Ireland for eight years. This may be the time when a powerful Viking settlement was
made in Scotland.
Attacks began again in 821 in the Irish Sea and on the south coast. In 821 Vikings
raided Howth and ‘took a great prey of women’ – as slaves, very likely. By 822 they had
reached Cork on the south coast and in 824 they raided the remote island monastery of
Skellig, 13 km off the Kerry coast.
In the 830 s, the raids became more threatening and from 836 large-scale attacks
began with ‘the first prey of the pagans from Southern Brega [south Co. Meath]... and
they carried off many prisoners and killed many and took very many captives’. That
autumn the annalist reports ‘a most cruel devastation of all the lands of Connacht by the
pagans’. The great monastery of Clonmore, Co. Carlow, was burned on Christmas Eve,
and many captives were taken. Mid-winter raiding for slaves proves that the Vikings
were already overwintering, possibly on islands that could hold many prisoners.
In 837 , a fleet of sixty ships appeared on the Boyne and another on the Liffey, very
likely from the Scottish settlements, each bringing about 1 , 500 men. They ravaged the
east-coast kingdoms and defeated the Uí Néill kings ‘in a countless slaughter’. These
appear to be royal expeditions with large resources. The Vikings now appear on the
inland waterways – the Shannon, the Erne, the Boyne, Lough Neagh and the Bann. They
overwintered on Lough Neagh for the first time in 840 – 1. They now began to build
longphoirt, fortresses that protected them and their ships, some of which became per-
manent (Kelly and Maas 1999 : 123 – 59 ). They first overwintered in Dublin in 841 – 2.
These large-scale raids marked the beginning of the occupation of the Irish east
midlands and were mounted from Scandinavian Scotland, where a powerful royal dyn-
asty had established itself in the north and west. Leaders of that dynasty, the brothers
Amlaíb (Óláfr) and Ímar (Ívarr), exercised authority over the Irish Vikings through a
series of royal expeditions – the annals report ones in 848 , 849 and 853 but there may
have been more. For nearly two centuries this dynasty played a major role in the history
of Ireland and Britain (Ó Corráin 1998 a: 296 – 339 ).
The Irish church leaders, who had borne the brunt of attacks, were aristocrats with
close ties to the dominant dynasties, and well used to war and violence. This conditioned
their reaction: they trusted in God and in their own arms. The Vikings fell on no
unworldly clerics but on a confident church organisation determined to defend
itself. That determination meant aggression. Armagh was on the attack when it first
encountered the Vikings in 831 : ‘the heathens defeated the community of Armagh in
the Carlingford Lough area and great numbers of them were taken captive’ – evidently
Armagh troops were defending its dependent coastal churches, now under attack. In
845 , the abbot of Terryglass and Clonenagh and the deputy abbot of Kildare were killed
by Vikings at the fortress of Dunamase leading their monastic levies. Dunamase is about
13 km from Clonenagh, 24 km from Kildare – near enough to show they were engaged
in local defence. A contemporary ironic comment on prayers for defence occurs in the
notice of a raid on Armagh in 895 :
Alas, holy Patrick!
unavailing your orisons –
the Vikings with axes
are hacking your oratories.–– chapter 31: The Vikings and Ireland––