Alternate Irelands: Where The Gaels Are So Pretty
- 17 hours ago
- 12 min read
By Gary Oswald.
Ireland prior to 800 AD was almost entirely rural. There were settlements but these were normally either ringforts where in a clan would find shelter during wars or monasteries and religious schools for Catholic orders. Modern day towns, as we currently think of them, with a wide range of people doing different jobs living in a fixed area, didn’t really exist.
This would change in the 9th century, with towns like Dublin, Cork, Limerick, and Waterford emerging. Except, none of these modern-day Irish cities were actually founded by the Irish. They were all instead founded by settlers and raiders from modern day Scandinavia. The Vikings.
The Vikings first arrived in Ireland in 795 but they were originally only sporadic visitors and raiders. It wasn’t until 837 that they started looking at building bases. 839 marked the first time they stayed in Ireland all year rather than going back home during the winter and the result of this was the emergence of camps in Ireland where raiders could stay or stop off to on the way to their targets. These waystations acted as gateway communities which opened up more of Ireland to Viking targets, with their ships pushing up rivers and into lakes as well as going all around the shoreline.
830 to 849 thus saw a huge step up in Viking raids on the churches and monasteries which held most of Ireland’s wealth during this period, with those twenty years containing more than half of the 9th centuries Viking attacks on churches (this timespan was the only time in Irish history when most attacks on churches were by Vikings and not other Irish people). It also saw increasingly intense conflict between the Vikings and native Kingdoms, with the first major Irish victories also being recorded as the natives took this new threat more seriously. This era saw essentially an extraction of wealth from Ireland and the rest of Western Europe to Norway, allowing more sophisticated trade and state building in that country.
Ireland was not a rich country. Its main wealth was tied up in Cattle, which were the main target of inter Irish raiding but were difficult to transport to Scandinavia. What was being extracted was timber and metal, which was stripped off people and buildings alike (with Irish style pins being found on Vikings as far away as Canada), but primarily slaves. Slaves were taken, and probably also bought, in huge numbers from Ireland. They were used both in Scandinavian settlements and to be traded with other societies, such as the Muslim empires. Slavery was not new to Ireland but this scale of it was, and some areas became depopulated as a result.
The first permanently occupied Viking towns emerged from those camps as early as the 840s, with Dublin quickly becoming the political and economic capital of the Viking settlers in Ireland. Great markets to trade slaves and goods captured in raids sprang up through the Viking world during the 9th century and Ireland was no exception, with large markets held in Dublin, something new to Irish history. This wealth attracted new bands of Scandinavians, ‘the dark foreigners’ who during the mid-9th century launched their own attacks on Dublin and its satellites to try and get in on that lucrative raiding Ireland business, but they failed to do anything but allow the native Irish to recover their position.
From 849 this raiding and conflict dropped off for several reasons. For a start, Ireland was now a lot poorer with less rich churches left to raid. Secondly, according to Irish sagas (though this is disputed), the most ambitious of the early Viking rulers, Turgesius, had been killed by the King of Mide as part of a series of Irish victories that checked further raids. But most importantly the increasing power of Norwegian rulers (due to their wealth from raiding) was pushing those who opposed them out of Norway, so increasing numbers of Vikings weren’t returning home at all and had instead settled into Ireland as farmers and traders rather than raiders. Dublin was the only major Norwegian settlement to not be unified by Harald Fairhair in the 870s and as such changed from a gateway port for raiders to its own independent Kingdom, largely politically separated from this new Norwegian realm. This kingdom had a different relationship to the people they lived along than had the raiders who were only there for a season.
During this point, thanks to the establishment of permanent settlements, the Viking economic relationship with Ireland changed from an entirely extractive one to a more mutual, though still largely extractive, one. Dublin was built in Ireland with resources from elsewhere and riches stopped in Dublin rather than going to Norway. Because of that, more and more Scandinavian goods, in particular silver, began turning up in Irish hands, through both trade and Irish raiding of the Viking cities. In this way the Vikings became responsible for some small, inadvertent redistribution of wealth from the monasteries to the Irish raiding class.
By this point, Ireland was now divided ethnically between urban Vikings and rural Irish with both conflict and trade routine between them, but this was only a part of a wider ambition. The Vikings used their bases in Ireland to attack England, Scotland and Wales, and vice versa, with them increasingly coordinating attacks. The fierce warfare of the 830s which saw Irish Kingdoms fight off the Vikings was repeated again in the 860s, as part of the Great Heathen Army that conquered England, and then again in the 910s, as part of the Danish reconquest of Northumbria.
There is also evidence of increasing unity between the non-Scandinavian peoples of the archipelago as a result. In a battle in Chester, Irish conscripts in the Dublin Viking Army swapped sides to join the Anglo-Saxons en masse after appeals to them of friendship and Christian unity. It is fair to say that Irish soldiers deserting in droves to avoid fighting the English for moral reasons isn’t a common theme in Irish history.
However this unity between the Christians opposed to the pagan Scandinavians was always very fragile. Throughout the second half of the ninth century, the Vikings in Dublin were generally able to find Irish allies to team up with against other Irish kingdoms. Those high marks of raids marked breaks in the order of usual warfare of Ireland; when those raids weren't happening Dublin was just another Irish Kingdom in that constant fight, one that could be both fought and allied with. Increasing infighting also broke out between different Viking rulers, further taking Ireland away from a simple 'Irish on one side and Vikings on the other' scenario. One of the recurring patterns of the Vikings in Ireland was a particularly ambitious leader launching vast attacks on the Irish and then being assassinated by an Irishman and his followers immediately breaking into infighting and losing the campaign. Another is temporary coalitions of Irish Kingdoms against the Vikings falling into their own infighting after a major victory.
In 902, Dublin was captured by the Irish Kings of Brega and so became one of the first actual Irish towns, with a population of both Norse and Irish residents but Irish rulers. This wouldn't last, the Vikings would retake it in 917, but this set the pattern that the tenth century followed.
Dublin, as the largest port and town in Ireland, had become a target for ambitious rulers, who wanted it within their domain. In the 920s it was attacked by the Vikings of Limerick who wished to usurp the Kings of Dublin. In the 940s it was captured once again by the Kings of Brega. And in the 950s Dublin was closely aligned to Leinster to protect it. Any ambitious Irish King, whether native or Viking, wanted either an alliance or control over Dublin.
Controlling fortified towns and ports, both of which control of Dublin gave you, had become major parts of warfare in Ireland, as each petty ruler began to make their own fleets and their own fortresses. By 978, Limerick was captured by the Irish fleet of the Kingdom of Thomond and by 988, in the aftermath of the Kingdom of Mide's great victory over the Dubliners in 980, the residents of Dublin, both Norse and Irish, were following Irish law and paying taxes to Irish Kings. Ireland had urban centres within it now and this boosted the powers of those who owned them.
And with the Vikings having largely become Christian, Irish-speaking residents of Ireland who had intermarried with the Irish and stopped returning to Scandinavia, the distinction that they were not Irish towns began to be a bit more arbitrary. The Vikings had now become the Norse-Gaels. And the Norse-Gaels traded far more with England, through their towns of Chester and Bristol, and France than with Norway, a country most had never been to. What had been an extractive relationship had now become something very different, with Dublin linking Ireland to a trade web which spanned from Norway to Spain.
Now, the Norse-Gaels were still perceived as foreigners and written about as an invading threat. Moreover, their Kings were still linked into the Scandinavian world, through trade and warfare, in a way which meant they had ambitions and alliances outside of Ireland. It was common for Kings of Dublin to campaign in England, Wales and Scotland in a way other Irish Kings normally didn’t, and those kings could in return recruit their Norse-Gael kin from Orkneys and the Hebrides to reinforce them when threatened. They also worked with Danish and Norwegian Kings when they were active in the area, bowing to Magnus Barefoot of Norway as late as 1103.
The Norse-Gaels were ethnically separate from the rest of Ireland but rarely politically so because kings with Norse-Gael subjects had considerable advantages. It is no coincidence that Thomond's victory over Limerick and later Waterford led their King, Brian Boru, to overthrow the dominant uí Néill and become one of the most dominant Kings in Irish history, with the use of their money and fleet being critical to his victories.
Ireland traditionally had around 150 Kings but Brian sought to force all of them to recognise his over lordship. One by one he forced them to join his side, either as an ally or subject, sacking towns that resisted him, such as Dublin in 999. It took a lifetime of constant warfare, as kings who submitted one month rebelled the next but by 1012, every area of Ireland was truly controlled by Brian, with his Norse-Gael subjects playing a huge part in his success.
And there was every evidence that Brian had thought about how to cement that control. He donated money to the Monastery of Armagh and got the priests there to name him Emperor of the Irish, securing the support of the powerful Christian clergy behind his regime.
At which point Dublin rebelled and called in a Viking army of their kinfolk from Scandinavian Scotland to reinforce their position.
Now this was part of a rebellion across all of Leinster, meaning there were many Celtic Irish in Dublin’s army and there were Norse-Gaels in Boru’s Army, but the Irish perceived this as a battle of the Gaels vs the Norse. The 1014 Battle of Clontarf, fought to protect Dublin from siege, was the conclusion to Boru’s war of unification but also of two hundred years of Nordic invasion and a hundred years of Dublin being the most valuable land in Ireland.
Boru won the battle, destroying the Viking army. But he did so at the cost of his own life, the lives of his son and grandson, and the unity he’d fought for. Without its leaders, the army could not press its advantage to take Dublin and so the kingdom there regained its independence. Boru's coalition collapsed upon his death, his younger son was unable to hold together the united Ireland of his father and Ireland split into numerous factions once again with no other true High King.
Dublin spent the next 150 years much weakened, often being ruled by either Irish Kings or the Norse-Gaels from the Isle of Man while their spells of independence had them playing their Irish neighbours against each other in terms of hostages or allying with Scandinavian kings. They were finally destroyed as an independent entity by the Norman invasion of 1170.
At which point Dublin became an English city and the Norse-Gaels became just another strand of Irish people. By 1170 there was also nothing uniquely Norse about fortification or ships, all the Irish had these, and while the country was still mostly rural and would not become urban until after the English conquest, there were even the first small Irish built towns emerging such as at Downpatrick.
Which begs the question, if the Norse-Gaels became Irish when their status as foreigners was usurped by new foreigners in the form of the English, does that ethnic divide remain longer if that invasion was avoided?
The question is for how long. For Dublin to remain a centre of culture opposed to the Irish in Tara, then the Kingdom of Dublin needs to remain a going concern. That is difficult to achieve without a foreign backer, given it was conquered numerous times by the Irish. Without Norman conquest, it probably just ends up a part of Leinster and therefore becomes Irish, the same way the Hebrides became Scottish.
But Dublin was heavily linked with Viking Northumbria and Viking Scotland. If an independent Norse state emerges there which is strong enough to hold off Wessex and Scotland both, it will likely end up including Dublin. Likewise, if Norway remained strong enough to hold land in the British Isles, they will view Dublin as a target, as Magnus Barelegs did. So long as Dublin is politically separate from the rest of Ireland, as part of a Norse state, the ethnic distinction will remain.
The problem with tying Dublin's fate to the survival of Scandinavian states in Great Britain is the tide was turning against the Vikings there. It feels unsustainable for England and Scottish unification to not happen and that leaves Dublin as a target. Dublin as part of Northumbria probably falls to England and Dublin as part of the Kingdom of the Isles probably falls to the Scottish. Giving those states a toehold in Ireland probably just leads them to push for the conquest of the rest of the country and so ends the ethnic divide just as in our timeline.
So could we make Viking Ireland stronger? Dublin, and the other Viking towns, were trade ports with a hinterland of farmers and lumberjacks rather than large states and as such are always going to be vulnerable, but could we have them conquer more land so that Dublin can be an ongoing concern free from fear of conquest by its neighbours?
This is also tricky. The Vikings could absolutely have more luck, but fundamentally Ireland was a country not really worth conquering because its lack of infrastructure and its warlike independent clans made conquest hard while the lack of riches made it pointless. The only existing inter-island structure was that of the Church which was furiously opposed to the Vikings. There was no top-down hierarchy where if you took the rest would follow, Ireland would have to be conquered piece by piece and there simply wasn't enough riches for that to be worth it. It is notable that Irish rulers never paid Danegeld the way British rulers did, because they lacked the riches to do so. In England taxation through conquest became more profitable to the Vikings than raiding but in Ireland it never did. A more successful Viking Ireland is one where more slaves are taken, not where more land is held, which limits its lifespan.
So having discussed more success for the Norse-Gaels, we must also discuss more success for the Irish.
While various Irish Kingdoms conquered Dublin, the Norse-Gaels normally took it back from their nearby bases in the Hebrides and Isle of Man. In the late 11th century, the Irish had enough naval power to challenge them there, with both Muirchertach Ua Briain and Diarmait mac Máel na mBó conquering the Isle of Man, but in neither case were they able to hold it for long, due to having to fight other wars within Ireland. Irish Kings were too caught up in wars with their neighbours to focus on the Irish Sea and that normally meant losing Dublin while fighting each other.
A unified Ireland would make things far easier in terms of being able to project power into the Irish Sea but would only really be on the cards if Brian Boru had managed to survive Clontarf and cement his legacy there. If he manages to hold his control together for a generation then his loose alliances can form into a real country, as happened in England.
Is this likely, though? No. Even at Clontarf, when Brian had all of Ireland under his control, the actual army was primarily made of men from his home province of Munster. And Leinster overwhelming supported Dublin in that battle. The rivalries between Norse-Gaels and Gaels were real, but so were the rivalries between different regions. As far as the Ulster families felt, they had not been unified, they had been conquered. One of the disadvantages the Irish had over England was that the Vikings controlled less land, so unification was not coming alongside liberation from foreign rulers.
Moreover Brian was in his early 70s when he died. He was on a ticking clock anyway. His eldest son and heir surviving would be a huge change, but that son would also have to spend all his life campaigning against rebels for any actual unity to emerge.
A unified Ireland emerging in the 1020s vastly changes Irish History. They probably still clash with the kingdoms of Great Britain but they do so far more as equals; and probably it’s this Ireland, not Scotland, that takes the Kingdom of the Isles from Norway. To get there however, requires a lot of sixes being rolled. The Irish didn't have a history of a strictly hereditary monarchy, they largely, with the exception of the Norse-Gaels, shared a culture and the idea of being one country, but they viewed the High Kingship as a prize to be won by the most powerful monarch, and even viewed the ascension of any monarch as being something to block if he was unsuitable. This innately was unstable because it encouraged the idea that any man of the elite could become king and gave no incentive to not dispute successions.
So much of the legend of Brian Boru, and his defeat of a foreigner army, is building a narrative to counteract that instability, by enshrining an innate legitimacy to the family of Boru. To an extent then, any United Ireland has to use the Norse-Gaels as a punching bag in internal propaganda while also not alienating the residents of its largest and richest city, Norse-Gael Dublin. It would be an interesting relationship.
Gary Oswald is the editor of the Grapeshot and Guillotines, Emerald Isles, and If We'd Just Got That Penalty anthologies.
Comments