usage (Smyth 1974 – 7 ; Dumville 2004 ): it allows us to see a distinction between two
politically and genealogically defined groups of vikings operating in the Insular world
(particularly in the ninth century) and especially associated with Dublin (Downham
2007 ).
The last terminological issue arising relates to the lands from which vikings arrived
in the territories of Insular chroniclers. On the whole, what is striking is that chroniclers
writing in the First Viking Age largely ignored this issue: either the origin or the
immediate provenance of groups of vikings was unknown or it was obvious. If they
were Dani / Nordmanni, their Scandinavian ethnicity and Northern origin could be taken
for granted. Those familiar with the Latin Bible knew that it was prophesied, and a
given, that evil would come from the north: but this sentiment is not, I think,
openly expressed in Insular chronicling, although it is visible elsewhere (cf. Coupland
1991 ).
An instructive case is the famous notice in annal 787 (for 789 ) of ‘The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle’, in which we read that in the days of Beorhtric, king of the West Saxons
( 786 – 802 ), three ships of vikings landed in his kingdom. The chronicler concluded –
no doubt with an eye to a similar sentiment expressed in annal 449 about the arrival of
the English in Britain – that Þæt wæron þa ærestan scipu deniscra monna þe Angelcynnes
lond gesohton, ‘They were the first ships of “Danish” men who attacked England’. For
Æthelweard, a century later, they were Dani (Campbell 1962 : 26 – 7 ). ‘The Northern
Recension’ of ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, approximately contemporary with
Æthelweard but written at York, tells us (on what authority we know not) that these
were .iii. scipu Norðmanna of Hereða lande, ‘three ships of Northmen from Hereða lande’
(Dumville 2007 a), where the last might be identified with Ho ̨rðaland in Norway
(Plummer 1892 / 9 , vol. 2 : 59 ). In a fairly close Latin translation (‘The Annals of St
Neots’) of a lost version of ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ to 912 made in the earlier
twelfth century, we read of .iii. naues Normannorum `id est Danorum ́ (Dumville and
Lapidge 1985 : 39 )! We may conclude that in the late ninth century the precise date of
the event was unknown, that the source of the Scandinavians in question was unknown,
but that for the Alfredian chronicler(s) the Viking Age in England began in Wessex
about a century earlier and had uncomfortable parallels with fifth-century British
history (cf. Godden 2004 ). After a further century the story had begun to be elaborated
and glossed with further ethnic, geographical and local statements (these have not all
been discussed here).
A northern territory which loomed large in medieval Gaelic writing has been the
subject of much modern scholarly discussion, often with little resulting profit. In some
ninth-century Gaelic texts we read of Lothlind or Laithlind as a source of vikings (Mac
Airt and Mac Niocaill 1983 : 306 and 312 , annals 848 and 853 ; Ahlqvist 2005 ). In
eleventh-century and later Gaelic writing we find Lochlann used in the same way. These
two words are not etymologically related but seem to occupy the same semantic space.
Attempts at specific equations with Scandinavian locations (for example, Rogaland)
have failed (Marstrander 1911 , 1915 ; Greene 1975 ). And periodic attempts to locate
this source of Scandinavians in a Scottish provenance have found little favour with other
scholars (cf. Ó Corráin 1998 for the latest attempt). In Gaelic usage Lochlann came to
mean ‘Scandinavia’ and may have done so from the time of its first attestation (cf. Greene
1975 ). It was used for Norway in relation to Magnús, its king, in ‘The Annals of Ulster’
for 1102 and 1103 (Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill 1983 : 538 – 43 ).
–– David N. Dumville––