quietly subsided
into King of Meath.
[Sidenote: Brian, King of all Ireland, 1002.]
Brian was henceforth reckoned as monarch of Ireland. He invaded Connaught
with a flotilla on the Shannon and an army marching on land, and the
chiefs of the western province were glad to give hostages. The Ulster
potentates falling out among themselves, the north also was easily
subdued, and Brian became the actual lord paramount of Ireland. After
this he made a tour round the island, starting from the Shannon and
marching through Roscommon and over the Curlew mountains into Sligo.
Hugging the coast by Ballyshannon to Donegal, he crossed Barnesmore Gap
into Tyrone, and then passing the Foyle, near Lifford, he went through
Londonderry, Antrim, Down, and Louth, to the neighbourhood of Kells. In a
previous expedition he had visited Armagh and laid twenty ounces of gold
on the altar. A fleet, manned by the Danes of Dublin, Limerick, and
Waterford, seems to have circumnavigated Ireland while he was making the
circuit by land.
[Sidenote: Brian's supremacy a loose one.]
[Sidenote: Gormflaith's intrigues.]
The supremacy of Brian was no doubt an extremely loose one. He had made
no real impression on the northern tribes, and they only waited a
favourable opportunity to cast off the nominal yet galling yoke. But for
about seven years there seems to have been no serious attempt against
him, and he was able to turn his attention to the building of churches
and bridges. It was during this period that a lone woman is said to have
walked unmolested from the Bloody Foreland to Glandore with a gold ring
at the end of a wand. Peace, however, there was not; for Brian was
engaged in at least two warlike expeditions to Ulster, and there was a
fair amount of murder and private war among the minor chiefs. Brian had
repudiated Gormflaith, Maelmordha's sister and Sitric's mother, and
probably not without good reason, for her moral character was by no means
on a par with her beauty and talents, since she had been married
successively to Olaf Cuaran and to Malachi II., and had been repudiated
by both. 'She was,' says the Saga, 'the fairest of all women, and best
gifted in everything that was not in her power, but it was the talk of
men that she did all things ill over which she had any power.' Brian
afterwards married a daughter of the King of Connaught, and when she
died, Gormflaith may have sought to be reinstated. At all events she was
at Kincora when her brother arrived, bringing with him the tribute of
Leinster. Her taunts, and a quarrel which he had with Murrough, Brian's
eldest son, provoked Maelmordha to leave Kincora in anger, and to raise
the standard of revolt. 'Gormflaith,' says the Saga, 'was so grim
against King Brian after their parting, that she would gladly have him
dead, and egged on her son Sitric very much to kill him.' Sitric readily
agreed to Maelmordha's proposal, and so did the northern Hy Neill, who
had never been really conquered, and who at once invaded Meath. After a
gallant struggle against Leinster and Ulster, Malachi was overpowered,
and called upon Brian for help. The King of Ireland, to whom the men of
Connaught remained faithful, accordingly ravaged the country between his
own district and Dublin, but was obliged to retire from before its walls
for want of provisions.[20]
[Sidenote: Alliance of Sitric and Gormflaith against Brian.]
Sitric and Gormflaith made use of the breathing space allowed them to
organise a powerful confederacy against Brian. Sitric himself went to
Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, who, after many refusals, at last agreed to join,
on condition of receiving the Crown of Ireland and Gormflaith's land.
'All his men,' says the Saga, 'besought Earl Sigurd not to go into the
war, but it was all to no good.' Gormflaith was well pleased at the
prospect before her, and advised large preparations for the inevitable
struggle.
[Sidenote: Sitric's allies. Sigurd. Brodir.]
Sigurd was nominally a Christian, but he reposed his chief trust in the
raven banner which his mother had woven with mighty spells; and many
Scandinavian warriors were still fanatically attached to Thor and Woden.
The Vikings, Ospak and Brodir, were lying off Man, and to them Sitric
next addressed himself in person. The Norsemen do not seem to have
insisted on youth in their wives, for Brodir was induced to join by the
same promises which had been made to Sigurd, and Gormflaith's first
husband had been dead thirty-three years. 'Brodir,' says the Icelandic
account, 'had been a Christian man and a mass deacon, but he had thrown
off his faith and become God's dastard, and now worshipped heathen
fiends, and was of all men most skilled in sorcery. He had the coat of
mail on which no steel would bite. He was both tall and strong, and had
such long locks that he tucked them under his belt. His hair was
black.'[21]
[Sidenote: Conflict between Christianity and Paganism.]
Ospak, who had leanings towards Christianity, refused to attack Brian;
indeed, he went over to him, and, according to Norse accounts, was
baptized. An immense force was, however, gradually collected, and
Scandinavian contingents are mentioned from Northumbria, under two Earls,
from Norway, from Orkney and Shetland, Skye and Lewis, from Cantire,
Argyle, and Galloway. Welshmen from Pembrokeshire and Cornwall,
Frenchmen, that is in all probability French Normans, under Karl and
Ebric, and some Flemings under a knight are also spoken of. Romans even
are mentioned, but this may be mere magniloquence. To oppose this motley
host Brian had the men of Munster, Meath, and South-eastern Connaught,
and the Danes of Limerick and probably of Waterford. He may have had the
numerical superiority, for Sigurd told his mother, the wise woman, that
he expected to be outnumbered seven to one. The eve of the battle of
Clontarf was signalised, according to the annalists, by various
supernatural occurrences. A messenger from St. Senanus appeared to the
king, and prophesied his death as the penalty due for violating the
sanctuary on Scattery Island thirty-seven years before. The interests and
prejudices of monastic chroniclers may account for this story, but it is
not so easy to explain the firm belief in pagan deities, in fairies, in
demons, and in satyrs shown by two independent historians. It is evident
that the oracles of heathenism were not supposed to have been dumb more
than 500 years after the death of Patrick, and 400 after that of Columba.
Nor was there any lack of marvels on the Danish side. Brodir, who had
already been plagued by showers of boiling blood, by supernatural noises,
by deaths among his men, and by ravens with beaks and claws of iron,
'tried by sorcery how the fight would go. And the answer ran, that if the
fight were on Good Friday, King Brian would fall but win the day; but if
they fought before, they would all fall that were against him.'[22]
[Sidenote: Battle of Clontarf, 1014.]
The battle was fought upon the fateful Friday, and Brian refused to take
part in it because the day was holy. He remained in the rear protected by
a ring of soldiers with their shields locked together. It was observed
that the successive bearers of the raven banner all fell, and Hrafn the
red, who was called by Sigurd to the dangerous duty, refused, saying,
'Bear thine own devil thyself.' ''Tis fittest that the beggar should bear
the bag,' answered the Earl, and put the banner under his cloak. Sigurd
fell, and Sitric had to retire before Ospak. Hrafn the red flew to a
river into which the devils wished to drag him, but a spoken spell
dispersed them. 'Thy dog,' he cried, 'Apostle Peter, hath run twice to
Rome, and he would run the third time if thou gavest him leave.' Of
Thorstein we are told that he interrupted his flight to tie his shoe.
Kerthialfad, Brian's foster son, asked him why he lingered at such a
critical moment, and the Northman returned an answer worthy of Sparta's
best days--'Because I can't get home to-night, since I am at home out in
Iceland.'[23]
[Sidenote: Death of Brian.]
In the moment of victory Brian was left behind, and Brodir, who had
lingered for a time in a thicket, broke through the line of shields and
hewed off the king's head. The Viking was taken and disembowelled alive,
according to the Norse account, but the Irish writers say that he fell by
Brian's hands. Sigurd being already dead, Gormflaith lost all chance of a
royal husband, and it is only further recorded of her that she died
sixteen years later. Many other chiefs fell, including Maelmordha, and
Murrough, Brian's favourite son, and the fight was followed, as it had
been heralded, by many signs and wonders both in the Celtic and in the
Scandinavian world.
[Sidenote: The Danes were not expelled.]
The popular delusion that the battle of Clontarf caused the expulsion of
the Danes from Ireland must be pretty well dissipated by this time.
Sitric remained with reserves within the fortress, and thus saved his
kingdom; nor do the annalists cease to make frequent mention of the
foreigners. But the defeat was great, and may have had considerable
influence in deciding those who were already hovering between Woden and
Jesus. Fourteen years after Clontarf we find Sitric going to Rome, and
his son Olaf was killed in England when attempting the same pilgrimage.
These facts lend some countenance to the legend that Sitric founded
Christ Church in 1038; for the Roman court well knew how to impress the
rude northern warriors, and to profit in various ways by their simple
faith. We are told that Flosi the Icelander went to Rome to cleanse
himself from the stain of blood-guiltiness, 'where,' says the Njal-Saga,
'he gat so great honour that he took absolution from the Pope himself,
and for that he gave a great sum of money.'
[Sidenote: But they soon accepted Christianity.]
Without actually amalgamating, the Danes seem to have drawn gradually
closer to the native Irish. A royal heir of Ulster received the name of
Ragnal less than half a century after Clontarf, and in 1121 a bishop
seems to have been temporarily appointed at Dublin by the joint election
of Irish and Danes. But quarrels were frequent even after the Danes had
become fully Christianised; and when the men of Munster invaded Fingal in
1133, they burned the church of Lusk when it was full of people and
treasures. Nor did fresh invasions quite cease, for Magnus, King of
Norway, made two expeditions to Ireland, in the latter of which, in 1103,
he lost his life. The separate history of the Irish Ostmen was drawing to
a close, even at the date of the Anglo-Norman invasion; but they have
left indelible traces upon the map of Ireland and on the traditional lore
of her people.
[Sidenote: The Danes were traders.]
Giraldus informs us that the Scandinavians who settled at Dublin,
Waterford, and Limerick, came under pretence of peaceful trading. The
Irish, he says, were prevented by their innate sloth from going down to
the sea in ships, but were ready to welcome those who would trade for
them, and thus allowed the fierce strangers to get a strong footing.
However this may be, it is certain that the Irish are deficient in
maritime enterprise, and equally certain that the Northmen had a constant
eye to trade as well as to war and plunder. Unerring instinct pointed out
the best stations, and on the sites thus chosen the chief cities of
Ireland were reared. The Kaupmannaeyjar or merchant isles, probably
those now called the Copelands, may have been a rendezvous for passing
vessels. Arabic coins, of which more than 20,000 pieces from more than
1,000 different dies are preserved at Stockholm, have been found in
Ireland, and the Irish Northmen certainly had a coinage of their own,
when the native princes had none. Pieces have been found which were
struck by, or at least for, a Scandinavian king of Dublin as early as the
ninth century, and all coins minted in Ireland up to the Anglo-Norman
invasion were perhaps of similar origin. Many such pieces have been found
in the Isle of Man, and some as far off as Denmark.[24]
[Sidenote: They were superior to the Irish in peaceful arts.]
The Irish annalists constantly dwell on the superiority of Norse arms and
armour as a reason for their success in war. Ringmail in particular shows
a high degree of manufacturing skill, and they wore it at Clontarf both
in brass and iron, while none is mentioned in the pompous Irish catalogue
of the arms worn by Brian's troops. Nor was this costly harness worn only
by the Scandinavian leaders, for they are said to have had 1,000 coats of
mail in that one battle. Danish swords which have survived from Brian's
days are of superior workmanship to Irish blades of the same date; and
the Northmen had perhaps a superiority in bows also, though on this point
the annalists are less explicit. The turgid verbosity of these writers
makes it doubtful whether the Danes used poisoned arrows, but no such
thing is mentioned in the Saga.
[Sidenote: They built the first cities. Dublin, Waterford.]
The flotillas which Brian maintained on inland waters, and the sea-going
vessels which attended his army in the North, were all manned by Danes,
and a mercantile marine has in every age been the best nursery of naval
power. No doubt the Irish felt the advantage of having commercial
emporiums on their coast, as other shore-going people profited by Greek
and Phoenician colonies. The analogy might easily be carried further,
and Dublin and Waterford might be represented as standing between the
Anglo-Normans and Celts of Ireland, as Massilia stood between the Romans
and Celts of Gaul. It is at all events clear that the Scandinavians
built the first cities and coined the first money in Ireland.
[Sidenote: Brian's monarchy soon fell to pieces.]
High as Brian towers above other mediæval Celts--one annalist calls him
the Charlemagne of North-western Europe--it cannot be said that he laid
the foundation of an Irish monarchy. He lived to be eighty, yet none of
his work lasted. Malachi received the honorary office of chief king, from
which his rival's personal prowess had driven him, and the years of his
reign are counted by some annalists without noticing Brian's
intervention, as in the modern case of Charles II. Brian was indeed
doubly a usurper, in wresting Munster from the race of Eoghan, and in
wresting Ireland from the race of Nial, in whom royalty had been vested
for centuries. With all his ceaseless exertions he was little more than a
levier of black mail, who left intact the internal government of weaker
princes. Borumha, or the tribute-taker, if that be really the meaning of
the term, describes his position with sufficient accuracy. When he died
Donnchadh, or Donogh, his son by Gormflaith, became head of his tribe,
and claimed the succession to the Irish monarchy. The Eugenians
repudiated his claim, alleging that their turn, which had been wrongfully
passed over, had now come to reign in Munster. Not satisfied with this,
their two principal chiefs fell out among themselves. The Ossorian
followed suit, and thus Brian's creation crumbled at once into dust.
More than 150 years elapsed between the battle of Clontarf and the
landing of the first Anglo-Norman, and they were years of almost constant
war and confusion. Had Ireland been left to herself a prince might in
time have arisen strong enough to establish such a monarchy as Brian
failed to found. The Danes had ceased to be a seriously disturbing
influence, but there is no evidence that any such process of
consolidation was going on, and a feudal system, which had lost none of
its vigour, was at last confronted with a tribal system which had lost
none of its inherent weakness.
[Sidenote: Progress of Christianity.]
It is impossible to fix the exact date when Christianity began to make
head against the Irish Ostmen. When St. Anschar obtained from the Swedes
a place for his God in the northern pantheon, and when Guthrum and his
officers submitted to baptism in Wessex, a foundation had been laid for a
general Scandinavian conversion. But neither Norway nor the Norwegian
colonies in Iceland, Shetland, Orkney, or the Hebrides, yielded so soon.
Irish anchorites spent some time in Iceland about 795, and when Ingulf
and Lief landed in 870 they found that Irish priests had lately been
there, and had left behind them books, bells, and croziers. The second
batch had probably fled from Ingulf's congeners in Ireland. Olaf
Trygvesson, the first Christian king of Norway, was educated at
Athelstane's court, and the nominal conversion of Norway may date from
the year of his accession. Five years later, in 1000, Christianity was
established by law in Iceland. Removed as she was from English or Roman
influences, Ireland remained a stronghold of paganism after the Danes of
England had been generally converted; and the Irish being on the whole
weaker in war, were scarcely in a position to prove that Woden and Thor
had nothing to say for themselves. Olaf Cuaran was baptized in England.
It is clear that the Irish Danes remained generally pagan throughout the
tenth century, and that the confederacy which failed at Clontarf had to a
great extent been formed against Christianity. The story of Ospak and
Brodir shows that some of the fiercest Danes were beginning to waver, the
question at issue being the relative power of two deities, rather than
the relative merit of two systems. After Clontarf Woden seems to have
been looked upon as beaten. He had been tried and found wanting, like
Baal on Mount Carmel, and the defeated party went over to the stronger
side.
[Sidenote: The Danish church of Dublin.]
The connection of the Dublin Danes with their brethren in England had
long been very close, and it was to Canterbury and Rome rather than to
Armagh that they naturally turned. Sitric and Canute were perhaps in the
Eternal City together; their visit was at least almost simultaneous, and
we cannot doubt that every means were taken to prejudice the powerful
neophyte against the pretensions of St. Patrick's successor. An Ostman
named Dunan or Donat is reckoned the first Bishop of Dublin, and is
credited with the foundation of Christ Church. A tradition which may be
true, but which is not supported by contemporary evidence, makes Sitric
the joint founder. From an expression in the celebrated letter of the
Dublin burgesses to Archbishop Ralph d'Eures it may be fairly inferred
that Donat had his succession from Canterbury, and he certainly
corresponded with Lanfranc on the subject of infant baptism. He was
succeeded by Patrick or Gillapatrick, an Ostman, who was consecrated by
Lanfranc in St. Paul's at the instance of Godred Crovan, king of Man, who
was then supreme at Dublin. Godred's reign is rather shadowy, but
Lanfranc's letter to him has always been considered genuine, and it
addresses him as king not only of Dublin, but of Ireland. Lanfranc also
wrote to Tirlogh, who had acquired the supreme kingship, like his father,
Brian Borumha. It is not unlikely that the curious poem which represents
St. Patrick as blessing Dublin and its Danish inhabitants, and cursing
the Hy Neill, was forged at this time, partly in the Munster interest and
partly to prove that Dublin was not subject to Armagh.[25]
[Sidenote: Dublin acknowledges Canterbury and repudiates Armagh.]
In his letters Lanfranc insists much upon Catholic unity. According to
modern ideas, the heaviest of the charges which he brings against the
Irish Church is the levity with which they regarded the marriage tie. It
appears that men even exchanged wives. Bishop Patrick promised
ecclesiastical fealty to the Archbishop of Canterbury, as Primate of the
British Isles. Lanfranc had obeyed the order of his old pupil Alexander
II., who was prompted by the deacon Hildebrand, and had gone to Rome to
receive his pall. But in his dealings with Dublin he acted independently,
and he was ready to give advice to Irish prelates, though without
claiming direct jurisdiction over them. In doctrinal matters he was an
ally of Rome. Himself an Italian, he espoused the dogma of
transubstantiation in opposition to the Irishman Erigena, and the
Frenchman Berengarius; and on the great question of clerical celibacy he
was a follower, though not an extreme one, of the uncompromising
Hildebrand. The ever-watchful Roman Court probably espied the germ of a
Western patriarchate, and was thus moved to annex Armagh as a
counterpoise to the dangerous primacy claimed under a grant of Gregory
the Great by the successors of Augustine. Gregory VII., in addressing the
kings, nobles, and prelates of Ireland, took care to claim absolute
sovereignty by divine right; and here he ran little risk of such a rebuff
as William the Conqueror administered.[26]
[Sidenote: Lanfranc and Anselm.]
Patrick's successor was Donat O'Haingly, an Irishman, but a Benedictine
monk of Canterbury, who was consecrated by Lanfranc, to whom he had been
recommended by King Tirlogh. He was succeeded by his nephew Samuel, a
Benedictine of St. Albans, who was consecrated by Anselm. That great
archbishop was not altogether pleased with his Irish brother, whom he
chid for alienating vestments bestowed on the Church of Dublin by
Lanfranc, and for having the cross borne before him, although he had
never received the pall. A further element of confusion was introduced,
probably in 1118, by the Irish synod of Rathbreasil, which declared
Dublin to be in the diocese of Glendalough; and it seems that the Irish
inhabitants submitted, while those of Danish origin refused to do so.
[Sidenote: Ralph of Canterbury consecrates Gregory, who receives the pall
from Pope Eugenius.]
On the death of Bishop Samuel O'Haingly, the Irish annals inform us that
'Cellach, comarb of Patrick, assumed the bishopric of Ath-cliath,[27] by
the choice of foreigners and Gaeidhil.' If there be any truth in this it
was a bold stroke on the part of Armagh to exercise jurisdiction in
Dublin, and was probably the act of the Irish as opposed to the Danish
party. In the same year, or the next, the burgesses and clergy of Dublin
wrote to Ralph of Canterbury, begging him to consecrate their nominee
Gregory. They reminded him that their bishops originally derived their
dignity from his predecessors, and that the bishops of Ireland were very
jealous of them; and especially he of Armagh, because they preferred the
rule of Canterbury. Ralph consecrated Gregory, and he governed the see
for forty years. To his lot it fell to receive the pall sent by Pope
Eugenius, who was too politic to insist on a visit to Rome. For the
moment it was enough to assert the necessity of the pallium and its papal
origin. The legate Paparo ignored the pretensions of the bishop whose
church in the mountains had the name of city, and divided the diocese
into two parts: the bishop with the Cantuarian succession being made
Metropolitan, and the Irishman at Glendalough being reduced to the
position of a suffragan. St. Lawrence O'Toole, who was the second
Archbishop of Dublin, derived his succession from Armagh, and the
Scandinavian Church of Dublin ceases to have a separate history.
[Sidenote: See of Waterford.]
Of far less importance than that of Dublin, the early history of the see
of Waterford is proportionately obscure. Malchus, a Benedictine of
Winchester, who seems to have been the first bishop elected by the
Ostmen, was consecrated by Anselm; to whom he promised canonical
obedience, and with whom he corresponded. It seems likely that he was
afterwards translated to Lismore, or he may have held both sees together,
as they were held in after years. It is probable that the great Malachi
of Armagh studied under him. Maelisa O'Hanmire appears next in
succession, but we know nothing of him. He may have represented a
reaction against the dominion of Canterbury. The next name preserved is
that of Tosti, who was, of course, a Dane, and who assisted in the
establishment of the papal or Eugenian constitution. Tosti's successor,
Augustine O'Sealbhaigh, was practically appointed by Henry II., and he
attended the Lateran Council in 1179.
[Sidenote: See of Limerick. Gillebert.]
The tradition which connects St. Patrick with Limerick is of the vaguest
kind: practically, the first recorded bishop is Gillebert. He was an
Irishman. Cellach of Armagh acted with the Bishop of Limerick on this
occasion; but while both were anxious to parcel out Ireland into
dioceses, neither ventured to interfere with Dublin, which was under the
powerful patronage of Canterbury. Gillebert resigned both the legatine
authority and his own bishopric before his death, which took place in or
about 1145. His successor Patrick, having been elected by the Ostmen,
was consecrated in England by Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, to whom
he promised canonical obedience. The three following bishops, Harold,
Turgeis, and Brictius, who may be Elbric or Eric, were doubtless all
Ostmen. Very little is known of them, except that the last named attended
the Lateran Council in 1179 and 1180.
[Sidenote: See of Cork.]
Cork was often plundered by the Northmen, and they settled there
permanently early in the eleventh century. But they found themselves
confronted by a strong monastic organisation, under the successor of St.
Finbar, whereas at Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick the field had been
clear. Around the abbey a native town had sprung up, which was strong
enough to maintain itself by the side of the Scandinavian garrison. Once,
with the help of a force from Carbery, they defeated a confederacy of
Danes belonging to Cork, Waterford, and Wexford. The Ostmen were in quiet
possession of Cork for a period long preceding the Anglo-Norman invasion,
but they were probably content to take their Christianity from their
neighbours, for we do not find that any bishop of this see sought
consecration at Canterbury.[28]
FOOTNOTES:
[16] The account which Giraldus gives of Turgesius is funny, but
worthless.
[17] Reeves's Adamnan, p. 332 n.
[18] _Wars of the Gaedhill with the Gaill_, chap. xxxvi.
[19] _Wars of the Gaedhill with the Gaill_, chap. xl.
[20] The quotations are from _Burnt Njal_, chap. cliii.
[21] _Burnt Njal_, chap. cliv.
[22] _Ibid._, chap. clvi. _Wars of the Gaedhill with the Gaill_, chaps.
xcviii. and xcix. _Annals of Lough Cé_, pp. 7-13.
[23] _Burnt Njal_, chap. clvi.
[24] Many details about the Hiberno-Norse coins are to be found in
Worsaae.
[25] _Book of Rights_, pp. 225 _sqq._, and O'Donovan's preface.
[26] See Hook's _Lives of Lanfranc, Anselm, and Ralph d'Eures_.
Translations of the letters mentioned in the text may be found in King's
Primer of the Irish Church; most of the originals are printed in Ussher's
_Sylloge_.
[27] The Irish always called Dublin Ath-cliath, or the Ford of Hurdles.
[28] The great mine of knowledge about the Irish Scandinavians is Todd's
_Wars of the Gaedhill with the Gaill_, in the Record series. I have also
used Dasent's _Story of Burnt Njal_, and Anderson's _Orkneyinga Saga_.
Haliday's _Scandinavian Kingdom of Dublin_, edited by Mr. J. P.
Prendergast, is a good modern book. Worsaae's _Danes and Norwegians_ is
said to be somewhat fanciful, but it contains information not readily
accessible elsewhere.
[Illustration: IRELAND IN 1172.
_The principal Danish Settlements are underlined Blue._]