Customer Reviews

The Vikings In Ireland (Exploring)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an excellent overview of the subject. Presents comprehensive information in plain and simple language. It didn't get the fifth star only because it lacks a bibliography. There are no references for someone who'd like to read further on the subject. Otherwise, recommended.

This little book is written simply, in a style suitable for interested young people but is nonetheless loaded with information new to me. To the extent that events over 1,000 years ago are known, Llywelin does a good job of summarizing events and discussing their overall importance in the development of the place we no know as Ireland. The author, also correctly, never says that the Vikings were repulsed or strategically defeated. They simply melded with the the Celtic population to become the present-day Irish.

Still some events are more legendary than real. The epic battle of Clontarf [April 23, 1014] was probably not so epic. Reportedly, Brodir of Man, while 'running away from the battle', stumbled on Boru's tent, killing him. If he did so, Brodir must have been 'retreating' into the Irish lines, a most peculiar thing to do. Far more likely is that Boru was slain in a rear area by a Viking assault that had penetrated the lines. Also, the statement that the Vikings were discomfited and drowned because the retreating tide had pulled their long ships far from the land is weird. The Vikings were altogether familiar with the effects of tides. At worse, the long ships would have been resting on the beach...and...long ships were designed to be beached. On the other hand, maybe the author means that the tide had come in and anchored long ships were now far from the high tide mark.

This is also weird. If the Vikings, rather uncharacteristically, anchored their war ships, they would have accessed the beach by smaller rowboats...rowboats that would have been guarded. Retreating Vikings would simply have rowed to their long ships. I make a point of this because a couple of long ships have been discovered in a Danish bay. If I can recall rightly, scientific analysis shows that both ships were built of timbers felled in the Dublin area in the early 1100s i.e. the Vikings must have still be thoroughly escounced in Ireland at this time. By simple extrapolation, the Battle of Clontarf probably wasn't the climatic victory many Irish thought.

Nevertheless, the Irish continued to speak Gaelic rather than Scandinavian but, then again, there were always a lot more Irish than 'Vikings.'

Ron Braithwaite author of novels...'Skull Rack' and 'Hummingbird God'...on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico