ten or twelve thousand picked men, and which he divided into two divisions. One squadron of sixty ships entered the Liffey, while Turgeis himself with the other sailed up the Boyne. From these points small bands of invaders entered into the interior of the country, carrying their boats overland with them when necessary, spread here and there and made the first permanent Norse settlements in Ireland.
Irish History
And
The Fighting Irish
And
The Fighting Irish
( Ireland and the Viking Invasion )
Turgeis
confined his operations to the north. He pitched his headquarters at the southern extre-
mity of Lough Ree, near where Athlone now stands, and threw up earthworks along the upper courses of the Shannon and a line of forts across the country from Carlingford Bay to Connaught. He even got some support from the Irish and for a time it looked as if the whole northern portion of the island might speedily fall under his sway.
His design included the supplanting of Christianity by the heathenism of his own country. With that end in view he took possession, some years previously, of Armagh, Ireland's Holy City, which contained the staff which Christ himself was said to have given to St. Patrick, and where the Abbot, who was regarded as the spiritual head of Ireland resided. Turgeis drove away " the follower of St. Patrick " converted the church in to a pagan temple and made himself high priest of the new religion. As if that sacrilege was not sufficient to arouse the special anger of the Irish, he is said to have enthroned his wife Otta upon the high altar of the principal church at Clonmacnois, the next most Holy place in Ireland, situated on the eastern bank of the Shannon in the midst of the meadows. From that sacred seat Otta, who seems to have been a sibyl as well as a priestess, delivered oracles in magic strains to the people.
These things took place in or about the year 845, and for some years all the foreigners in Ireland recognised Turgeis as their sovereign, though it could hardly be said that he had founded a kingdom. His ablest opponent among the the native Chieftains was Niall, provincial King of Ulster. Shortly afterwards, or about the year 845, he was somehow taken prisoner by Maelsechlainn ( Malachy ) King of Meath, and drowned in Loch Owel, either as a criminal or by the miracles of the saints, or according to the legends, through a stratagem of Maelsechlainn's daughter who accompanied by 15 Irish warriors disguised as maidens, kept tryst with him, and 15 of his captains. After his death the Norsemen abandoned their settlements on Lough Ree, moved up the Shannon and fought their way along the rivers and lakes to the Sligo coast where a fleet had assembled to carry them home.
Thereafter the tide of victory turned for a while in favour of the Irish, and a new epoch began in the history of the Scandinavian invasion of Ireland. Hitherto the Vikings like their great leader Turgeis were all of Norwegian stock, but with a few Danes and Swedes among them. During the tenth and eleventh centuries, however, the Danes, a people of distinct origin, who at that time were ravaging the southern and western coasts of England, took the lead in Viking activities. They were better organised than the Norse and had a more centralised government, and they could always fall back on their kingdom in Northumbria, with its capital at York. They were jealous of the success which the Norwegians had met with in ireland and soon proceeded to deprive them of the fruits of their victories, so that it was not primarily owing to a desire to attack the Irish, but purely by accident that the Danes came to Ireland and made it the battleground on which to settle their differences with their cousins from Norway. In the words of the annalist ( 847 ) " They disturbed Ireland between them. " At first the Irish called all these northern raiders indiscriminately ' Genti ' " the heathen ' or Gaill " the strangers " or ' Lochlannaigh. ' Later however when Irish writers felt the need of making a clear distinction between the two waves of invasion, they either limited the name Lochlannaigh to the Norwegians, and applied the name Danair to the Danes, or more commonly, they called the Vikings of Norwegian descent white heathens, while those of Danish descent they called black heathens.
The year 847 marks the first sudden descent of the Danes " in seven score ships " upon the eastern shores of Ireland. They at once proceeded to attack the Norwegians and to contest the possession of the coast settlements with them. In that year the Norwegian Chieftain Earl Tomar was slain in the Battle of Sciath Nechtin. In 850 the Danes seized and plundered Dublin and in the following year they defeated the Norwegians decisively at Carlingford Lough. The battle was a fierce one and is said to have continued for three days and three nights. At first the Norwegians were successful, but finally the Danes, it is said by calling upon St. Patrick fro his help were victorious. After the battle they remebered their promise and sent a huge vat filled with silver and gold to the shrine of the Apostle. Interestingly the use of the terms " Black " and " whites " for the Danish and Norwegian warriors had no connection with the colour of their har or complextion. It is to be found only in the fact that the danes were clad in body armour. The Irish themselves fought in their ordinary dress and mantles except in combat of special danger when they donned breastplated and aprons of leather. They used light javelins for throwing and longer and stouter spears for thrusting. They also carried swords along with a shield of wicker work to defend the body with. The first of the Norwegian invaders likewise wore only a tunic of leather, but the Danes wore dark metal coats of mail, helmets and visors, and were partial to the battle-axe. As they were the first mail-clad warriors the Irish had ever seen, it is no wonder that they seemed to be ' dark blue ' or ' blue green ' as they called them. There are many references in the old irish chronicles and sagas to the mail-clad armour and battle- axes of the foreigners and to the black ships in which they came to Ireland. " For the bodies and skins and hearts of the bright champions of Munster were quickly pierced through the fine linen garments, and their very sharp blades took no effect. " This advantage which the Danes possessed helps to explain the success which they met with in the early years of their invasion. But the Irish soon learned in the hard school of experience how to imitate the superior weapons, armour and science of warfare of the enemy.
Maelsechlainn ( Malachy ) I, who was King of Ireland at the time, dispatched an embassy to the victors. Five thousand Norwegians with their King lay dead on the field. The messanger arrived just as the Danes were preparing their evening meal. Thay had their kettles sey up on stakes driven into the bodies of the slain and the corpses crackled with the heat. The Irish envoys expressed thier horror at the awful sight and reproached the Danes for their barbarity, but the Danes replied that the Norwegians would have treated them in the same manner had they won the battle. The next year ( 852 ) the Norwegians rallied, and a new warlord arrived to take command over them. This was Olafr enn hviti, " Olaf the White " as he is known in Icelandic history, or Amhlaobh in the Irish records, a man of royal descent and belonging to the same race as the famous Turgeis. In the following year
( 853 ) he and his countryman Ivar assumed joint Kingship over the foreigners in Ireland and set up their capital at Dublin. From there the Norwegians gradually gained ground and established vassal states and a string of trading posts and stations for their fleets along the coast. Many of these settlements bear Scandinavian names from fiords, Strangford and Carlingford, in the north and Wexford and Waterford in the south for example. The last of these towns was originally called Port Lairge ( Portlaw ) by the Irish but the foreigners renamed it Vedrafiordhr,
" Weatherhaven. "
His design included the supplanting of Christianity by the heathenism of his own country. With that end in view he took possession, some years previously, of Armagh, Ireland's Holy City, which contained the staff which Christ himself was said to have given to St. Patrick, and where the Abbot, who was regarded as the spiritual head of Ireland resided. Turgeis drove away " the follower of St. Patrick " converted the church in to a pagan temple and made himself high priest of the new religion. As if that sacrilege was not sufficient to arouse the special anger of the Irish, he is said to have enthroned his wife Otta upon the high altar of the principal church at Clonmacnois, the next most Holy place in Ireland, situated on the eastern bank of the Shannon in the midst of the meadows. From that sacred seat Otta, who seems to have been a sibyl as well as a priestess, delivered oracles in magic strains to the people.
These things took place in or about the year 845, and for some years all the foreigners in Ireland recognised Turgeis as their sovereign, though it could hardly be said that he had founded a kingdom. His ablest opponent among the the native Chieftains was Niall, provincial King of Ulster. Shortly afterwards, or about the year 845, he was somehow taken prisoner by Maelsechlainn ( Malachy ) King of Meath, and drowned in Loch Owel, either as a criminal or by the miracles of the saints, or according to the legends, through a stratagem of Maelsechlainn's daughter who accompanied by 15 Irish warriors disguised as maidens, kept tryst with him, and 15 of his captains. After his death the Norsemen abandoned their settlements on Lough Ree, moved up the Shannon and fought their way along the rivers and lakes to the Sligo coast where a fleet had assembled to carry them home.
Thereafter the tide of victory turned for a while in favour of the Irish, and a new epoch began in the history of the Scandinavian invasion of Ireland. Hitherto the Vikings like their great leader Turgeis were all of Norwegian stock, but with a few Danes and Swedes among them. During the tenth and eleventh centuries, however, the Danes, a people of distinct origin, who at that time were ravaging the southern and western coasts of England, took the lead in Viking activities. They were better organised than the Norse and had a more centralised government, and they could always fall back on their kingdom in Northumbria, with its capital at York. They were jealous of the success which the Norwegians had met with in ireland and soon proceeded to deprive them of the fruits of their victories, so that it was not primarily owing to a desire to attack the Irish, but purely by accident that the Danes came to Ireland and made it the battleground on which to settle their differences with their cousins from Norway. In the words of the annalist ( 847 ) " They disturbed Ireland between them. " At first the Irish called all these northern raiders indiscriminately ' Genti ' " the heathen ' or Gaill " the strangers " or ' Lochlannaigh. ' Later however when Irish writers felt the need of making a clear distinction between the two waves of invasion, they either limited the name Lochlannaigh to the Norwegians, and applied the name Danair to the Danes, or more commonly, they called the Vikings of Norwegian descent white heathens, while those of Danish descent they called black heathens.
The year 847 marks the first sudden descent of the Danes " in seven score ships " upon the eastern shores of Ireland. They at once proceeded to attack the Norwegians and to contest the possession of the coast settlements with them. In that year the Norwegian Chieftain Earl Tomar was slain in the Battle of Sciath Nechtin. In 850 the Danes seized and plundered Dublin and in the following year they defeated the Norwegians decisively at Carlingford Lough. The battle was a fierce one and is said to have continued for three days and three nights. At first the Norwegians were successful, but finally the Danes, it is said by calling upon St. Patrick fro his help were victorious. After the battle they remebered their promise and sent a huge vat filled with silver and gold to the shrine of the Apostle. Interestingly the use of the terms " Black " and " whites " for the Danish and Norwegian warriors had no connection with the colour of their har or complextion. It is to be found only in the fact that the danes were clad in body armour. The Irish themselves fought in their ordinary dress and mantles except in combat of special danger when they donned breastplated and aprons of leather. They used light javelins for throwing and longer and stouter spears for thrusting. They also carried swords along with a shield of wicker work to defend the body with. The first of the Norwegian invaders likewise wore only a tunic of leather, but the Danes wore dark metal coats of mail, helmets and visors, and were partial to the battle-axe. As they were the first mail-clad warriors the Irish had ever seen, it is no wonder that they seemed to be ' dark blue ' or ' blue green ' as they called them. There are many references in the old irish chronicles and sagas to the mail-clad armour and battle- axes of the foreigners and to the black ships in which they came to Ireland. " For the bodies and skins and hearts of the bright champions of Munster were quickly pierced through the fine linen garments, and their very sharp blades took no effect. " This advantage which the Danes possessed helps to explain the success which they met with in the early years of their invasion. But the Irish soon learned in the hard school of experience how to imitate the superior weapons, armour and science of warfare of the enemy.
Maelsechlainn ( Malachy ) I, who was King of Ireland at the time, dispatched an embassy to the victors. Five thousand Norwegians with their King lay dead on the field. The messanger arrived just as the Danes were preparing their evening meal. Thay had their kettles sey up on stakes driven into the bodies of the slain and the corpses crackled with the heat. The Irish envoys expressed thier horror at the awful sight and reproached the Danes for their barbarity, but the Danes replied that the Norwegians would have treated them in the same manner had they won the battle. The next year ( 852 ) the Norwegians rallied, and a new warlord arrived to take command over them. This was Olafr enn hviti, " Olaf the White " as he is known in Icelandic history, or Amhlaobh in the Irish records, a man of royal descent and belonging to the same race as the famous Turgeis. In the following year
( 853 ) he and his countryman Ivar assumed joint Kingship over the foreigners in Ireland and set up their capital at Dublin. From there the Norwegians gradually gained ground and established vassal states and a string of trading posts and stations for their fleets along the coast. Many of these settlements bear Scandinavian names from fiords, Strangford and Carlingford, in the north and Wexford and Waterford in the south for example. The last of these towns was originally called Port Lairge ( Portlaw ) by the Irish but the foreigners renamed it Vedrafiordhr,
" Weatherhaven. "
The
most important artery reaching into the heart of Ireland is the River Shannon. On its banks the
Vikings, who were most probably Danes, founded and fortified, in the second half of the ninthe century, a city which they called Limerick. " Limerick of the mighty ships, " as one of the chroniclers calls it. The city flourished and exerted an influence over all of Munster. There was close connection between it and the distant Hebrides, and it was not long before it became a dangerous rival even of the Norwegian kingdom at Dublin, and for a long time there was enmity between them. The two parties engaged in raidings and hostings, just like the native clansmen. Now one side and now the other invited the Irish to help them, and Irish Chieftains in turn, in their internecine wars, sought the aid of the foreigners. The first Irish king who is said to have made such an alliance was Aed Finnliath, father of Niall Glundubh, king of Ulster in the middle of the ninth century. But indeed from the time of the first coming of the Northmen to their final defeat, there probably never was a war in which they and the Irish were not, to some degree, banded together.
Irish literature of a thousand years ago is obsessed with the spectre of the Norse occupation of Ireland, and, if we are to believe the native annalists, a night of misery had really settled down on the country with the coming of the Vikings. On the occasion of a raid, villages were burned and sacked and there was wholesale slaughter and enslavement of men, women and children. The foreign soldiers were billeted on the Irish farmers and a heavy tax was laid upon all the people. In default of paying the tax ' nose money ' ( a custom which they had brought from their own counry ) that is the loss of the nose was exacted. In the words of one of old chronicles " even though a man had but one cow, he might not milk it for a child one night old, nor for a sick person, but he had to keep it for the tax collector and the foreign soldiers. "
There were no walled towns in those days in Ireland and but few and scattered villages. The population of the country was comparatively sparse. Life except at the courts of Chiefs was simple and primitive. The people were mostly engaged in cattle raising, and their wealth consisted chiefly of flocks and herds. The nation was broken up into numerous clans which of course stood in the way of national union. By the end of the ninth century there were frequent alliances by marriage between the two peoples. According to legendary history, such marriages had taken place as early as the second century. Naturally the annalists tell of such marriages only in the case of Irish ladies of high degree and Viking Chieftains but they must have been more common among the people. The first historical instance of such marriages was that of Iarnkne to Muirgel, daughter of Malachy I, Emperor of Ireland about the middle of the ninth century. About the same time Amhlaobh, son of the King of Norway married the daughter of
Aed mac Neill. It scarcely ever appears that the wishes of the ladies most concerned were consulted and as an old Irish poet remarks " by no means was it happy for them. "
Irish literature of a thousand years ago is obsessed with the spectre of the Norse occupation of Ireland, and, if we are to believe the native annalists, a night of misery had really settled down on the country with the coming of the Vikings. On the occasion of a raid, villages were burned and sacked and there was wholesale slaughter and enslavement of men, women and children. The foreign soldiers were billeted on the Irish farmers and a heavy tax was laid upon all the people. In default of paying the tax ' nose money ' ( a custom which they had brought from their own counry ) that is the loss of the nose was exacted. In the words of one of old chronicles " even though a man had but one cow, he might not milk it for a child one night old, nor for a sick person, but he had to keep it for the tax collector and the foreign soldiers. "
There were no walled towns in those days in Ireland and but few and scattered villages. The population of the country was comparatively sparse. Life except at the courts of Chiefs was simple and primitive. The people were mostly engaged in cattle raising, and their wealth consisted chiefly of flocks and herds. The nation was broken up into numerous clans which of course stood in the way of national union. By the end of the ninth century there were frequent alliances by marriage between the two peoples. According to legendary history, such marriages had taken place as early as the second century. Naturally the annalists tell of such marriages only in the case of Irish ladies of high degree and Viking Chieftains but they must have been more common among the people. The first historical instance of such marriages was that of Iarnkne to Muirgel, daughter of Malachy I, Emperor of Ireland about the middle of the ninth century. About the same time Amhlaobh, son of the King of Norway married the daughter of
Aed mac Neill. It scarcely ever appears that the wishes of the ladies most concerned were consulted and as an old Irish poet remarks " by no means was it happy for them. "
