annal, and the annals (some left blank for lack of suitable information) together consti-
tute the chronicle. While an individual chronicle-author might think his work to have
beginning and end, the annalistic chronicle is widely recognised as history without an
end; while time continues, we cannot expect or require closure of a chronicle constituted
of successive annals (Van Houts 1980 ; Dumville 2002 a: 18 ).
Before the Viking Age, Insular chronicles had limited terms of relevance of informa-
tion for inclusion (Dumville 1982 , 1999 ). Typically, succession to important office
(whether described by the death of the former or the accession of the latter office-holder,
or both) was a major concern, as were battles; disturbance of nature – plague, famine,
great severity of weather, heavenly signs, miraculous events – also merited attention
(MacNeill 1913 / 14 : 81 – 5 ; Hughes 1957 ; cf. Cooke 1980 ; Hughes 1980 : 99 ; Thornton
1996 ). While annalistic chronicles tended towards greater inclusiveness of information
as the early Middle Ages progressed, nevertheless that development had not undergone
radical change before the Viking Age.
In general, the events and processes of the Viking Age did greatly stimulate chron-
iclers, challenging them to record events of a character previously unknown. In effect,
vikings, by their very disorderliness in the Insular societies which they encountered
from the closing years of the eighth century, forced their way into the writing of
contemporary chroniclers; the chroniclers were challenged to adapt their criteria
of relevance and the vocabulary, style and even the very language which they used
(Dumville 1982 ). By the eleventh century, the English and Irish chronicles were being
written in more expansive styles, more information was being recorded and the local
vernacular language had a larger role (Clark 1971 ; Dumville 1999 ). ‘The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle’ now included poetry (Dobbie 1942 ; cf. Abegg 1894 ).
In other words, we see changes over time in Insular chronicling, partly continuing
the early medieval developments, partly reacting to the new circumstances of the Viking
Age. Likewise, the Viking Age had its own internal dynamics, and we see these reflected
above all in chroniclers’ reactions to rulers of large Scandinavian polities, whose
involvement in Insular politics evoked from eleventh-century chroniclers a response
rather different from that which those writers’ ninth-century predecessors had accorded
the leaders of viking armies of their day (Lund 1986 ; Keynes 1978 , 1986 ). All the
Insular chronicles of this period, and particularly those which had begun earlier (and,
indeed, continued later) than the Viking Age, can be seen in a process of continual (but
by no means continuous) change.
However, the differing cultural traditions within which Insular chroniclers worked
ensured varying presentations of information. Generic inheritance should not be under-
estimated as a factor determining what was recorded or excluded. Likewise, differing
types of authorship, generic function and institutional (or authorial) outlook and
purpose should all be recognised as contributors to the character of the texts which we
possess.
Surviving Insular chronicles of the Viking Age show us a chronological order of
recording of vikings: English and Gaelic (principally, but not exclusively, Irish) from
the 790 s, Welsh from 850 , Breton, Scottish. We have no Cornish chronicle of the
period, nor any certain chronicle-record native to Viking Age Strathclyde or Mann
(on Strathclyde, see Hughes 1980 : 95 – 100 ; Grabowski and Dumville 1984 : 216 – 17 ).
What is now northernmost Scotland (north of a line drawn due west from the
Beauly Firth) is without any chronicle-record throughout the entire era, in spite of
–– chapter 26: Vikings in Insular chronicling––