CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

THE VIKINGS AND IRELAND

Donnchadh Ó Corráin

T

here were contacts between Scandinavia and the British Isles long before the end
of the eighth century. The best witness to Irish contact with Scandinavians is Liber
de mensura orbis terrae ( 825 ) by Dícuill the Geographer, an Irish scholar at the Frankish
court (Tierney 1967 ). He first describes a scientific expedition by Irish clerics to Iceland
in 795 or so. They met no Vikings there or elsewhere during their voyage. He gives a
detailed account of the Faroes, occupied by Irish hermits since at least 725. Some
archaeologists have been reluctant to accept Dícuill’s testimony. Faroese field evidence is
as poor as one would expect from hermits – there are inscribed gravestones showing Irish
features and recent palynological work shows that oats were cultivated and sheep reared
c. ad 600 – 50. This fits well enough with Dícuill’s record (Debes 1993 : 454 – 64 ; Arge
1993 : 465 – 72 ; Stummann Hansen, 1993 : 473 – 86 ). Thus, the Irish monks who com-
piled the Irish annals, our richest source for the history of the Vikings in Ireland, knew
more about them than one might suspect.
The raids began abruptly and unexpectedly. The Annals of Ulster report for 794 : ‘The
devastation of all the islands of Britain by pagans’ (Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill 1983 ).
This pattern of sudden raids on islands and coasts was to continue for a generation. The
first recorded Viking raids on Ireland took place in 795 : ‘The burning of Rechru by
the pagans’. The Vikings soon swept south into the Irish Sea: in 798 the annalist reports
‘the burning of Inis Pátraic by the pagans and they took the cattle-tribute of the
territories and they smashed the shrine of Do Chonna and they made great incursions
both in Ireland and in Scotland’. Inis Pátraic is St Patrick’s Island near Skerries, Co.
Dublin; St Do Chonna is its patron.
So far the raids were exploratory, by a few ships rather than larger fleets. The rich
church of Iona was found and attacked in 802 and 806. By 807 they had rounded
Donegal and had reached the west-coast bays and harbours. They burned the monastery
of Inishmurray off the coast of Sligo and attacked Roscam, near Oranmore, on Galway
Bay. They concentrated on the north and west coasts, but sometimes they met with
determined opposition from local Irish lords. In 812 Viking raiders reached the Kerry
coastline, in the far south-west, but they were slaughtered by local kings. By now, the
Vikings knew all they needed about the coastline and its possibilities for plunder or
colonisation, but suddenly there is silence. There are no reports of activities anywhere in