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The battle was a bloody struggle of men who fought on foot. From what we know of the warfare of the time we can visualise it as a clash of two lines of closely packed forces with the best men, the champions and leaders, in front and the meaner folk scrambling and pushing behind. There was then no science of war; there was no ability to manreuvre, nor appreciation that more than blows was necessary for victory. Opponents were slung out in tightly packed lines of battle, their shields held close, one to the other, in long 'shield walls' from the slight shelter of which men hacked and stabbed at their enemies to the limit of their strength and courage. According to the Irish account of Clontarf and the events of the time which has been translated under the title The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, Brian's army was in a 'battle phalanx, compact, huge, disciplined', and the men stood so close together in the lines on either side as they faced one another that a four-horsed chariot could be driven on their heads from one flank to the other. The Norse Saga of Burnt Njal says that both armies were drawn up in battle array. Both records mention banners. It is claimed that the Irish had three score and ten of them, of many colours; the Saga says that the Norse banners were borne before their 'mid battle', or centre. These banners mayor may not have been flags. It is possible that they were, like Harold's standard as shown in the Bayeux Tapestry, actual figures of dragons, birds or other creatures. Although the details are scanty, the evidence suggests a tripartite arrangement of forces that was common to both armies, an arrangement of centre, or main battle, and two wings; that is, the universal method of drawing up fighting forces that was in use down the centuries. The Norse chronicler, who omits the Leinstermen from his scheme, says that Sigurd led the 'mid battle', Brodar one wing and Sitric the other. Opposite these were Brian's grandson Turlough in the centre and two Norse allies of the Irish, Wolf the Quarrelsome and Ospak, one on either wing. The Irish accounts speak of three lines, one behind the other, on either side. On their side the Dal Chais were in front, the remainder of the Munstermen behind them, and the Connachtmen in a third formation, presumably behind that again. Brian's Norse allies, mentioned also by the Irish, were, according to this description, formed on a wing. The Irish say that their enemies placed Mael-mora's overseas allies in front, the Dublinmen behind them, and the Leinstermen in a third line. Once begun, the fighting was continued from high tide to high tide, through the day. It was a conflict that was 'wounding, noisy, bloody, crimsoned, terrible, fierce, quarrelsome' -the chroniclers, rising to the occasion, pile on the expletives. Hour by hour the warriors clashed and drew off to draw breath, to rest their arms, to rearrange their front-clashed and drew off, and then fell on again, swaying and stumbling. The wings, says the Saga, fell on one another, 'and there was a very hard fight'. Individuals were outstanding. Brodar 'went through the host of the foe and felled all the foremost that stood there', until he met Wolf, who struck him down three times and send him flying into the near-by wood of Tomar. Turlough, Brian's grandson, brought on a struggle around Sigurd's standard. He killed the standard-bearer, and when another man took up the banner 'there was again a hard fight'. He too was killed, 'and so on one after the other all who stood near him'. Sigurd called upon Thorstein, son of Hall of the Side, to bear the banner, but when he was about to take it Asmund the White cried, 'Don't bear the banner, for all they who bear it get their deathl' Then Sigurd called on Hrafn the Red, but his answer was 'Bear thine own devil thyselfl' Soon Sigurd, his banner under his cloak, was pierced through with a spear and killed. Much of this may be no more than the romance of the story-tellers and saga-men, the fictitious element intruded on the basic record of facts; but the predominance of individual champions over the rest, which waS part of the warfare of the age, must be factual. The Norsemen, because of their superior armour and weapons, and because fighting was second nature to them, may in this way have had an advantage, man for man, over all but the best of their Irish opponents. They were well equipped. They wore byrnies, or mail shirts of interlinked iron rings, and carried circular shields, and their weapons were axes, swords, spears and bows. The short-hafted, wide-bladed axes, the weapons of the Viking galleys, could be grasped with both hands to add weight to their blows; they must have been as terrible in a melee on land as they were on shipboard in a sea fight. And the Norse were renowned swordsmen, with a mystic regard for their straight, broad-bladed, often beautifully omamented swords. The armoury of 'the terrible, nimble wolf-hounds of victorious Banba' was little different from that of their foes. The Irish too had swords and spears and carried shields with metal bosses. Their leaders wore crested helmets; some even bore the enemy's weapons, the 'Lochlann axes'. They do not seem to have had armour; the only garments of theirs which are mentioned are cloth ones. Neither side was well equipped with missile weapons. Although both had bows, neither the Norse nor the Irish were renowned archers. The Irish missile, then and later, was the cast-ing spear, javelin, or dart. At Clontarf, says The War of the Gaedhi/ with the Gaill, they had 'darts with variegated silken strings, thick set with bright, dazzling, shining nails, to be violendy cast at the heroes of valour and bravery'. The string was the thong which was retained by the thrower to ensure retrieval of his missile; such throwing weapons were used by the Irish for centuries. Whatever advantage their armour and their tradition of fighting gave them, however, the Norsemen were outfought. As the day wore on 'the fight broke out throughout all the host'; every man was engaged. By evening the 'shield wall' in front of what was left of Sitric's men collapsed. Rout followed. The Norse and the Leinstermen, with their backs to the Tolka and the sea, were borne further backward by the pressure of the victors. 'They retreated to the sea like a herd of cows in heat, from sun, and from gadflies, and from insects, and they were pursued closely, rapidly and lighdy; and the foreigners were drowned in great numbers in the sea'. The chroniclers supply the details; most of which, we must suspect, are imaginary. And in the midst of this victory Brian died. Before the batde a 'shieldburg' had been 'thrown round him', that is, he was left under guard behind his line. After the rout had commenced, and when most of the guard had gone off to join in the pursuit-the occasion of plunder-Brodar, the sea-rover, who had lurked through the later part of the day in the wood to which he had earlier fled, came forth. He saw 'that there were few men by the shieldburg', and, breaking through these, he forced his way to Brian and 'hewed at the king'. Although Clontarf was clouded by the death of Brian, Emperor of the Gael, and although it was followed by an era of strife that seems like the aftermath of a defeat, it was still-as a combat -a mighty victory, and was remembered as such throughout the Gaelic and the Norse world. To have overcome 'men of such hardihood that nothing can withstand them', men on whose mail shirts 'no steel would bite', was a proud achievement. The literature of Clontarf is extensive, but not all valuable. There are two sub-contemporary accounts, those in-(I) The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill (edited by J. H. Todd and published in the Rolls Series), and (2.) Njals Saga (edited in various editions by· G. W. Dasent as The Story of Burnt Njal; the passages relating to the battle were edited and published by Dr Colm 0 Lochlainn in 1933 under the title The Story of King Brian's Battle). The most detailed and reliable of the modern accounts of the battle is Rev. Professor John Ryan's 'The Battle of Clontarf' in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, LXVIII (1938), pp. 1 if. This contains in its footnotes an extensive bibliography. See also, among many popular descriptions, Mrs Stopford Green's paper on Clontarf in Irish History Studies, 2nd series (1927), pp. 63 if. Mrs Green, in common with many earlier writers (including W. St J. Joyce in his Ireland's Battles and Battlefields, published in 1892, p. 8), places the battlefield in the district between the mouths of the Liffey and Tolka-i.e. from Drum-condra southwards. For an estimate of the Vikings as fighters see H. Nickerson, 'Warfare in the Roman Empire, the Dark and Middle Ages' in Warfare, published by Harrap in 1924, pp. 284 f; for an enquiry regarding the time of high tide on the day of the battle see Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, VII (1857-61), pp. 495 if; for correspondence regarding a mound said to mark the site of the battlefield see The Irish Independent, Dublin for 2-12 January 1907. Taken from Irish Battles by G.A. Hayes-McCoy, published by Appletree Press. Further reading: A Little History of Ireland by Martin Wallace with illustrations by Ian McCullough. Click here for more information on the book.
Battle of Clontarf - part 1 |
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