1014: Brian Boru & the Battle for Ireland Read Free Page B

an end in itself, a transforming experience which could open the gates to Valhalla , their idea of heaven. The Gael usually respected their dead enemies. The Vikings practised a variety of mutilations on theirs. Two of the most frequently cited examples are revealing. In one, a man was propped against a tree while still alive, eviscerated, then bound to the tree with his own intestines. The second example is the notorious and not infrequent ‘blood eagle’. A man’s lungs were torn from his living body and placed on his back, like wings. It is little wonder that the word ‘viking’ could instil terror.
    Yet within a couple of generations many of the Vikings in Ireland had become settlers in the literal meaning of the word. They settled. And as emigrants tend to do, they clung to their own kind. They formed communities which grew into towns – a foreign concept in such a pastoral culture. Wicklow and Arklow in the southeast were two of their earliest successes.
    As Norse and Dane adjusted to the more moderate climate of their new land they grew comfortable, even prosperous. Trading centres proliferated and eventually became the focal point of towns. Bunratty Castle in County Clare stands on what was the site of a Viking trading post in 970. In Ireland the growing season waslonger and the soil was warmer, so farms were laid out in the hinterland of the towns. Families expanded in response to the change in circumstances. Immigrants married Irish women, or, rarely, brought women from their homeland, built houses and raised children. Memories of the cold north faded into tales told to the little ones around the fire. The newcomers ceased to be, if they ever had been, the rampaging Vikings of song and saga.
    Ultimately the Norse became the predominant Scandinavian element in Ireland. After changing hands several times between Norse and Dane, Dublin became the nucleus of the smaller Danish population. However, the phrase ‘The Danes of Dublin’ entered into common usage to such an extent that eventually all Northmen were called Danes. This created a confusion which continues to influence historians today – although some go the other way, and call all the Danes ‘Norsemen’.
    Around the coasts of the island various Gaelic tribes developed trading relationships with the newcomers. One result was valuable cultural and linguistic cross-pollination , which engendered a growing if grudging respect. But tribes elsewhere in Ireland went to war against the foreigners, striving to expel or at least dominate them. War was too old a habit to relinquish infavour of trade. In a society where the greatest honours were achieved in battle, commerce was considered less than noble.
The Annals of the Four Masters
, which document early and medieval Irish history in great detail and was compiled in the seventeenth century, contain hundreds of accounts of great battles and heroic undertakings , but none of commercial success.
    Many of the written records of the period were lost when Vikings – or raiding parties of Irish outlaws, who were just as bad – burned or stole countless books and manuscripts. There is no excuse for the Irish, but until they were Christianised the Vikings could not read, and so did not value what they had taken. They knew enough to sell them, though, or at least to steal the jewels with which many books and sacred objects were embellished. In this way a number of priceless artefacts found their way to the European continent. A few eventually came home again.
    The surviving ancient Irish texts, fragmentary though they are, stand as documents of the era in which they were written. Thanks to the efforts of scholars and archaeologists many can now be dated with reasonable certainty. The identities of individuals as well as historical details have been verified. We know to a degree what happened at Clontarf on Good Friday, 1014. Wecan recognise the event for what it was: a Greek tragedy of classical proportions. Its