Ireland 837
The northern kingdom of Tara and the southern kingdom of Munster are at war.
As these great high kings clash, petty kings rapidly declare allegiance to one, the other, or none.
Hearing tales of chaos, Thorgest the Sea King arrives with 120 longships. Two years later
he sacks the monastery of Armagh.
Defiling the altar, Saint Patrick
himself had installed and ordained. The pagans scatter the Saint's holy relics in the streets,
butchers scholars, and destroy the monastery's most precious treasure: Their books.
Perhaps most shocking, this pagan lord declares himself the new abbot, and
begins collecting the monastery's rents.
But the heathen is not satiated. In 841, Thorgest seizes a harbour. He builds walls and a port,
declaring himself king over all foreigners in Ireland, and he names this new city after its black pools:
Dublin
As the Danes plundered the remains of Charlemagne's Frankish Empire,
the Norwegians set their site on a different target: The British Isles
They began with seasonal raids on the coasts of England and Scotland
returning to Scandinavia with their wealth each winter
But they soon realized that these British islands warmed by passing currents, had a far more
temperate climate than Norway. They began to establish winter outposts, that turned into expeditionary bases in the spring
The first probing attacks hit Ireland in the early 830's
These were classic hit and run affairs ,attacking vulnerable targets,
like coastal monasteries, and disappearing before local troops could muster for combat
Ireland proved an attractive target. Through their trade networks the Scandinavians knew the island was rich in precious metals and stones
Irish craftsmen famously produced intricate gold silver and copper jewelry, as well as reliquaries and devotional objects
Local stones, such as emeralds, sapphires, and pearls, decorated these breathtaking objects
Indeed, despite the fractious nature of Irish politics, the island was in the midst of an early Medieval Renaissance
unlike the rest of Europe, abbots held spiritual power, rather than bishops and archbishops, and
monasteries served as political units much more like a town or city
They would have merchants and soldiers, sex workers and farmers. One monastery might even go to war with another and
this uniquely powerful institution,
allowed the Irish Church to develop into a center of learning
Irish monasteries produced and often reproduced vast
libraries of spiritual works as well as surviving Greek and Latin classics. The Irish students, monks and copyists
so revered these books that they fashioned covers out of gold, silver and jewels, meaning they were the first things
Vikings stole.
Initially the raiders tore these volumes apart for their valuables, and threw the pages into the sea.
But they soon learned that the Irish coveted these strange blocks of parchment.
Abbots were willing to pay fat ransoms for both these books, and the monks that produced them.
So soon, the raids turned from simple pillage operations to pillage- and capture-missions.
They ransomed high-value prisoners and sold the peasants into slavery. But Thorgest was different.
His raids were not simple harrying but river campaigns, striking deep into the country.
Dublin was developing into a permanent base for Viking activity, as well as the largest slave trade center in Western Europe.
And he was getting reinforcements as Frankish silver started to run dry, and the Frankish resistance stiffened,
Danish vikings increasingly showed up in Dublin, and to the horror of the Irish, Thorgest proved to be the rare
Scandinavian leader who could govern a coalition of both the Norwegians and Danes.
He began founding other cities: Cork, Wexford and Waterford.
In 844 he sailed to Limerick and raided the city, hoisting his wife up on an altar, where she could declare shamanistic
prophesies from Odin. He spoke of conquering all Ireland as a new Scandinavian kingdom, and
alarmingly, this display of power began to attract local converts.
Get-rich-quick raids and the riotous Viking lifestyle lured some Irish into their cultural fold, and
soon there was a generation of half Scandinavian, half Irish children, inhabiting the proto-city.
The high kings knew Thorgest had to be stopped.
They set aside their civil war, and concentrated on the Viking threat. Their main target: Thorgest himself.
With him removed, they reasoned, the Norse-Danish Alliance would fall apart, and
a year after the Limerick raid, the high king of Tara got lucky.
It's unknown how he captured Thorgest but history does remember his execution.
The high king bound his limbs, weighed him with stones, and threw him in a river.
Thorgest's death precipitated a stunning reversal:
Native Irish forces began pushing Viking territory back towards the coasts.
Dublin descended into violence. With the uniting figure of Thorgest removed ,war bands split by national affiliation in a civil war.
The Irish Vikings, semi-outsiders in this Scandinavian city, fought for whichever side promised the best deal.
On one side was the Norse Olaf the White, and on the other was the Danish Ivar the Boneless,
son of Ragnar Lothbrok.
But just as the two sides seemed destined to destroy each other, the leaders held a conference.
There was too much to lose, they agreed. True, without Thorgest,
there was no hope of turning Ireland into a Scandinavian state, but there was still money to be made.
Scandinavian cities in Ireland remained valuable trade centres, and good bases to gather Vikings for campaigns in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
Ivar and his brothers dreamed of rallying a great heathen army to attack the
Anglo-Saxons and if they succeeded in capturing territory there, the
agricultural lands of England and the trade center of Dublin could link up in a powerful North Sea empire, and
Olaf, for his part, set his sights on territory in Pictland, modern-day Scotland.
They partitioned to the city and began gathering forces and they were partially successful
The English Danelaw did become a Viking power center in the British Isles
Though as we mentioned in a different series, it was Haften and Guthrum, rather than Ivar, who realized that dream.
Indeed a later Sea King would briefly unite Dublin and Viking York under one rule.
But the Kingdom didn't outlive him. These campaigns against the
Anglo-Saxons and Picts doomed the Viking project in Ireland. Dublin experienced a chronic manpower shortage by the
870s, as new raiders from Scandinavia decided to chase opportunities in England and Scotland,
rather than reinforcing old conquests in Ireland. Because Vikings had no central control, there was no way to follow up success.
Attrition started to take a toll.
Dublin men that left to fight in England rarely returned, and bit by bit, the Irish reclaimed their lost ground.
In 980 the king of Meath defeated the Viking king Olaf the Red at the Hill of Tara,
killing his sons and forcing the pagan to, ironically,
flee to a monastery.
Viking Dublin endured but only as a minor ally, bartered between larger Irish factions.
Scandinavian power in Ireland was over.
It would fall to Brian Boru, king of Munster, to finally destroy the Scandinavians.
He turned Viking tactics against the invaders, using ships and shield walls to drive the pagans in Western Ireland into the sea.
But this victory came at a steep price. At the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, Beru
finally ended Viking Ireland, yet as he knelt in his tent praying for victory, a retreating Danish mercenary entered, and
butchered him with an axe. The king died
But his army won, freeing Ireland from pagan occupation, though
that's probably just legend. After all by this time, Ireland was not under foreign occupation
In fact, the Scandinavians in Ireland had largely assimilated.
These so-called "Vikings"
were christian, born in Ireland,
had Irish heritage, and lived in a Gaelic Norse hybrid society.
In fact, many men from "Viking" cities like Cork and Wexford, fought on Beru's side.
These were simply Irish kingdoms, fighting other Irish kingdoms.
But national myths are often built on legend, and
Beru's victory over the supposed foreign Vikings became a rallying point for Irish identity, that continues today. In fact
Beru's trademark instrument, the harp, became the symbol of Ireland.
Though Viking conquest in Ireland lasted a brief period, around 150 years, their presence
radically changed the island.
It linked Ireland into
Scandinavian trade networks, with Irish Goods and enslaved people,
travelling as far as Anatolia, while receiving a previously unknown products in return. And the island began showing up in Arab atlases.
In short, it made the world aware of Ireland, and opened Ireland to the world.
But there was a darker side to this trade: By founding Dublin,
Scandinavians had reintroduced slavery to Ireland, and made it socially acceptable, in a way it had not then when they arrived.
Slavery had previously existed in ancient Ireland, but Saint Patrick,
who had experienced the practice himself, labeled it sinful, and stamped it out through preachings and writing. But these new
Scandinavian lords had no qualms about keeping Irish thralls, and in time, the Irish began enslaving
Scandinavians as a way of turning the tables.
The trade would continue another two centuries, only declining when the Normans invaded both England and Ireland,
introducing feudalism in place of old slave systems.
So just to recap real quick, the Viking Normans ended the Viking slave system in Ireland.
Yeah, history is weird. So join us next time as we trek east to Baghdad,
Constantinople and the lands of the Rus.