The Vikings

How should we assess the impact of Viking raids on Irish society and the church? Firstly, it is important to bear in mind just how long the so-called Viking period in Irish history lasted. The ninth and tenth centuries comprise a period of two hundred years during which Viking activity varied greatly in extent and intensity. If, for example, we averaged out the number of recorded raids in the period between 795 and 836, that is in the period before attempts at Scandinavian settlement in Ireland were made, bearing in mind, however, that we may not have a record of all the raids which did occur, it works out at about one raid every eighteen months. This would certainly not have increased noticeably the level of violence in Irish society. Between 795 and 820 for example - that is, a twenty-five-year period - the annals record twenty-six acts of violence committed by Viking raiding parties. This compares with eighty-seven acts of violence committed by the Irish themselves.

As for individual monasteries attacked, it is true that some of the smaller monasteries foundered during the Viking age, but the extent to which the Vikings were the major contributory factor has yet to be determined. It is certain that the major monasteries, such as Armagh or Clonmacnoise, managed to survive with their economic resources undiminished. It is possible that the demise of some of the smaller monastic foundations may have owed more to local political circumstances and the encroachment of the more powerful monastic houses, with their expanding network of paruchiae or filiations, than to Viking raiding parties. The monastery of Bangor, for example, was raided by the Vikings in 823 and 824. Bangor's location was certainly very exposed to Viking attack from the sea, but the weakness of the Dal nAraide dynasty, its political support, may have been a more important factor in its decline and apparent extinction than Viking raids. Only more detailed research into the history of individual monasteries will provide an accurate assessment of the Viking impact on the church.

Viking activity in Ireland entered a new and more intensive phase after 837 with greater inland penetration and the first attempts at the establishment of permanent Scandinavian bases in the country. By contrast with England, over half of which was under the control of Vikings by the end of the ninth century, permanent Viking settlement in Ireland was confined to coastal areas. How is this contrast to be explained? Nobody has yet suggested that the Irish were more effective militarily at repelling the Vikings than the English. Indeed there would be little evidence to support such a hypothesis.

One explanation offered by historians is that the Irish polity, the secular power structures, were so complex and fragmented, that there was such a multiplicity of petty kingdoms in Ireland in a continuous state of flux, that it proved difficult to effect a permanent conquest or colonisation of large areas of territory. It is possible, however, that it is not so much a contrast between the more fragmented polity of Ireland and the existence of larger and more consolidated political units in England, facilitating more extensive take-over, which accounts for the more restricted extent of territorial settlements in Ireland by comparison with the Scandinavian settlements in England or Francia during the same period.

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From the Appletree Press title: The People of Ireland (currently out of print).
Also see A Little History of Ireland.