art and literature. In turn, the Irish exercised a profound
influence on Viking settlers. As Vikings from Ireland
made incursions elsewhere, this influence extended to
other colonies. Thus, Hiberno-Viking impact can be
traced in diverse sources such as place names, saints
cults, or medieval literature in Normandy, Iceland, and
Western Britain.
CLARE DOWNHAM
References and Further Reading
O’Donovan, John, ed. and trans. Annala Rioghachta Eireann:
Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters, from
the Earliest Times to the Year 1616, 2nd ed. Dublin: 1856.
Clarke, Howard B. et al., eds.Ireland and Scandinavia in the
Early Viking Age.Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998.
Duffy, Seán. “Irishmen and Islesmen in the Kingdoms of Dublin
and Man, 1052–1171.” Ériu43 (1992): 93–133.
Etchingham, Colmán. Viking Raids on Irish Church Settlements
in the Ninth Century: A Reconsideration of the Annals
(Maynooth Monographs, Series Minor 1). Maynooth: 1996.
Lucas, A. T. “Irish-Norse Relations: Time for a Reappraisal?”
Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Associ-
ation71 (1966): 62–75.
See alsoBrian Boru; Cerball mac Deungaile;
Cerball mac Muirecáin; Dublin; Limerick;
Máel-Sechnaill I; Waterford
VILLAGES
Very little is known about village life in medieval Ire-
land. Archaeological work has been limited, and the
poor survival of records makes it difficult for the his-
torian, but fortunately it has been a subject of research
by historical geographers. The lack of interdisciplinary
study is further exacerbated by the fact that from about
the tenth century onward most English and continental
peasants lived in villages, while in Ireland dispersed
settlements appear to have remained the norm.
A village is a settlement intermediate in size
between a hamlet and a town, but in practice the bor-
derlines are vague and undefined. Commonly, a medi-
eval village consisted not only of the built-up area of
houses, outbuildings, gardens, haggards, and orchards,
but also the surrounding fields from which the inhab-
itants derived their livelihoods. It has often been
remarked that the Latin word villashould really be
translated as “township,” rather than “village.” Further-
more, the medieval village was more than a settlement
form. It was also a community and, indeed, a special
type of community, in that it was one defined by com-
mon residence and a shared economic and social inter-
est, rather than one bound together purely by the ties
of kinship. Medieval Irish villages varied in size, phys-
ical form, function, and population. These differences
suggest that there was a hierarchical ordering in the
landscape as well as an economic and social complex-
ity, but insufficient work has been done to establish
the patterns.
Village life prior to the Anglo-Norman invasion
remains nebulous, but during the eleventh and twelfth
centuries the evidence for nucleation increases. This
is indicated by the appearance of new words such as
baileandsráidbaileas well as the archaeological and
documentary evidence for the concentration of crafts-
men and artisans at ecclesiastical sites. The phrase
“monastic town” has been coined for larger settlements
such as Armagh, Clonmacnoise, Kells, and Kildare,
but there were also places of intermediate size that
could be called monastic villages. Seventy or eighty
houses, for instance, are recorded as being burnt at
Duleek in 1123, while eighty houses were destroyed
in the remodeling of Derry in 1162. Houses are also
recorded at Ardagh (Co. Longford), Ardpatrick (Co.
Limerick), Ardstraw, Cloyne, Devenish, Emly, Louth,
Ratass, Roscommon, and Slane, among others, and
nucleation was not confined to ecclesiastical sites
alone. Excavations at Knowth, County Meath, have
uncovered six or seven houses clustered below the
royal site during the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
while by the mid-twelfth century, there was a mixed
community of clerics and burgesses at Killaloe, the
settlement at the foot of the Ua Briain royal site of
Kincora. Similarly, there were intermediate-sized set-
tlements in the Hiberno-Scandinavian world, such as
Arklow and Wicklow, which probably functioned pri-
marily as fishing villages. Nonetheless, in view of the
kin-based structure of early Irish society and the some-
what tantalizing nature of the evidence, the degree to
which these settlements were villages in the accepted
sense rather than kin-based agglomerations remains
open to question.
After the Anglo-Norman invasion, the migration of
English peasants led to the foundation of many new
villages. The manorial lords frequently offered burgess
rights to the colonists, leading to the establishment of
what scholars have called rural boroughs: settlements
with an agricultural economy, but in which property
holders had the status of townspeople. This permitted
the development of an organized village community
led by a reeve, who may have been appointed by the
lord or elected by the burgesses, and whose responsi-
bility was to oversee the annual performance of obli-
gations to the lord and the collection of rents and dues.
There has been a debate about the extent to which
the colonists introduced the English village system and
the degree to which the traditional Irish pattern of dis-
persed settlement was adopted. English-syle villages
are found in the densely settled parts of the Anglo-
Norman colony, such as Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny,
Meath, and Tipperary. Typically these would have hadVIKING INCURSIONS