Names for the Vikings in Irish Annals Colmán Etchingham Our
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NAMES FOR THE VIKINGS IN IRISH ANNALS Colmán Etchingham Our understanding of the history of the Viking Age is seriously impaired by the fact that we have no contemporary documentary sources from the Scandinavian homelands. The sagas of the central and later middle ages are a most uncertain guide to ninth- and tenth-century history. Otherwise, the principal historical perspective on the Vikings is that of others: the chroniclers of countries in which they raided, traded, warred and settled. Among those chroniclers are the Irish, whose annals for the ninth and tenth centuries are in several respects uniquely informative about Viking activity. This paper is concerned with just one issue: the range of differ- ent names by which the Irish annals identify the Vikings. Comparatively little attention has been paid to this nomenclature and patterns of usage merit closer attention than they have generally received. These patterns display interesting features, including the possibilities that growing famil- iarity with the Vikings modified the annalists’ vocabulary, and that the annalists were influenced by European chronicling usage. There is also the possibility that certain names reflect more or less informed distinc- tions, recorded by the Irish, between different Viking elements. It will be argued that some of these names may be markers of ethnic or regional sub-groups of Vikings. They may tell us something of the Scandinavian provenance of such sub-groups. If this is correct, then Irish annals can shed genuine glimmers of light on the history and political geography of Viking-age Scandinavia. When Vikings first appear in the Irish annals of the mid-790s, they are described as heathens. The terms used are Latin gentiles and Old Irish genti, denoting Gentiles in the Jewish sense and, by extension, pagans. In 794.7, the Annals of Ulster (hereafter AU) report uastatio omnium inso- larum Britanniae a gentilibus (“devastation of all the islands of Britain by pagans”).1 In the following year, the same chronicle records (795.3) loscadh Rechrainne ó geinntib 7 scrín doscradh 7 do lomradh (“burning of 1 References here and hereafter are to year and numbered paragraph of Seán Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill, ed., The Annals of Ulster (to A.D. 1131) (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1983). 24 colmán etchingham Rechru (Lambay, County Dublin, or Rathlin, County Antrim) by pagans and a shrine was broken and stripped”).2 Throughout the ensuing period of sporadic raiding, up to the later 820s, in the contemporary usage of AU, Vikings are described only as ‘pagans’. In the later 820s, as the frequency of raiding begins to increase, a new usage—Gaill ‘Foreigners’—is first attested, in AU (827.3): orggan Luscan do genntib 7 a loscadh, 7 innreadh Cíannachta co rici Óchtar nUgan, 7 organ Gall ind airthir olchena (“plun- der of Lusk by pagans and its burning, and raiding of Cíanachta as far as Uachtar nUgan, and plunder of the Foreigners of the east also”). ‘Foreigners’ (Gaill) comes to prevail as the standard designation of Vikings, both raiders and settlers, in the ninth and tenth centuries and, indeed, right up to the mid-twelfth century.3 Accordingly, the context in which this term is first used of them, in 827, is of great interest. ‘Plunder of the Foreigners of the east’ means Vikings were victims of a raid, not perpetrators. It is the first event of this kind recorded in the annals. Of the places mentioned in this composite report of three distinct events, Lusk is in north County Dublin. While Uachtar nUgan is unidentified, Cíanachta in this context denotes the terrain between the rivers Liffey and Boyne (or beyond), to the north of Dublin. Airther “the east” here can hardly refer to the eastern Airgialla territory of County Armagh so designated, where there is no evidence of a Viking presence at any date and a base at so early a date is altogether implausible. However, Vikings oconaibh insibh airthir Breg (“at the islands of eastern Brega”) are noticed a generation later, in 852 (AU 852.8; cf. AU 784.8). This can only refer to the islands of the north County Dublin coast, extending from St Patrick’s Island, off Skerries, south to Lambay and Ireland’s Eye (the latter three all Norse place-names, incidentally). Given the locations of the other identifiable places in AU 827.3, the airther mentioned there may well also refer to eastern Brega, the coastal region to the north of Dublin. If so, this would indicate that Vikings had a base of some kind on islands or on the adjacent mainland 2 For re-interpretation of this record, see Claire Downham, “An imaginary Viking raid on Skye in 795?”, Scottish Gaelic Studies 20 (2000): 192–6, and, further, my forthcoming book on Viking raiding, Viking raiders and Irish reporters: Viking attacks on Irish churches and their chroniclers, AD 795 to 1015. 3 Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Ireland before the Normans (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1972), 96, aptly summarised trends in the use of the term ‘pagans’, although it is not, strictly speaking, true that genti was entirely abandoned after 860, even in AU, until the early tenth century. After the 920s, ‘pagans’ occurs in AU only in 932, 942, 943 and 975; see David Dumville, The churches of north Britain in the First Viking Age: Fifth Whithorn Lecture (Whithorn, 1997), 37, n. 111; Colmán Etchingham, “North Wales, Ireland and the Isles: the Insular Viking zone”, Peritia 15 (2001): 145–187, at 176..