3. the Movement South and South-T7est to 9542 the British Isles
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Tbe Mopemcnt Soatb and Soath-Wett t0 954 zos which, helped by a civil war instigated by the priest-king of Mun- srer, he spread his elbows to good effect throughout Ulster. By the capture of Armagh, at once a chief town of the north, the most important ecclesiastical centre oflreland, and one ofthe holy places ofwestern Christendom, he acquired wealth, power, reputation, and his place in Irish tradition. To him and his kind is attributed the esta^blishment of harbour-strongholds at Anagassan, Dublin, Wex- ford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, with important consequences 3. The Movement South and South-T7est for the subsequent history of both Norse and Irish Ireland. He is to 9542 the British Isles, the Frankish Empire, the Mediterranean .r Io ror,r-ow rN DETATL THE vrKrNG oNSLAUGHT oN Europe whether nation b1' nationr decade, ninth-century r -decade.by or under thl fou.^ generally accepted heads of individual raids for plunder, expeditlons ol political significance and intention, colonial venture; seeking new land for settlement, and enterprises whose main concern was mercantile and commercial, would be a bis task-and in terms of this book a distorting one' It must be en"ough to trace it in general though one hopes indicative outline' We biein with Ireland in the 83os. thJ Irish coast had suffered sporadically from Norwegian plunderers ever since the first raid on Lambeyin Tg5rand sometimes ihe raiders had penetrated far inland. These were painful depreda- tionsrl but bearable, and left the character of country.and-people unchaneed. But nothing could ever be the same again after the arrival6f the famous Tuigeis from Norway shortly before 84o' Our knowledge of him, unfortinately, is at once inflated and diminished bv the leEendary material associated wjth him several hundred years aiter his"death, when he had become a favourite receptacle for Christian.indignation and alarm. But we can accept that he held command of a"fleet, had ambitions and the energy to put them in irain, came to Ireland at the right moment' and intended a.pro- longed stay. We first hear of him in the north, where he is said to hav"e ass,rmed the overlordship of all the foreigners in Erin, after for 8zo: sea r And rhetorically recorded as such in the Annah of .ulsur 'The ro.*.J for,t, floohs offoreigners over Erin, so that nb haven, no landing-place, n'o stronqhold, no fort, no-crstle might be found, but it was submerged by waves ofvikings and pirates.' lrap 6. IRELAND AND THE rRrsH sEA zo1 A llistorl of tlte ltikitgt Thc Mopement South and Soutb-|,lett to 954 2oj reported to have intervened for gain in the civil war to the south of Unless Ireland was to be left to the Irish-an unthinkable pro- him; to have entered the Shannon and reached Lough Ree; the posidon for another thousand years-it was time for renewed sack of Clonmacnois and ClonGrt has been laid at his door, and the ioreign intervention. It was made by the Danes, and not out of love dispersal of their monks. Various of the Irish_are charged with for their brothers the Finngaill, to whom they immediately offered joining him, opportunists who reneged on_ Christi^anity and.as c. 85o their fleet put in to Carlingford Lough, on the ;Ihor'i war. In men trooped into heathen temples which belore Turgeis's southern edge of County Down; the following year they overran time had been monasteries, churches, and abbeys' Few things in the Norwegian base at Dublin, rnaking a big haul of treasure and viking history sound less likely. These were the Gall-Gaedhil, womenfolk. The Irish preferred the newcomers to the old, but with Forei[n Gaed or Foreign Irish, of whom the Irish complained that a plague on both their houses. In 852 the Norwegians mustered for wgie thoug:h the Foreigne.J*.re bad enough, the Foreign .Gae! revenge and attacked the Danish fleet in Carlingford. St. Patrick *o.ri.t Christian witness against Turgeis is unsparing for his favoured the Danes; a mere han1ful of Norwegians survived the desecration of holy places. Hlving .*p.ll".d the abbot ofArmagh, three-day slaughter. The Danes, prudently, rEwarded the saint he sat himself downln the abbey as its heathen high priest, and at with gold and silver; and the Irish, mistakenly, saw piery in the the altar of Clonmacnois his wiG Ota (Aud) chanted spells and Danes. Ifso, it aided them little and not long. In 853 the Norwegians oracles. Possibly this was the way Turgeis chose to Present himself made a re-entry into Ireland with a royal fleet under the command to his people as leader, sustainer ofsacrifices, andguarantor ofgood of Olaf (Amlaibh), son of the king of Norway (Lochlann), though ,.rroni, on the Norwegian model. More probably it is monkish which son of what king is hard to determine.'The Danes and Nor- invention. However, foith. comfort of the Christiin devout, there wegians, we are told, quickly recognized his authority and vari- had been an ancient prophecy that Gentiles, Foreigners, would come ous of the Irish paid him tribute, including wergeld for Turgeis. from across the sea io ionfound the Irishmen for a period ofseven Those Danes who had no stomach for a Norwegian master left years, and one of them would be abbot without Pater and credo, for England, whence they had probably come in 85o, and Olaf without lrish, too, but only a foreign tongue.z The seven years settled into Dublin. He then returned to Norwav for reasons which were evidently now up, forin 845 he was taken prisoner by Magl can only be guessed at, leaving his brother Ivar in charge in Ireland. Seachlainn, king ofMeith, arrd drowned in Lough Owel, Westmeath. ln 856-7 he returned to his Dublin kingdom and ruled it till 87r, A bad time iollowed for the Norwegians. By widespread raiding they still exacted a toll ofmisery and spoil, but a succession ofdeftats 1 He has often, indeed generally, been identified with Olaf the White of reputation. Icelandic sasa tradition. The identifcation is invitins but difficult, It rests in ihe field reduced their strength and smirched their "have mainly on tlie cir.umstance that each Ola[was said to conquered Dublin r The Gall-Gaedhil would grow to considerable importance by 85o, with tleir and its neighbouring territory at more or less the same time. Oiherwise their own social orsanization anl their own armies under their own leaders. They parentage is different, their wives are different, and their deaths are different. besan as a bo?v otlrishmen who renounced Christianity and thrcw in their By way of complication Olat-Amlaibh's brother Ivar-lmhar is sometimes been fostered lot"with the heathen Norse; but some are described as having equated with Ivar the Boneless (see p. zr9 below), no Norwegian but a no in Norse homes and so inducted into a Norse way of life. There can be prodigy among the Danes. It makes the best of a badjob to postulate con- doubt that a proportion ofthem were ofmixed Norse-Irish parentage, sharing fusion in the Icelandic Landndmab6k's account of Olaf the White, to hold the culture, and'blending (or muddling) the beliefs otViking and Celt. This tentatively to Olaf-Amlaibh, whether he was at some time nicknamed the them to mongreldom o[race, culture' religion, and political interest endeared White or not, and to recognize lvar-Imhar as his brother and a person dis- the Norwegians, against nobo?v. Durine the Ssos they lought battles against tinct from lvar the Boneles. lThe R"gtr"r-complex has now been ie-explored they the lrish, and igainst thc Norwe[ians and Iriih combined' Expectedly by A. P. Smyth, Scardinavian York and Dublin, l, rg71, II, rg78, and power declined after were earnest an? heartless mara,Iders' Their political Scandinauian Kings in the British lsles, 85o-80, rg77, who argues ingeniously for was a 86o. but thev continued to contribute to the miseries of Erin. There a military and dynastic presence and reality; and by R. McTurk, 'Ragnarr Scotland later, in prrrll.l gtoup of Gall-Gaedhil, Gall-Gael, Foreign Scots, in Lodbr6k in the British Isles', Proceedings of the Seuenth Viking Congress, Dublin, ballowa!, which received its name from them. t973, and reviews of Smyth, Saga-Book, t977 and r98o, who argues, as I 21. H. Tbdd, Tbe War of tbe Gaedbil oitb tbe Gael,t876,p. tr. think, convincingly against.) 2o8 A Historl of tbe Vikingt was again recalled to Norw-ay-1nd died in battle there' It when he "" VTKING RAIDS a restless"reign, marked by shifting P9t-t.Y was -alliances, -yltt' 2 ON t".*inst in Irela# which spared neitheithe homes of the living ENGLAND,793-860 ;;ii;?t;t; oith. d."d, in the period 865-7o by profitable \, "nd Welsh in Scotlancl' exoeditiJns against the Picts and Strathclyde I n-Gl i"It i"tJ i?*erick supported his brothet oltf in Ircland' and in "f Britannie' 8zr succeeded him as ,ri'Nord,on*rum Totiut Hibernie et to ;hi;h;;;;.tts that the Dublin kingdom had clairns -authority ';;;ffi;.gi.nt *ho had settled"in the north-west ofEngland' iit","riit-Uo#* .igh? ."pfd" Ivar's quarrels with^the Danes of neigh- n.irr1 *hi.h were offerei as the justification for the attack ii"Bfi-;"'Vl by Halfdan (we think) and the Danes of that ""ti"*a"*. riir.lifril.d and cbst Halfdan his life up in Strangford principal Norse actors norv offstage Ireland grew 1""?ft--w;,tt'.fr.