the momentous events and processes which the Viking Age brought to that complex
region (on Skye, see Downham 2000 ). Within England and Ireland, some regions are
much better covered than others (indeed, some areas generally lack coverage, although
the distribution of record changes over time: on Ireland, cf. Etchingham 1996 ).
Throughout the Viking Age, the extant Welsh chronicling is generally rather thin
(Downham 2007 ; Maund 1991 ). And survival from Brittany is exceedingly poor: there
are fragments and hints of Breton Viking Age chronicling record (and some external
survival); but our knowledge of events in Brittany, insofar as it depends on chronicles, is
largely drawn from foreign texts (Dumville 2007 c; cf. Werner 1959 and Price 1986 – 9 ).
There is no doubt that in the Gaelic record we see contemporary chronicling from the
first notices of vikings’ activities – which begin once those impinge on Gaelic-speaking
territory, particularly Ireland (from 795 ) and the Inner Hebrides (from 802 ), apart from
generalising notices about Britain under 794 and 798 (Charles-Edwards 2006 ). No
extant Gaelic chronicle is earlier in date than the late eleventh century (Dumville 1999 ),
but we can be sure that contemporary record constitutes the mass of the entries for the
Viking Age (cf. Ó Máille 1910 ; Hughes 1972 : 129 – 35 , 148 – 59 ). That corruptions of
entries and insertions occurred during transmission is equally certain, however, as we
shall see. Gaelic chronicling, while essentially bilingual in Gaelic and Latin, tends
increasingly towards the vernacular in this period (Dumville 1982 ) – and this process
was (as I have remarked above) greatly encouraged by the need to break away from
generically conventional diction to record vikings’ activities. For all that, Gaelic
chronicles very much remain constituted of discrete entries and annals, however large
these might become: the generic inheritance remained powerful. Both secular and
ecclesiastical dimensions of vikings’ presence in the Gaelic world are covered in the
chronicles. For the most part, it is not possible to deduce large agenda on the part of
Gaelic chroniclers – the record is generally local and specific, very much evenemental.
One fragmentary eleventh-century text surviving in a seventeenth-century manuscript
offers a very different perspective, however (Radner 1978 ; Downham 2004 b).
Viking Age interaction between the Insular chronicling traditions must be recog-
nised as possible. Welsh chronicles carry a notice of vikings’ first activity in Ireland,
in 795 , derived from a tenth-century Irish chronicle (Grabowski and Dumville 1984 ;
Downham 2000 and Griscom 1925 – 6 : 95 – 7 ; Dumville 2002 b: 8 – 9 ; 2005 : 14 – 15 ).
Native Welsh record of vikings begins only with an annal for 850 (Dumville 2002 b:
10 – 11 ; 2005 : 22 – 3 ).
The several chronicles in their different traditions display varying types of interest
and angles of approach. All are local, whether in their sources or their production or
their politics. In the Insular political circumstances of 800 , it would have been difficult
for a chronicler to articulate a national position in the absence of a political nation.
After the formation of the kingdom of England in 927 , an English chronicler might
adopt a new stance (Dumville 1992 : 141 – 71 ); but we should also remember that
the creation of a single English polity may have been a West-Saxon project for at least a
half-century before 927 , and the chronicling of those decades must be scrutinised for
such an outlook (for the texts see Thorpe 1861 ; Plummer 1892 / 9 ; Whitelock et al.
1961 ). The hypothetical Gaelic chronicle which Kathleen Hughes ( 1972 : 99 – 115 )
named ‘The Chronicle of Ireland’ (substantially reconstructable as it stood in 911 ;
Grabowski and Dumville 1984 ; Charles-Edwards 2006 ) may have been created and
maintained by chroniclers who aspired to a national coverage (and it was not closed to
–– David N. Dumville––