The Viking Age (793 - 1066) witnessed a maritime expansion of peoples predominantly of Scandinavian origin. Land across the North Atlantic ocean attracted the attention of Scandinavian people seeking opportunities for advancement. The arriving diaspora were immediately treated with antagonism by the contemporary Irish annals which helped mask the complexity of their contributions and relationships within the region. Scholars with romantic and nationalistic leanings have also isolated limited aspects of the diaspora to create a pernicious stereotype of Vikings as hyper-masculine warriors who ruthlessly conquered new territories across the North Atlantic region. Highly compelling though this image has been to the public imagination, its domination has been to the detriment of Donegal’s significant legacy during the period. They are barely mentioned. But as home to the high kings of Ireland and embedded into a vast Columban network of monasteries and cells across the North Atlantic Ocean, the people of Donegal helped establish a network of interdependence across the region. A network reliant on an infrastructure of sea lanes for survival. It was into this influential network that the Scandinavians became entangled. This essay will begin to explore how this entanglement unfurled as the boundaries of their interdependence were stretched and reshaped over time in a long-term campaign for the sea-lanes of the Viking-Age North Atlantic.

Donegal’s geography made it inevitable that the North Atlantic region would become an important aspect of its people's culture and political strategies. As Ireland’s most northern county, the region is bound by 706 miles of undulating and rugged North Atlantic coastline. Inlets open up to a number of extensive loughs and desolate mountain ranges loom large to the north and south, compelling movement out across the ocean. From the coast of Inishowen, where the royal headquarters of the Kings of Aileach were based, one can look out across the water and see the three Paps of Jura sitting alluringly on the Hebridean island of Jura^[1].

In the years preceding the Viking Age, cross-Atlantic influences can be read in the landscapes. Iron Age settlements in Donegal and the West of Scotland signal a shared, though not identical consciousness with circular dry stone enclosures abounding. The cashel site Doon Glebe in Donegal with its intra-mural passage roofed by flagstones echoes the style of Scottish complex Atlantic roundhouses, providing a hint of what large-scale excavations of cashel sites across the county might reveal.^[2]

Tropes of isolation and otherness naturally attached themselves to the North Atlantic islands, as particularly exemplified by Donegal’s famed ecclesiaste, Columba, who sought a local equivalent to St.Anthony’s desert places of third and fourth-century Egypt. The journeys of clergymen into the ocean in search of solitude are well attested in the early Irish corpus of Immram tales.^[3] Of particular notoriety is Nauigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis which regales the reader with a fantastical voyage from island-to-island across the North Atlantic^[4]. A tale in which we observe just how important overlaying biblical landscapes onto the North Atlantic region was to the clergy.

The extent of their voyaging is also attested in a significant corpus of stone sculpture to be found dotted across the North Atlantic from Donegal to the West Highlands and Islands, and even Iceland. Some 462 of the sculpted stones scattered around the West Highlands and Islands have been comprehensively accounted for by Ian Fisher^[5] and a coherent group of Columban cross-slabs have been isolated by Ewan Campbell^[6]. Brian Lacey has led the way with the first survey of Donegal’s rich archeology^[7], which includes preliminary references to cross-slabs, some of which display distinct Pictish affinities, reminding us of the to-and-fro of cultural influences. However, no in-depth comparison with the broader North Atlantic corpus has yet been undertaken. To do so would undoubtedly reveal additional depth to our understanding of the region's cross-ocean relationships.

That said, the research undertaken thus far has been critical in dating crosses discovered in southwest Iceland to the early Medieval period and more specifically, the community of Columba. The terminal art-form crosses discovered in the man-made caves of Seljaland have been positively matched with that of Ewan Campbell’s Argyll group, offering a date of late eighth-century occupation to the caves. Kristján Ahronson’s examination of the contemporary environmental impact preserved in the sedimentary deposits of the caves has also produced an early date of ca. 800.^[8] That’s some 70 years before the Landnám, the period of settlement activity that many scholars have identified as the only significant early settlement in Iceland. But not for much longer.

The case for an earlier Irish settlement of Iceland is further bolstered by contemporary evidence courtesy of Dicuil. Writing from the court of Charlemagne, circa AD 825,^[9] the Irish scholar relayed that it had been thirty years since clerics had lived on the island from the first of February to the first of August. Providing us with a date of seasonal occupation to around 795.^[10] Dicuil also detailed another set of small islands “nearly all separated by narrow stretches of water” on which for nearly a hundred years lived hermits who had sailed from Ireland.^[11] This clearly fits the geographical layout of the Faroe Islands. Recent pollen analysis has indicated the existence of small-scale settlements from the fifth to sixth centuries on the Faroe Islands and an examination of carbonized barley grains has also signaled two distinct waves of settlement between the fourth to mid-sixth century and late sixth to the eighth century.^[12] Distinctly earlier than the Norse, whose occupation of the Faroes is assigned to the reign of Harald Hárfagri (c.880-930).^[13]

Excavations in 1991 by Margrét Hermanns-Auðardóttir on Iceland’s Westmann Islands have additionally produced early dates to the eighth century, though the controversy over her carbon dating has been vigorous.^[14] An interesting and under-explored site on the headland of Seltjarnarnes beside Reyjakvic also appears to be an early Irish settlement. Spotted from a plane in the 1980s the site features the ruins including eight to ten rings and a figure-of-eight construction; an Irish practice evolved out of status-based restrictions on settlement sizes. Also, a practice said to have spread to the Hebrides and the Northern Isles.^[15]

Figure 1. Þorgeir Helgason, Ruins at Seltjarnarnes.^[16]

Considering the relatively large size of the main ringfort and surrounding buildings, the location of the site on level ground at low altitude and near the critical sea lanes into Reykjavik, it is almost certainly a high-status site.

With respect to Icelandic literature, a brief mention of Irish clergy in the opening of Þorgilsson’s 12th century Íslendingabók provides food for thought. It reads “Christian men were here, whom the Norwegians call papar, but they departed afterward because they would not be here with heathen men; and they left behind them Irish books, and bells, and croziers.”^[17] This is reiterated in the opening of the Landnámabók dated to the second half of the 13th century or later.^[18] The pap element remains extant in a number of place names across the North Atlantic as The Pap Project, pioneered by Barbara Crawford highlights.^[19] The brevity of the Icelandic reference to papar may be an attempt to preclude land claims emerging from the Irish church and/or their patrons.

This leads us to the great paradox of Columba’s legacy. Born in AD 521 to parents of the distinguished Cenél Conaill dynasty, Columba exiled himself from secular life, but in doing so, he compelled secular society to follow. The Donegal poet and Iona monk, Beccán mac Luigdech, memorialised this sacrifice in a rather romantic poem:

He possessed books, renounced fully claims of kinship:

for love of learning he gave up wars, gave up strongholds.

He left chariots, he loved ships, foe to falsehood;

sun-like exile, sailing, he left fame's steel bindings. ^[20]

Columba could never truly escape this world of wars, chariots, and strongholds. He needed patrons, he needed land and his success attracted significant fame. When we read of a few solitary Irish anchorites (papar) in Icelandic literature, we cannot accept them as completely isolated. They were woven into the broader Columban community including elite patrons and their land acquisition concerns. The papar belonged to a powerful federation of monasteries and cells that spanned Ireland, Scotland, North Britain and beyond. Iona, based in Argyl, was widely acknowledged as one of the leading intellectual and cultural centres of northwest Europe, it’s daughter was the famous Lindisfarne on the Northumbrian coast. The curious target of the very first “Viking” raid.

Who would have made the first claims for the Icelandic land the papar visited? Land was the very foundation of power in early medieval Europe. Ownership was key to preserving social standing. Nowhere is this more evident than in the early Irish law-tracts such as Crith Gablach.^[21] So more to the point, how did the Columban church (and other federations) accumulate so much land, and under what terms? A letter written to Ecgberht in 734 by Bede sheds some light.

“There are others, laymen, who have no love for the monastic life nor for military service, who commit a graver crime by giving money to the kings and obtaining land under the pretext of monasteries…these lands they have assigned to them in hereditary right.” ^[22]

This strategy undoubtedly contributed to the widespread success of Columba’s foundation across the North Atlantic and Ireland. With a foundation of noble landholders upholding the Columban network across the North Atlantic region, the incoming Scandinavians faced tough opposition. Yet according to scholarly tradition, from around 800-1050 Norwegians “controlled and colonised the whole of the North Atlantic.” ^[23] This is despite an absence of hard evidence that it was anything such at the beginning of the Viking-Age.^[24]

It wasn’t just the land of these monasteries that were of strategic importance to the elite either. The activities upon them were too. Monasteries were significant creators and distributors of production, stimulating the regional economy through their needs and surpluses. They had relationships with external suppliers, merchants, boat-owners and the royal elite abroad, all of whom depended on safe sea-lanes to function. It was vital for the local political elite to control the functioning of this network in order to fulfill their own gift-giving obligations and protect their power. Interestingly, in aid of their “conquest” model, scholars have said that Iona was destroyed by the Vikings, yet recent archeological evidence has shown the monastery was producing craftwork throughout the Viking Age.^[25] Had the Scandinavians really aggressively conquered the Hebrides early on, where was the political fight-back and the economic damage from that?

It is plausible that the Scandinavian migrants were part of a covert programme of recruitment and resettlement managed by the ambitious Cenél nEóghain dynasty based in Donegal. As the Viking Age began, Cenél nEóghain were in the midst of consolidating and expanding their power. They had managed to force their rivals, Cenél Conaill, into ceding leadership of the Northern Uí Néill and subjugated nine branches of the Airgialla of Central Ulster.^[26] Following the pivotal defeat of Cenél Conaill at the battle of Clóitech in 789, the Cenél nEóghain relocated their headquarters to the Grianán of Aileach in Inishowen. The large hilltop cashel had extensive views across the region. It was a bold move, symbolic of their status and ambition. And according to Brian Lacey, the year before they also burnt down Colum Cille’s church (belonging to the Cenél Conaill) as part of a series of final blows.^[27] Come 797, Cenél nEóghain’s Áed Oirdnide was recognised as the High King of Ireland and by 806^[28] we witness a clear strategic move by Aed to consolidate an alliance with Armagh through the promulgation of St. Patrick’s Law. Armagh’s ambition for primacy over the whole of Ireland has been comprehensively argued by Patrick Wadden.^[29]

As an ambitious, competent and militarily aggressive people based in the north west corner of Ireland, key elements for their preservation and expansion would have included control over nearby sea-lanes, military prowess and effective propaganda. A part of this would require the dismantling of the Dál Riata, located in a critical position on northeastern Irish and western Scottish seaboards. The Annals of Tigernach have recorded the naval prowess of Dal Riata, with their expeditions spanning Orkney to the Isle of Man^[30], but the dynasty was in decline preceding the Viking Age. The encroaching kingdom of the Picts who had taken over the territory in which Iona lay, would also need to be checked in subtle ways.

The work of the Columban foundation had helped soften the power of the Picts through a dependency on Gaelic for their administrative infrastructures that upheld social order.^[31] However, the Cenél nEóghain would need reinforcements in order to effectively make further headway into occupying the very veins of their existence. They would need to bolster their naval hardware, take control of the North Atlantic sea lanes and monopolise the trading vessels of those sea lanes that led out to Norway and via the Irish Sea. Creating wealth from the land is a must, but without effective distribution and the capacity to exchange, it amounts to very little. As part of a learned society with information travelling in from Europe, the elite would have been aware of the ways in which foreign kingdoms had been consolidating their power and they may well have been versed in the classical Greek understanding of sea power, thalassocracy.^[32]

In order to implement this political strategy, the incoming Scandinavians would need land in exchange for their maritime services. As noted, the Columban church had built a significant land portfolio. It is also likely that nobility across the Northern U’Neill had acquired plots of land along the western seaboard in the form of diplomatic gifts and exchange too. Therefore, the terse entry of 794 reporting the “devastation of all the islands of Britain by heathens” ^[33] could relate to the settlement process which undoubtedly would have required some demolition and repurposing. And much to the “devastation” of the Christian clergy, a permanent encroachment onto their land.^[34] Any booty acquired could have been gifted to the new recruits who then shipped it back to Norway via their trusted trading networks, at which point they were dismantled and reconfigured as various expressions of affection and exotic symbols of achievement for families to take to their graves.

The terse account of heathen raiding at the start of the Viking Age arouses suspicion. The choice to reference “all the islands of Britain'' requires the reader to infer which islands they were because it certainly couldn’t have been all. The lack of specificity is suggestive of a need for a degree of political discretion. The term “heathens” may well have been politicised early on as a means of ensuring the principal driving power eluded suspicion whilst fostering a consciousness of Ireland as a Christian nation pitted against the other. In the decades prior to this event when monasteries were being relentlessly burnt by competing factions^[35], the annals refrained from naming political actors too. Perhaps this is heathens being used as scapegoats in political propaganda. The lack of any subsequent reports in the annals of retaliation towards heathens for this early “devastation” is also suggestive of localised political backing.

The proceeding raids, including the procurement of cattle-tribute in both Ireland and Alba in 798 plus the repeated incursions onto Iona may reflect efforts to cover the costs of the new naval force and critically, strongarm a re-orientation of key islands towards dependency upon Áed Oirdnide and the Cenél nEóghain. This dependency could have meant using their newly contracted Scandinavian fleet for distribution, their select merchants for resources and tributes for sea route protection and defense; key for pilgrims and trade. Resist and face the wrath of their navy.

Over time, the leaders amongst the Scandinavian migrants of the North Atlantic will have inevitably increased their value to the Northern Uí Néill elite. Ireland was a highly stratified, status-conscious island and it could take up to three generations to attain an improvement in status. Once achieved though, we should witness a testing of boundaries and a push for greater independence and public acknowledgement. Such is the nature of developing interdependence. In the annals we witness a progression from heathens to foreigners, dark or fair foreigners, specific Scandinavian names, and the announcement of alliances.^[36] The picture also becomes increasingly complex as fresh waves of Scandinavian migrants arrive, kings across Ireland create and break off strategic alliances and independent groups offer their services.^[37]

At one critical juncture in 866, Áed Findliath, just after he’d attained the position of high-king of Ireland in 866, decided to diminish the power of the Scandinavians by plundering their strongholds across the north, taking away heads, flocks and herds by battle.^[38] The severing of their relationship may well have been of dire economic consequence to the Cenél nEóghain in the long term due to their grip over the sea-lanes loosening and trade diminishing. In 939 the annals also report the plundering of the Insi Gall (Hebrides) by Muirchertach son of Niall^[39] possibly as revenge due to an attack on the royal fort at Aileach the year before. Relations certainly experienced turbulence.

Throughout the contemporary sources we also find enigmatic mention of a place called Laithlind, Laithlinn and Lothind. In 848 a deputy of ‘the King of Laithlinn’ reportedly participated in a battle in the southwest of Dublin. In 853 a man by the name of Amlaib, son of the king of Laithlind then arrived to take tribute from the irish.^[40] Scholars are generally split between support of the Hebrides as the destination of this land^[41] or an economically vibrant region of Norway on the other. Given there were regularly up to 120 kings in Ireland at any one time during the Viking-Age^[42], it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Áed Findliath, king of Aileach, appeased his increasingly valuable Scandinavian friends in the Hebrides with the privilege of a royal title and a very small kingdom. If the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland are to be believed then in order to consolidate the close alliance between the kingdoms, Áed provided his daughter as Amlaib’s wife.^[43] It could also be possible that Cenél nEóghain developed the plan to secure the sea lanes from the start in association with a high-status Norwegian clan.

A level of intimate social connection between the Kings of Aileach and the Scandinavian diaspora is certainly indicated by the character of five silver hoards discovered on or close to Ailech, their royal centre. The hoards are composed entirely of non-numismatic material and suggest the act of tribute or gift exchange.^[44] However, unlike the Hebrides and the eastern seaboard of Ireland, there are no Norse-influenced place names in Donegal and just one rural Viking-Age settlement with Scandinavian affinities has been excavated thus far. This absence of Scandinavian legacy is probably as much testament to the strength of an Irish national identity nurtured by the learned classes, as it was to the decentralised politics and early segregation of Scandinavians in the Hebrides.

The ambitious campaign to re-orientate the islands and coastline of the North Atlantic sea-lanes to dependency upon Cenél nEóghain and the Northern U’Neil inevitably encountered its challenges, such is the nature of interdependence between people, groups and nascent kingdoms. The Scandinavian diaspora developed a strong legacy in the Hebrides and although their value to the Irish kings and their kin was no doubt felt and increased over time; demanding strategic marriage alliances, additional land and possibly a kingship, there was always an element of being other to the natives, particularly to the ruling kings and clans of Donegal. Even the development of high-status Hiberno-Scandinavian identities could ultimately not trump the power of being a native nobleman. In part, it was the impenetrability of Ireland, of Irishness, that encouraged their movement further north into Iceland. Through distant mirrors we see the flecks of that Irish influence glinting beneath the lava flows and sparkling in the rhythms of their verse. And so, it comes as no surprise when we hear reports from geneticists that the greatest genetic affinity of ancient Icelanders is with the modern-day people of the Hebrides, and of Donegal.

^[1] Aidan O’Hara, Atlantic Gaels: Links between Donegal and The Hebrides (Lewis: The Islands Book Trust 2013): 5.

^[2] Jon C. Henderson, The Atlantic Iron Age Settlement and Identity in the First Millenium BC (London; New York: Routledge, 2007), 195.

^[3]See Barbara Hillers. "Voyages between Heaven and Hell: Navigating the Early Irish Immram Tales." Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 13 (1993): 66-81. Accessed May 7, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/20557257.

^[4] “Navigatio sancti Brendani abbatis”. Trans. Donoghue, 1893. Accessed April 20, 2020, https://markjberry.blogs.com/StBrendan.pdf

^[5] Ian Fisher, Early Medieval Sculpture in the West Highlands and Islands, Edinburgh University Press (2004).

^[6] Kristján Ahronson, Into the Ocean (2015): 160-161

^[7] Brian Lacy, Archaeological Survey of County Donegal: A Description of the Field Antiquities of the County from the Mesolithic Period to the 17th Century A.D (Lifford: Donegal County Council, 1983)

^[8] Kristján Ahronson, Into the Ocean (2015): 122

^[9] Simon V. Arge, The Landnám in the Faroes. Arctic Anthropology 28 (2),101-120

^[10] Dicuil, Liber De Mensura Orbis Terrae. Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition. Chapters 7-15. https://celt.ucc.ie//published/T090000-001/index.html

^[11] Ibid 7:15

^[12] Simon V. Arge et al. “Viking Faroes: Settlement, Paleoeconomy, and Chronology”. Journal of the North Atlantic. 7 (2014): 1-17.

^[13] A Forte et al, eds, Viking Empires. Cambridge University Press (2005): 304

^[14] Margrét Hermanns-Auðardóttir, “The early settlement of Iceland: Results based on excavations of a Merovingian and Viking farm site at Herjólfsdalur in the Westmann Islands, Iceland.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 24 (1991): 1–9. DOI: 10.1080/00293652.1991.9965524. For controversy see: Sigrid Kaland “Comments on the early settlement of Iceland”, Norwegian Archaeological Review, 24:1 (1991):10-12, DOI: 10.1080/00293652.1991.9965525 and Ditlev Mahler & Claus Malmros “Comments on the early settlement of Iceland”, Norwegian Archaeological Review, 24:1 (1991):14-18 DOI: 10.1080/00293652.1991.9965527

^[15] Allan Lane, “Ceramic and Cultural Change in the Hebrides AD 500-1300”, Northern World: Celtic-Norse Relationships in the Irish Sea in the Middle Ages 800-1200, ed. Jón Viðar Sigurðsson; Timothy Bolton (Leiden: BRILL 2014), 144.

^[16] Þorgeir Helgason, Ruins at Seltjarnarnes, digital photograph, accessed May 5 2020, https://icelandmag.is/article/mysterious-rings-reykjavik-possibly-ruins-irish-settlements-dating-viking-age

^[17] Jakob Benediktsson, editor. Landnámabók (Reykjavík, Hið Íslenzka fornritafélag, 1968), 4-5.

^[18] The Book of Settlements: Landnamabok, trans. Hermann Palsson and Paul Edward (Canada: University of Manitoba Press, 1972):5

^[19] “The Pap Project”, accessed May 5, 2020, http://www.paparproject.org.uk

^[20] Thomas Owen Clancy and Gilbert Markus, “The Poems of Beccán mac Luigdech”, The Earliest Poetry of a Celtic Monastery (1995):149

^[21] Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (Dublin: DIAS 1998)

^[22] David Rollason, Early Medieval Europe 300-1050 (Oxon: Routledge 2018): 325

^[23] Stefan Brink and Neil Price. The Viking World. (Oxon: Routledge 2008): 4. Cited in David Griffiths, Antiquity 93, no. 368 (2019): 468–77. doi:10.15184/aqy.2018.199.

^[24] Macniven, “Modelling Viking Migration to the Inner Hebrides”, Journal of the North Atlantic, vol.4 (2013): 9

^[25] Cambell, Ewan et al. Furnishing an Early Medieval Monastery: New Evidence from Iona. Medieval Archeology, 63/2, 2019. 329.

^[26] Darren McGettigan, The Vikings of Aileach and the Vikings, AD 800-1060 (Dublin: The Four Courts Press 2020): 56.

^[27] Brian Lacey, Medieval and Monastic Derry (Dublin: Four Courts, 2014): 38-42.

^[28] AU806.5

^[29] Patrick Wadden, “Church, Apostle and Nation in Early Ireland” Medieval Worlds (2017). https://www.medievalworlds.net/0xc1aa5576%200x00369e51.pdf

^[30] “The Annals of Tigernach” CELT Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition, accessed May 7 2020, https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T100002A/index.html

^[31] See Gilbert Márkus, Conceiving a Nation : Scotland to 900 AD. The New History of Scotland: Vol. 1. Edinburgh University Press, 2017.

^[32] See Arnaldo Momiglian, “Sea-Power in Greek Thought.” The Classical Review, Vol. 58, No. 1 (May, 1944):. 1-7

^[33] AU 794.7 DOI: https://celt.ucc.ie//published/T100001A/

^[34] This disgust at living beside heathens is utilised in the Landnámabók to explain why papar left upon the arrival of the Norse. See Jakob Benediktsson, editor. Landnámabók (Reykjavík, Hið Íslenzka fornritafélag, 1968), 4-5.

^[35] AU 775.2 The burning of Ard Macha (Armagh), AU 775.3 The Burning of Cell Dara (Kildare), AU775.4 The burning of Glenn da Locha (Glendalough), AU775.10, The burning of Inis Baíthéni. AU778.2 The burning of Cluain Moccu Nóis (Clonmacnoise) AU779.4 The burning of Cell Dara, AU779.5 The burning of Cluain Mór Maedóc (Clonmore), AU779.6 The burning of Cell Deilge (Kildarkey), AU780.1 The burning of Ail Cluaithe.

^[36] AU 857 for example.

^[37] See the Life of St. Findan when an opposing chieftain contracts Norsemenn to kidnap him. “Life of St. Findan”, section 1, p.157, https://celt.ucc.ie//published/T201041/index.html accessed May 1 2020.

^[38] AU, 866

^[39] This Muirchertach could also be the inspiration behind Mykjartan in the Saga of the People of Laxardal whose daughter, Melkorka, was taken as a slave to Iceland.

^[40] Arne Kruse, “The Norway to Be: Laithlind and Avaldsnes” Traversing the Inner Seas ed. Christian Coolijmans. Edinburgh: The Scottish Society for Northern Studies, 2017.

^[41] See Donnchadh Ó Corráin “Vikings in Ireland and Scotland in the Ninth Century,” Peritia Vol.12, (1998).

^[42] John Bryne, Irish Kings and High Kings (Dublin : Four Courts Press), 2001.

^[43] FA 292, 113 https://celt.ucc.ie//published/T100017/index.html. Marriage alliances as a political strategy is also exemplified by Áed Findliath in 858 when he marries the daughter of the king of Pictland, Cinaed mac Ailpin -AU 913

^[44] Emer Purcell and John Sheehan, “Viking Dublin: Enmities, Alliances and the Cold Gleam of Silver”. .M. Hadley and L. Ten Harkle (eds), Everyday Life in Viking 'Towns': Social Approaches to Viking Age Towns in Ireland and England c.850-1100, 2013: 29-30.