This was a major event. The plunder taken from Scotland was vast. The Dublin kings
smashed the power of the Strathclyde Britons and established their authority over them.
Given the captives they took, they also reasserted their authority over Pictland as a
whole and, if the Anglian captives were taken in their homeland, they may have been
raiding Lothian as well. They had now brought the whole of Scotland under their
suzerainty.
Ímar continued to rule in Dublin and died in 873. His death notice in the Annals
of Ulster reads:
Ímar king of the Norwegian Vikings of the whole of Ireland and Britain ended his
life.This record means that Ímar was overking of all the Norwegian Vikings in Ireland and
Britain. One may infer, too, that Dublin had become the dynastic caput. The evidence
suggests that Dublin was the capital of a sea-kingdom: Man and all Scotland and it is
probable that Galloway and Cumbria from the Solway Firth to the Mersey formed part
of the same overkingship.
Dublin was soon being fought over by rival groups within the dynasty. There were
intense dynastic feuds and killings in 883 and 888. In 893 there was a major conflict
between the Vikings of Dublin and they divided into two main groups, one led by the
son of Ímar and the other by Earl Sigfrith. In 896 his fellow Vikings killed Sitric, son
of Ímar, and the rulers of a small kingdom in Louth, to the north of Dublin, killed
his brother Amlaíb. The Dubliners were still able to raid the monastic centres in the
Irish hinterland. In 890 – 1 they plundered Ardbraccan, Donaghpatrick, Dulane,
Glendalough, Kildare and Clonard – all within easy striking distance. In 895 they
attacked Armagh and took 710 prisoners. But the power of Dublin was ebbing fast. The
decisive defeat came in 902 when the kingdoms of Brega to the north and Leinster to the
south joined forces against them. As the annalist records: ‘The pagans were driven from
Ireland, i.e. from the fortress of Dublin... and they abandoned a good number of their
ships, and escaped half-dead after they had been wounded and broken.’ The first Viking
settlement of Dublin had ended.
When Dublin fell its rulers went to Scotland and to territories that had long been
their dependencies. In 903 we next find them engaged in fierce warfare in southern
Pictland. They attacked Dunkeld, an attack on the king of south Pictland, Constantine
II (r. 900 – 43 ), now the most important ruler in Scotland. Very likely, he had been
considered a dependent king by the dynasty of Dublin, and the fall of Dublin was the
signal for his revolt. In 904 Ímar grandson of Ímar, the former king of Dublin, was
killed with great slaughter. And then there is silence. However, some time between 904
and about 914 (when historical sources again become available), the exiled Dublin
dynasty rose to power again and embarked on another career of conquest that led to the
re-establishment of the Viking kingdom of Dublin, the taking of York by the same
dynasty, and the establishment of close relationships between Dublin, York and north-
ern England generally (Smyth 1975 – 9 ).
The second Viking Age began suddenly in 914 with ‘the arrival of a great sea-fleet of
pagans in Waterford Harbour’. In 917 the Dublin dynasty joined in the renewed
attack: Ragnall, who is called rí Dubgall ‘king of the Danes’ because he ruled Danish
Northumbria, and his kinsman, Sitric Caech. Their arrival sparked off a major conflict
–– chapter 31: The Vikings and Ireland––