Vikings of the Irish Sea E-Book

David Griffiths

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 436

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Vikings began raiding islands and monasteries on the Atlantic fringes of Europe in the 790s. The Irish Sea rapidly became one of their most productive hunting grounds. Attacks, battles and destruction were accompanied by trade – in slaves, silver and fine objects. Vikings crossed and re-crossed the Irish Sea in search of land, wealth and power. Raids were followed by settlement, first in fortified camps, and later in towns, market enclaves and rural estates. Vikings came into contact with existing populations in Ireland, Britain and the Isle of Man. Viking paganism, demonstrated by spectacular burials, was gradually eclipsed by Christianity. By 1050, the process of assimilation was well under way, yet Viking influence and distinctiveness did not altogether disappear. This updated edition of Vikings of the Irish Sea takes the sea as its starting point and looks afresh at the story of a supremely opportunistic people who left their mark in ways that still resonate today.

Leseprobe

For Neil,Who found some of it, and lived with the rest

Updated revised edition dedicated to the memory of Douglas Griffiths (1933–2021)

First published 2010

This revised and updated edition first published 2025

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© David Griffiths, 2010, 2012, 2025

The right of David Griffiths to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 75249 854 6

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Preface

Chapter 1 Introduction Vikings

The Irish Sea

‘The Irish Sea Province’

The Irish Sea in the pre-Viking period

Sources of evidence for the Viking period

Chapter 2 Raids and Early Settlement in Ireland

Longphort and dún: the Viking base on land

‘Dark’ and ‘fair’ foreigners, and the ‘Gallgoídil’

Chapter 3 Exporting Violence and Seeking Landfall c.850–c. 1050

Weakness and opportunity: Galloway and Cumbria

From Dublin to Brunanburh

The later tenth and early eleventh centuries

Chapter 4 Land-take and Landscape

Estates and landholding

Territory, boundaries and defence

Meetings and ‘things’

Rural settlement archaeology

Chapter 5 Burial: Changing Rites, New Places

Regional surveys 1: Ireland

Regional surveys 2: The Isle of Man

Regional surveys 3: From the Solway Firth to Wales

Viking-period finds and burial in churchyards

Chapter 6 Trade, Silver and Market Sites

Hoards and currency

Single finds and market sites

Chapter 7 Towns and Urbanisation

Tenth- and eleventh-century Dublin

Anglo-Saxon urbanisation and tenth-century Chester

Trade in the Bristol Channel, and the later Hiberno-Norse towns

Chapter 8 Assimilation and Cultural Change

Burial and commemoration

Religious conversion and Viking motifs

An Irish Sea metalwork tradition?

Architecture: urban and rural

Language and inscriptions

Hybridity and acculturation – the process of cultural change

Chapter 9 Conclusion

List of Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Front Cover: The ‘fishing scene’ stone, Gosforth, Cumbria. Thor and Hymir ride in a boat on a fish-filled sea, as Thor hooks the world serpent. (Ross Trench-Jellicoe)

Back Cover: Sea Stallion from Glendalough, a full-size reconstruction of an Irish-built Viking Ship (Skuldelev 2), passes the north-west of Scotland on its way from Denmark to Dublin, 2007.(© Roskilde Viking Ship Museum)

Figures

CHAPTER 1

1 The Irish Sea region in the Viking period: sites and territories.

2 Scandinavian place-names, mapped from the publications of Gillian Fellows-Jensen and others.

3 Wirral place-names: road sign at Caldy Crossroads. (Author)

CHAPTER 2

4 Viking raids on churches in Ireland. (After Etchingham 1996)

5 Inchmarnock ‘Hostage Stone’. (Reproduced by kind permission of Chris Lowe, © Headland Archaeology)

6 Irish/British ‘insular’ objects found in Viking-period graves in Scandinavia. (After Wamers 1998)

7 Longphort Comparison. (By Peter Drake and Michael Athanson, after Kelly and Maas 1995, Kelly 2015, Simpson 2005, Sheehan 2008)

8 Woodstown finds: a silver ingot, decorated and polyhedral weights, amber beads and an Arabic dirham fragment. (© Waterford Treasures Exhibition)

9 Type 1 building plan, Temple Bar West. (Reproduced by kind permission of Linzi Simpson, © Margaret Gowen & Co.)

CHAPTER 3

10 Chester from the air from North; the Medieval walls echo the Roman plan. (Nick Higham)

11 The Castle Ditch Hillfort, Eddisbury, Cheshire from North, the probable site of the burh founded in 914. (Robert Philpott)

CHAPTER 4

12 A working suggestion for areas of Viking land-holding and settlement before 1050.

13 Isle of Man: sites mentioned in text.

14 The Dyflinarskíri. (Reproduced by kind permission of John Bradley)

15 The lower Dee and Mersey: sites mentioned in text.

16 Morecambe Bay area: sites mentioned in text.

17 Land tenure and Medieval estates in Copeland, Cumbria. (Reproduced by kind permission of Angus Winchester)

18 Northern Cumbria: sites mentioned in text.

19 Scandinavian settlement names in Galloway. (Reproduced by kind permission of Richard Oram)

20 The Medieval territories of the Hiberno-Norse towns. (Reproduced by kind permission of John Bradley)

21 Burials and boundaries in Jurby Parish, Isle of Man, located on (fig. 13). (Reproduced by kind permission of Paul Reilly)

22 Tynwald, St Johns, Isle of Man. (Roger White)

23 Thingwall, Wirral. (Author)

24 Cross Hill, Thingwall, Wirral. (Robert Philpott)

25 Comparison of buildings from rural sites. (By Peter Drake, after Redknap 2000, Bersu 1949, Gelling 1970, Ó Néill 2000)

26 Vowlan Promontory Fort, Ramsey, Isle of Man. (After Bersu 1949)

27 Whetstones and spindle-whorls from Bryant’s Gill, Kentmere, Cumbria. (© National Museums Liverpool)

28 Irby, Wirral, bow-sided buildings under excavation in 1990. (Robert Philpott, © National Museums Liverpool)

CHAPTER 5

29 Viking burials in the Irish Sea Region.

30 Viking burial F196 with iron shield boss (centre), South Great George Street, Dublin. (Reproduced by kind permission of Linzi Simpson, © Margaret Gowen & Co.)

31 Antler comb from Burial F598, South Great George Street, Dublin. (Reproduced by kind permission of Linzi Simpson, © Margaret Gowen & Co.)

32 The Kilmainham-Islandbridge area, Dublin. (After Johnson 2004)

33 Ballateare: Bersu’s excavation. (© Gerhard Bersu and David M. Wilson)

34 Ballateare: the female skull. (© Manx National Heritage)

35 Ballateare: half section of the mound showing central burial pit and overlying features. (© Gerhard Bersu and David M. Wilson)

36 Balladoole: plan of the burial with lintel graves beneath. (Reproduced by kind permission of Julian D. Richards)

37 Balladoole: Bersu’s excavation, the Viking burial with lintel graves beneath. (© Gerhard Bersu and David M. Wilson)

38 Peel Castle, Isle of Man, the ‘Pagan Lady’ burial. (After Freke 2002, © St Patrick’s Isle Trust)

39 Aspatria, Cumbria, finds from burial mound. (After Rooke 1792)

40 Hesket-in the-Forest, Cumbria, finds from burial mound. (After Hodgson 1832)

41 Claughton Hall, Lancashire, oval brooches, bead and belt fitting. (© Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston)

42 Meols: weapons from probable Viking grave found in 1877–78. (Meols Project, © National Museums Liverpool)

43 Cumwhitton: gilded copper-alloy composite oval brooches. (© OA North)

44 Cumwhitton Viking cemetery, Cumbria, plan of the six graves. (After OA North)

45 Cumwhitton: X-ray of inlaid sword pommel. (© OA North)

CHAPTER 6

46 Galloway Hoard, silver bullion from the upper deposit. (Image © National Museums Scotland)

47 Hiberno-Norse silver pennies of Dublin of Phases I, II and III, (c. 995–c. 1050). (© Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge)

48 ‘Early Viking Age hoards’ in Ireland and (below) histogram showing dates of deposition of coin hoards. (Reproduced by kind permission of John Sheehan)

49 Dinorben Hoard of silver arm-rings, Anglesey. (© Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Cymru/National Museum of Wales)

50 Part of the Huxley Hoard of silver arm-rings, Cheshire, found in 2004. (© National Museums Liverpool)

51 Orton Scar, Cumbria, silver bossed penannular brooch. (© National Museums Liverpool/Society of Antiquaries of London)

52 Cuerdale Hoard, Lancashire, some of the silver including ingots, arm-rings, ‘ring-money’ and coins. (Nelson Collection, © National Museums Liverpool)

53 Chester, Castle Esplanade Hoard, found in Chester Ware vessel in 1950. (© Cheshire West and Chester Council)

54 Recent finds: Left: Preston, Lancashire: decorated lead weight; Right: Arnside, Cumbria: hanging bowl mount with human face. (© Portable Antiquities Scheme)

55 Meols: gilded copper-alloy plaque, pyramidal bell. (Meols Project, © National Museums Liverpool); roundel-decorated buckle plate and drinking horn terminal. (After Hume 1863)

56 Meols: copper-alloy bird from merchant’s balance scale (Meols Project, © National Museums Liverpool), with part of a complete example from Jåtten, Rogaland, Norway. (After Petersen 1940)

57 Ness, Wirral, silver ingot. (© National Museums Liverpool)

58 Llanbedrgoch: plan of excavated settlement. (© Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Cymru/National Museum of Wales)

59 South-eastern Anglesey and the Menai Straits: sites mentioned in text.

60 Hack-silver from Llanbedrgoch, Anglesey. (© Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Cymru/National Museum of Wales)

61 Decorated lead weights from Llanbedrgoch, Anglesey. (© Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Cymru/National Museum of Wales)

CHAPTER 7

62 Dublin Area: sites mentioned in text.

63 Dublin: plan of major excavations, by Peter Drake.

64 Dublin, Type 1 building, Fishamble Street Excavations. (© National Museum of Ireland)

65 Dublin: Fishamble Street excavations in progress. (© National Museum of Ireland)

66 Comparison of buildings from urban sites. (By Peter Drake, after Wallace 1992, Bourke 1995, Hurley et al 1997, Hill 1997)

67 Comparison of sunken-featured buildings. (By Peter Drake, after Ward 1994, Morris 1983, Wallace 1992)

68 Dublin: bone trial or motif piece bearing Ringerike-style designs. (© National Museum of Ireland)

69 Chester: plan of major excavations, by Peter Drake.

70 Chester: cellared buildings, Lower Bridge Street Excavation. (© Cheshire West and Chester Council)

71 Chester: Lower Bridge Street, reconstruction of Type IV cellared buildings. (© Cheshire West and Chester Council)

72 Comparison of cellared buildings: Chester and Waterford. (By Peter Drake after Mason 1985, Hurley et al 1997)

73 Identical Borre/Jellinge-style disc-brooches from High Street Dublin (with secondary pin attached) and Hunter Street, Chester. (© National Museum of Ireland/© Cheshire West and Chester Council)

74 Bristol and Waterford, plans of the eleventh-/twelfth-century towns, by Peter Drake.

75Left: St Olave’s Church, Chester (Robert Philpott); Right: St Olaf’s Church, Waterford with Medieval masonry exposed at street level. (Author)

CHAPTER 8

76 Part of the 1815 Halton Moor Hoard, Lancashire. (British Museum)

77 Gosforth Cross 1 (Ross Trench-Jellicoe) and drawing of its decorative schemes. (After Collingwood 1927)

78 Kirk Andreas Cross 121/95, Isle of Man. Sigurd roasts the dragon Fafnir’s heart over flames and licks his burnt thumb. (© National Museums Liverpool)

79 Hogback found in 2004 at Bidston, Wirral. (Ross Trench-Jellicoe, reproduced by kind permission of Richard Bailey)

80 Gosforth, Cumbria: the ‘Warrior’s Tomb’ hogback with battle-scene visible on side facing. (Ross Trench-Jellicoe)

81 Kirk Michael Cross 101/74, Isle of Man, carved by Gautr. Decorated with Borre ring-chain, with runic inscriptions upper left and right. (© National Museums Liverpool)

82 Kirk Braddan Cross shaft 136/109, Isle of Man. A fine example of animal art of the tenth-century Mammen Style. (Ross Trench-Jellicoe)

83 Circle-head crosses: (a) Cumbrian Type; (b) Cheshire Type, with distribution map. (Reproduced by kind permission of Richard Bailey)

84 The Smalls Reef, Pembrokeshire, Urnes-style sword guard. (© Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Cymru/National Museum of Wales)

85 ‘Hybrid’ Irish Sea style metalwork of the tenth century: a polyhedral-headed ringed pin from Crook Street, Chester, and two buckles from Peel Castle. (Author)

86 Strap ends and buckles: (a) Peel; (b) Cumwhitton; (c) Carlisle; (d) Golden Lane, Dublin. (After Freke 2002; © OA North; © Gabor Thomas 2000; © Edmond O’Donovan, Margaret Gowen & Co.)

87 Kirk Braddan Cross 138, Isle of Man; the runic inscription reads: Hross-Ketill betrayed in a truce his own oath-fellow. (Ross Trench-Jellicoe)

COLOUR SECTION

1 The Irish Sea from space. (© NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission)

2 The landscape of Sognefjord, Norway. (Author)

3Maen Achwyfan (Whitford, Flintshire), sandstone standing cross dated to c. 1000. (Author)

4 The Braaid settlement site, Isle of Man. (Nick Higham)

5 Earthworks showing unexcavated longhouse settlement at Linglow Hill, Cumbria. (Nick Higham)

6 One of a series of watercolours depicting objects from the Kilmainham/Islandbridge burials, Dublin, by James Plunket, 1847. (© National Museum of Ireland)

7 Camp Keeill Vael, Balladoole, Isle of Man: Viking burial on boundary towards lower left. (Nick Higham)

8 Balladoole: the reconstructed stone ship-setting. (Roger White)

9 St Patrick’s Isle/Peel Castle, Isle of Man, from west. The tenth-century burials were immediately north of the roofless cathedral at the east perimeter. (Nick Higham)

10 Cumwhitton, Cumbria: OA North photographers record the burials inside temporary excavation shelter, 2004. (© OA North)

11 Cumwhitton: artistic reconstruction of Grave 5 by Dominic Andrews. (By permission of OA North)

12 Meols, from the East. (Robert Philpott)

13 Meols: ringed pins. (Meols Project, © National Museums Liverpool)

14 Chester: a reconstruction of the tenth-century town from the south-west, by D.P. Astley and A.M. Beckett. (© Cheshire West and Chester Council)

15 Whithorn: Reconstruction of Type 1 house. (Robert Philpott)

16 Galloway Hoard, the vessel and its contents. (Image © National Museums Scotland)

PREFACE

I started writing this book in 2003, but little progress was made until another, somewhat larger, publication on the trading site of Meols was completed towards the end of 2007. This book’s origins go back much further, however, to my schooldays. Thanks largely to some inspiring teaching, I developed an interest in archaeology and in the local history of my home area: Wirral, and neighbouring parts of Cheshire, Wales and south Lancashire. I became fascinated by what were still widely known as the Dark Ages and wondered about the role that the sea had played in those remote times. I was brought up in a house with an open view across the Dee Estuary, and my late father, Douglas Griffiths, was a sailing enthusiast. Since he built a small plywood dinghy from a kit in the early 1970s, and later traded up to a small cruising yacht, the estuary and the Irish Sea became open to exploration. Sailing passages from the Dee to the Menai Straits, to Howth near Dublin, to the Isle of Man, to Kirkcudbright, and to Piel Island in the Barrow Channel, were all completed over the following years.

I studied history and archaeology as an undergraduate, being fortunate in that my university, Durham, was staffed with Medievalists of exceptional calibre, and I went on to write a PhD on a topic not far removed from that of this book (although this is not ‘the book of the thesis’). I spent many hours taking up the valuable time of museum curators in Chester, Liverpool, Douglas, Carlisle, Belfast and Edinburgh, and was generously allowed by Patrick Wallace to occupy a desk in the National Museum of Ireland for a summer, in order to familiarise myself with the Dublin finds. I visited Peel and was shown the recently excavated burial material by David Freke. I saw the Peter Street and Olaf Street excavations at Waterford taking place, and I spent some weeks digging on Peter Hill’s excavation at Whithorn. I was involved in creating the major ‘Silver Saga’ exhibition of the Cuerdale Hoard at Liverpool Museum in 1990, and contributed to the related guide, conference and book.1 Ross Trench-Jellicoe and I spent many days on the road, visiting the churches and stone sculpture sites of Cumbria, Lancashire, Galloway and Ireland, where I benefited from his deep knowledge of early Medieval art and iconography. I owe a special debt of gratitude to my PhD supervisor and examiners, Chris Morris, the late Rosemary Cramp and James Graham-Campbell, for overseeing my fledgling years as a researcher. I also spent an unforgettable year as a visiting student at the University of Tromsø, Norway, under the guidance of Reidar Bertelsen and the late Olav Sverre Johansen.

Subsequently, I have been lucky to take part in Mark Redknap’s splendid research project at Llanbedrgoch, supervising the excavation of House 1 in 1997–8, and to see the Cumwhitton grave finds as they were lifted from the ground in 2004. Attending the XV Viking Congress at Cork in 2005 took me for the first time to the newly-discovered Viking site at Woodstown, and across the steep Atlantic swell to Skellig Michael, the scene of a terrible Viking raid in 824. Writing this book has revealed to me not only how endlessly fascinating its subject is, but how much more there is yet to know about it, now and in the future. What follows is necessarily conditioned by my own strengths as an archaeologist, and to some extent a historian. I am not a philologist, a runologist, or a biologist. Needless to say, the mistakes are all my own.

* * *

A large number of friends and colleagues have helped me with illustrations, commentaries and technical assistance in putting this book together. Photographs and other images are acknowledged in the List of Illustrations. I am especially grateful in this regard to Patrick Wallace, Andy Halpin and Aoife McBride of the National Museum of Ireland; Mark Redknap of National Museums and Galleries of Wales; Robert Philpott of National Museums Liverpool; Eamonn McEneaney and Rosemary Ryan of the Waterford Treasures Exhibition; Linzi Simpson and Ed O’Donovan of Margaret Gowen & Co.; Ruth Johnson of Dublin City Council; Alan Lupton and Adam Parsons of Oxford Archaeology North; Peter Carrington and Simon Ward of the Grosvenor Museum, Chester; Paul Weatherall of Manx National Heritage; the late Mark Blackburn of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Roger Bland and Daniel Pett of the Portable Antiquities Scheme; the late Ole Crumlin-Pedersen and Rikke Johansen of the Roskilde Viking Ship Museum; Chris Lowe of Headland Archaeology; Nick Higham of the University of Manchester and Gabor Thomas of the University of Reading. I am privileged to thank Sir David Wilson, the late John Bradley, Richard Bailey, the late Ben Edwards, Julian D. Richards, John Sheehan, Richard Oram, Paul Reilly and Angus Winchester for their advice and generous permissions to reproduce images from their own publications.

John Sheehan, Stephen Harrison, Fiona Edmonds, Ross Trench-Jellicoe and Roger White read through the text, all or in part, saving me from countless errors, lapses of style and slip-ups. The book was first copy-edited by Tricia Hallam. Advice on DNA-related matters well outside my area of expertise was given by Steve Harding of Nottingham University. Ian Cartwright and Alison Wilkins of the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford University, gave essential technical assistance with the illustrations. Several of the maps and comparative plans are the work of Peter Drake. Mike Athanson helped me prepare the distribution maps in GIS. I owe a particularly keen debt of gratitude to Robert Philpott, Roger White and Ross Trench-Jellicoe, without whose friendship, good humour, generosity, candidness and photographic skills, my efforts would have foundered a long time ago.

Preface to Updated Edition

A decade and a half have passed since this book was first written. It has attracted a substantial readership and appears on numerous university reading lists. It now feels that the right time has arrived for an updated edition, with colour images and a redesigned text. More discoveries have come to light in the intervening years. Few if any Viking-period settlements around the Irish Sea have been newly identified since 2010, but there have been many individual finds of objects, a handful of Viking-period burials, and some more hoards; the Galloway Hoard, found in 2014, is the most spectacular of these. Equally importantly to scholarship, there have been many new publications covering old and new evidence, providing interpretation and synthesis. Whilst much of what was written in the first edition of this book still holds good, the text has been updated and refreshed throughout, with the addition of new information, images and references. I would like to thank Clare Downham, Nancy Edwards, Jane Kershaw and Stephen Harrison for the benefit of their extensive knowledge and advice.

Is acher in gaíth in-nocht,

Bitter is the wind tonight,

Fu fúasna fairggae findfholt;

it stirs up the white-waved sea;

Ní ágor réimm Mora Minn

I do not fear the coursing of the Irish Sea

dond láechraid lainn úa Lothlind.

by the fierce warriors of Lothlind.

(Stanza from a ninth-century poem in Old Irish, St Gall Codex 904, Folio 112. Thurneysen 1981, 39; translation courtesy of ASNC, Cambridge. ‘Mora Minn’ literally means clear sea but is widely accepted in this instance as a synonym for the Irish Sea.)

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this book is to bring together a disparate archaeological and historical subject in a region defined by common access to a relatively small and semi-enclosed sea (colour image 1), rather than in the more familiar terrestrial context of a country or national landmass. It is universally acknowledged that the sea was the principal highway of the Viking world. The Viking phenomenon in Britain and Ireland was primarily a maritime one. Vikings were pirates, adventurers and colonists. They also depended on the sea for trading, fishing and hunting. Early raids came from the sea. Fleets, enmities and alliances transferred easily from one landmass to another, especially when these were separated by only a day’s sailing time. Trade and settlement were conditioned by maritime access and held together by seaborne contacts. The geography of the Viking world was linked by sea crossings and river passages. Islands and headlands, isthmuses, sounds, bays, inlets, portages, anchorages, eddying currents, maelstroms, sands and rocks loom large in Norse literature and place-names. Ships were amongst the most prized and animated possessions. They formed the theatre of the grandest pagan graves at Oseberg and Gokstad, and of many lesser ones such as Balladoole on the Isle of Man, and are commemorated throughout Scandinavia by the earthwork remains of the large boat-houses or nausts on the strands of the most powerful farms.

It is ironic, therefore, that in most of Europe the activities of Vikings have mostly been viewed in the context of territorially-bounded national historical narratives. In Ireland and Britain, as in many other European countries outside Scandinavia, Vikings have until recently been viewed as outsiders in the story of ‘national races’ such as Celts or Anglo-Saxons. Political concepts of nationhood, race and ethnicity, from the eighteenth century to the present, but most particularly in the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries, have tended to distort and manipulate the archaeological and historical past. Vikings have been used, abused or ignored within patriotic historical traditions that have been mostly concerned with explaining or excusing the rise of modern nation states. This book does not attempt to iron out differences in a search for false conformity around the Irish Sea, because many variations and differences certainly existed, but to redress the balance somewhat by placing the neighbouring areas around this small maritime zone within the context of each other.

Vikings

Vikings have become predominant in our historical perceptions of early Medieval Britain and Ireland, linking the disparate pasts of places such as Waterford, Dublin, Wirral, the Isle of Man, Cumbria and Galloway, into a common international historical theme that stretches from Greenland to Russia and beyond. Vikings are, however, far from being a unified or easily categorised historical or archaeological phenomenon. The term ‘Viking’ is in part derived from Old Norse vík (bay or inlet), which came to mean something like ‘adventurer’, ‘marauder’ or ‘pirate’.1 It figures far more prominently as a convenient and universally understood shorthand in modern literature than as a description in contemporary historical sources where is it barely known. Rather than being restricted to its specific and historical meaning of pirate or adventurer, the term ‘Viking’ has now spread itself to encompass most expatriate Scandinavians in the period 790-1050, including traders and settlers, and is used in this manner here.

Early raiders and settlers from Scandinavia would not have thought of themselves as something as anonymously generic as ‘Vikings’. Their identity was constituted in terms of family or wider kindred (and by implication their rank within them), their religion and home territory, and their relationship with other families in their homelands. There were linking tenets to be found in convergences of mutually intelligible language, religion and warrior ideology. Late Iron Age Scandinavia, the homelands of these raiders and settlers, was a patchwork of semi-independent territorial chiefdoms, many of which paid scant loyalty to any upstart centralising dynasty. In the comparatively kinder and more pliable landscapes of Denmark, south-eastern Norway and southern and eastern Sweden, kings had begun in the eighth and ninth centuries to assert a dynastic pressure on their compatriots, fighting and buying off rival families to elevate their own, and beginning to call on resources throughout their nascent kingdoms. The western and northern chieftains maintained a particular sense of their own independent worth. One of them, Ottar (or Ohthere), from the northernmost farm in the northernmost Norwegian province (very probably Bjarkøy, Troms county, which is part of the ancient province of Hålogaland), gave King Alfred of Wessex a memorable account of fishing and whaling, of relations with the Lapps (better known today as Saami) of the inland areas, and his trading links to southern Norway and beyond. Separated from each other by majestic but harsh topography (colour image 2), local centres of power in Norway are marked by clusters of monumental grave mounds, and the remains of formerly impressive buildings. These graves and settlements, particularly in the western Norwegian coastal provinces of Rogaland, Hordaland, Sogn, Møre and Trøndelag, and Vestfold in south-east Norway, have been found to include impressive quantities of Irish and British metalwork alongside iron weapons and other indigenous products.2

Rather than ‘Vikings’, contemporary historical sources in Britain and Ireland (almost all compiled by hostile ecclesiastics) preferred ‘heathen’, ‘gentiles’ (religious distinctions which largely went out of use in the 940s), or ‘Northmen’. Irish annalists often used ‘foreigners’ (Gaill) as a general description, although their occasional willingness to distinguish between types of ‘foreigner’ – black or white foreigners, and the foreign-native hybrid Gallgoídil (below, Chapter 2), is somewhat more informative. Even so, contemporary references to Scandinavians are mostly implicit, rather than explicit. Were Scandinavians regarded in the west with more of a sense of familiarity than we perhaps assume? Given the contacts between an earlier, pagan, Anglo-Saxon England and Scandinavia, as exemplified in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf and the great seventh-century ship-burial at Sutton Hoo (Suffolk), it is highly unlikely that Vikings were the first Scandinavians ever to venture towards the west of Britain or beyond. They were certainly far from the last to exert their presence, as shown by the presence of nineteenth-century Norwegian and Swedish sailors’ hostels and churches in west-coast ports such as Liverpool and Cardiff.

Although ‘Northmen’ or ‘Danes’ have been of interest to antiquarians since at least the seventeenth century, scientifically grounded ‘Viking Archaeology’ could be said to have started with the visit to Britain and Ireland in 1846–7 of the eminent Danish prehistorian Jens J. A. Worsaae. His visit included a lengthy stay in Dublin, during which time he gave a series of lectures to the Royal Irish Academy and conferred with antiquarians such as Sir William Wilde (below, Chapter 5). Worsaae’s book of 1852, An Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland and Ireland, was the first of a long series of publications by Scandinavian scholars on the Viking period in Britain and Ireland. It launched a research tradition, based on typological studies of artefacts conducted with reference to museum collections in Scandinavia, which was to remain dominant for more than a century.3 Following the writings of Sir Walter Scott, the nineteenth century also saw a rapid rise in popular interest in Viking mythology and the Icelandic sagas, some of which was little-troubled by historical and archaeological reality.4 Nevertheless, despite the fictionalising vogue for Vikings, genuine scholars did emerge during the Victorian period. These included romanticists such as W.G. Collingwood, a follower of John Ruskin and a luminary of the arts and crafts movement, whose studies of the early Medieval sculptured stones of northern England remain a major contribution to research.5 Viking Archaeology was, however, little more than an obscure minority interest until the mid-twentieth century. During Ireland’s struggle for independence, Vikings were mostly viewed unsympathetically as villains in a national story which stressed Celtic purity, and their artistic and economic contributions were generally devalued as a result. As in many other areas of cultural expression, however, such historical conservatism began to feel the effects of change in the 1960s. The later twentieth-century booms in urban development and higher education, on both sides of the Irish Sea, saw public and academic interest in Vikings rise to an unprecedented level. Major excavations in Dublin and York in the 1970s and early 1980s provided a centrepiece for renewed academic research, and in the case of Dublin, significant political controversy (below, Chapter 7). Numerous television programmes, museum exhibitions, conferences and university courses followed in their wake. Vikings have now become virtually synonymous in the popular mind with the history of northern Europe in the period 800–1100, a situation which is now producing a revisionist backlash, exemplified by Richard Hodges’s recent book Goodbye to the Vikings, which attempts to re-cast them in a less dominant perspective, as merely an aspect of a much wider series of historical developments.6

As a result of the rise in Scandinavian studies, a vast number of words have been expended in ‘explaining’ the Viking phenomenon in European history,7 and it is not the purpose of this book to add to them. The emergence in the later eighth century of a particular combination of circumstances in Scandinavia was accompanied by a creative and courageous opportunism. A potent brew of expansionary energy was formed by rumours and material evidence of easy pickings overseas to the west and east. This fed, and was fed by, a long-held but growing liking for foreign finery to supplement chiefly regalia for oiling the wheels of power relations at home, improving boat and weapon technology, and an increasing appetite for land-take by those disaffected with dynastic power at home and hungry for sweeter pastures. The ensuing events we now identify with the Viking period profoundly affected Britain and Ireland along with other lands across Europe. Scandinavians who raided, traded, fought and settled overseas brought ingenuity and ability to adapt to the economic, religious and linguistic circumstances in which they found themselves. Gathering new sources of wealth and power, in war, in land, and from trade in people, silver, amber, other fine minerals and many more mundane items, was the drive behind Scandinavian expansion in the west and east. Scandinavian influence did not abruptly stop or disappear at the end of the age of expansion. Vikings, and the people they settled amongst, interbred and influenced each other; a process that is in itself huge, varied, and fascinating. Much of their original cultural baggage was quickly modified, or jettisoned, as it ceased to have the same significance in their new situation as it once had in their ancestral homelands, yet other traits subtly persisted. Many people, whose ancestors had never been anywhere near Norway, Sweden or Denmark, began to identify with Scandinavian-derived cultural and political symbolism. As generation succeeded generation, the processes of cultural admixture, assimilation and transformation within those areas of Britain and Ireland where a Scandinavian presence persisted, become the story behind the archaeology and history.

The Irish Sea

The Irish Sea is best defined as the roughly square basin between the coasts of Ireland, south-west Scotland, north-west England and north Wales, with the Isle of Man at its centre, together with its northern and southern offshoots known as the North Channel and Saint George’s Channel (fig. 1). There are no sharply defined geographical boundaries where the sea merges with the ocean, and nor would it be worthwhile to seek to impose them artificially. Lands within the Irish Sea region naturally include the territories bordering the central basin and channels, and inland areas that are dominated by overland or riverine access to the Irish Sea. Definitions of the Irish Sea region may be stretched further to encompass the entire Bristol Channel (north and south), the south-west and north-west coasts of Ireland, the upper Firth of Clyde, and the Hebrides (creating a much larger geographical scope which could perhaps be better termed the ‘Insular Viking Zone’)8; these are treated here as closely related, and are referred to in so far as they help to illuminate the context of the history and archaeology of the ‘inner’ Irish Sea region.

The present shape of the Irish Sea is a product of gradual rises in sea level since the Mesolithic period, as the influence of the last Ice Age receded and low-lying coastal lands were inundated. Its estuaries and bays are especially shallow and their upper reaches have a spring tidal range of up to ten metres. Dry land is separated from deep water by marshes and tidal mudflats, where the sea appears and disappears twice a day and navigation is fraught with shifting channels and sandbanks which change from season to season. An acute sense for the sea and land working together, which was second nature to earlier generations of coastal and estuarial communities, was needed to transit and exploit the coastal zone. Skill and resilience were required to harness wind and tide, to find reliable shelter, to anticipate changing patterns of scouring and silting in deep and shallow waters, and to follow the movements of fish and wildfowl.

1. The Irish Sea region in the Viking period: sites and territories

Notorious for its strong tides, shallow turbulent waters and estuarial quicksands, the Irish Sea can often seem more as a grey and menacing obstacle to transit than an inviting opportunity. The open Irish Sea is most often relatively calm and nondescript with prevailing westerly breezes, but the conjunction of a spring tide and cyclonic winter storm moving in rapidly from the North Atlantic can create a hellish frenzy of short and steep seas leading to terrible conditions in coastal waters which can last for some time in winter. There are few deep-water natural harbours, although the sea loughs of Ulster, and Derbyhaven (known in the Viking period as Ronaldsway) on the south-eastern corner of the Isle of Man, are exceptions. Shelter is mostly found in deeper pools left between the sandbanks at low tide, at the heads of bays, or via intricate networks of tidal channels leading inland towards the upper estuaries and riverine waters. Patience, luck, a shallow draught, an eye and a nose for weather, and a sound and up-to-date working knowledge of the coastline and tidal flows have always been essential for navigation in this unpredictable environment. It has remained a dangerous place; records from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries show that hundreds of wooden sailing vessels were wrecked in all areas of the Irish Sea, decade upon decade, often with total loss of life, and navigational disasters continue to occur in modern times.

In reasonable visibility, at sea level few stretches of the Irish Sea are entirely out of sight of land, and on any journey across them, such as from Holyhead to Dublin, or from the Mersey to the Isle of Man, land appears ahead very soon after it is lost to sight astern. From higher altitudes, most famously from the summit of Snaefell on the Isle of Man, an enclosing circuit of mountain ranges is fully visible, from the Wicklow Hills south of Dublin, to the Mourne Mountains in Ulster, via the Southern Uplands of Galloway, the Lake District Fells and the Lancashire flanks of the Pennines, around to Snowdonia in north Wales. At sea level, where horizons are more limited, navigation by sight is marked by passage between visible mountain peaks and major coastal landmarks. The coastlines of the Irish Sea are noted for their high proportion of Scandinavian topographical place-names. Scar, Skerry, Ness, Holm, and the suffix –ey – all terms for rocks, reefs, headlands and islands – appear even in areas where there is little evidence for Viking settlement on land, and indeed some of these coastal landforms also retain (different) Irish or Welsh names, suggesting that seaward and landward cultures did not always fully coincide.9 Tuskar Rock, off Rosslare (Co. Wexford), marks the south-western gateway to the Irish Sea; the islands of Caldey, Skokholm, Skomer, Grassholm and Ramsey ring the coast of Pembrokeshire. Worm’s Head on the Gower Peninsula in south Wales, and the towering headland of the Great Orme in north Wales (both names from ON ormr, ‘serpent’), dominate the seaways on the outer approaches to Bristol and Chester.

Seaways are made meaningful largely by their connection to harbours, landing places and overland routes. From the sea, the Dee and Mersey diverge southwards and eastwards into Mercia and Northumbria. Other inlets and estuaries give access to important inland routeways. The Liffey, Boyne, Barrow, Nore and Suir rivers reach deep into Ireland. The Wye and Severn open up Mercia and south-eastern Wales. The Solway Firth leads to Hadrian’s Wall, with its Roman military road leading eastwards, and to the Eden Valley leading south-east towards the Pennine watershed. Morecambe Bay and the River Ribble open up the most direct routes from the Irish Sea towards York, the latter connecting to the ‘Aire Gap’, where a Roman road traverses a relatively low and gently contoured Pennine pass.

‘The Irish Sea Province’

By the end of the Neolithic period (c. 2000 BC), the landscapes around the Irish Sea had seen the first permanently settled communities and the construction of spectacular megalithic burial monuments such as Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth in the Boyne Valley in eastern Ireland, and Bryn Celli Ddu and Barclodiad y Gawres in Anglesey. Archaeologists long ago began to notice the trans-Irish Sea similarities and correspondences in form, plan and artistic representation in these structures, including the geometric and spiral art carved on some of their megaliths, and speculated on the cultural links which had arisen between these lands divided by a short and shallow sea.10 To the Edwardian Oxford geographer Sir Halford Mackinder, the Irish Sea was the ‘British Mediterranean’.11 This is not quite literally true, as it is only a semi land-locked sea, and its relationship with the ocean is more profound than its more famous (and sunnier) counterpart. The style of Mackinder’s comment is imbued with the faded cartographic pink of a long-gone imperial confidence, but his essential idea has survived. The concept of a sea, rather than a landmass, being the defining geographical context of its terrestrial periphery is attractive to those who would see maritime contacts as equally important as land-based ones, and who would break away from the assumption of centrality for the land in the ancient human imagination.

The geographer E.G. Bowen, writing in the 1960s, saw the Irish Sea as a dynamic zone of contact in the prehistoric and early historic periods; he mapped and discussed the various wind and tidal streams against the geomorphological background to establish a series of ‘routeways’ based on best and safest passage for small boats. Bowen’s article (borrowing Mackinder’s phrase) ‘Britain and the British Seas’ helped to set the scene in a book (resulting from a conference held in Aberystwyth in 1968) entitled ‘The Irish Sea Province in Archaeology and History’.12 In chronologically-written articles (including one on the Vikings by P.H. Sawyer), its authors attempted to find common trans-Irish Sea themes and test the idea of a ‘culture province’ (exactly what that was supposed be, and why a maritime version would be any different from a terrestrial one, was not defined). Inevitably, significant differences in expressions of monumentality and material culture existed across time. These tended to produce a reaction against a broad-brush notion of continuity of contact. The value of studying the Irish Sea, or indeed the North Sea, Baltic Sea or English Channel, as inter-related regions of social and economic change, was only very guardedly accepted until recently. Trends in archaeological interpretation have moved on from explaining archaeological distribution patterns by migration alone, to stressing the importance of inter-communal contact, and the evolution and transmission of ideas. Barry Cunliffe’s book Facing the Ocean has brought refreshed vigour to the view that the sea was at the heart of much past human experience in practical and cultural terms.13 Despite scholarly scepticism, the concept of the ‘Irish Sea Province’ did take root in the 1960s, and remains in sporadic use.14 However, to avoid entanglement with whatever its cultural implications might or might not mean, the more neutral term ‘region’ is adopted here.

The Irish Sea in the pre-Viking period

The north and west of Roman Britain was predominantly a military zone with little by way of villas and civilian towns, the only urbanised settlements north of Chester being the vici of major forts on Hadrian’s Wall. Roman rule in the north and west was succeeded by a shadowy patchwork of regional British kingdoms, such as Rheged in the north (which was subsumed into Northumbria), and the constellation of small kingdoms in the mountainous west of Britannia Prima, which together became known to the Anglo-Saxons as Wales. The question of whether the Romans ‘invaded’ Ireland is one that has long been asked, but is as yet lacking a universally accepted answer. Roman coins, brooches and other portable objects are not uncommon finds in the Irish countryside. Metal detecting at an Iron Age coastal promontory fort at Drumanagh, north of Dublin, has produced a concentrated assemblage of Roman objects, leading to probably unfounded press speculation that there may have been a Roman fort on the site. The appearance of sporadic traces of Roman material culture in Ireland is most probably explained by a combination of trade, the passage of mercenaries and slaves, and informal political contacts (perhaps more likely to have been between local leaders on both sides of the Irish Sea rather than any involving imperial diplomacy).

As the tide of Roman influence rose and fell in Britain, Ireland remained a comparatively wealthy but politically fragmented society. Frequent wars of succession, cattle raids and shifting alliances produced the continual diminution and division of some dynasties in favour of the elevation of others. Before and during the Viking period, Ireland was divided into a network of kingdoms based on sub-kingdoms known as túatha (singular túath). As far as we can tell, the workings of political and landed authority were far from evenly spread or coherent; each province tended to be dominated by one, or possibly two, leading groups defined by a common kinship, and included numerous families controlling sub-kingdoms. There was much internal division and strife, even amongst groups claiming common genealogical origins under the same kings. In the aftermath of the Roman period, Irish influence and migration spread across the Irish Sea to south-west Wales, to Brycheiniog (Brecon) and to the west coast of the Llˆy n Peninsula, as well as from Irish Dál Riata in Co. Antrim to Scottish Dál Riata in Argyll. The Dál Fiátach of Co. Down may have had ambitions to control the Isle of Man later in the sixth century,15 although in the lead-up to the Viking period, Man seems to have fallen under the influence of a British dynasty with strong connections to Anglesey and south-west Scotland.

The English (or Anglo-Saxons) were latecomers to the Irish Sea region, but once established, were not slow to venture across its waters. As a sustained presence, they preceded the arrival of Vikings by little more than two centuries. Bede referred to the Northumbrian king Edwin’s control of Anglesey and the Isle of Man (‘the Menavian Islands’) in the early seventh century.16 Both Bede and the Annals of Ulster recorded that ‘Saxons’ attacked the Irish kingdom of Brega in 684 or 685.17 Anglo-Saxon settlers, some of whom were still pagans, probably arrived on the Irish Sea coast of England in the sixth century, but the traditional date of their arrival in greater numbers follows upon the defeat of the Britons by the Northumbrians in 616, somewhere near Chester.18 Less than three decades later, Mercia under Penda defeated Northumbria and took over the Cheshire Plain, establishing a coastal window onto the Irish Sea via the Dee and Mersey estuaries. As Mercia reached its short-lived peak as the dominant Anglo-Saxon kingdom later in the eighth century, Offa, and his less-adept successor Coenwulf, engaged in frontier construction and repeatedly fought the Welsh. The border earthwork known as Wat’s Dyke, which may have been constructed or reused as a north-eastern spur of the better-known Offa’s Dyke, encloses the upper Dee Estuary, terminating at the abbey of Basingwerk,19 thus suggesting its purpose was to secure and defend the flanks of Mercian maritime access to the Irish Sea.

The spread of Christianity and monasticism had a profound effect on the Irish Sea region. The Britons defeated at Chester in 616 were aided by monks from a large monastic community nearby which Bede called Bancornaburg – it may have been located at Bangor-is-y-Coed on the middle Dee on the English-Welsh border, but its site has not yet been identified. In Ireland, Armagh, the shrine of St Patrick, had developed by the seventh century into a large monastery with multiple dependent houses. The circular concentric plan of the site is visible even today in the topography of the town, with the mother church at its heart (now the site of the Church of Ireland cathedral). Kildare, the shrine of St Brigit, was described in Cogitosus’s Life of St Brigit as a civitas with suburbana. Vast and rich houses such as these held sway over large territories and resources with numerous priests of daughter-churches under their authority, and attracted and exhibited much wealth supplied by pilgrimage, industry and art. Fine objects in the form of gospel books, silver plate and jewel-encrusted liturgical equipment accumulated at these places, offering temptation to any worldly sinner unencumbered by respect for their sacred status.

Further down the scale of grandeur, medium-sized monasteries such as Nendrum (Co. Down) and Whithorn (Galloway) were sufficiently influential as economic and spiritual centres to participate in overseas trading networks and even to engage in regional dynastic politics. There were frequent rivalries and even wars between the Irish monasteries, as they were caught up in, and in some cases led, endemic power-struggles between peoples and kingdoms. A quieter and more contemplative life was sought by some, and imposed on others, in the more secluded monastic houses and individual hermitages which occupied islands, caves, coastal promontories and remote inland sites. Reference to the biblical desert of Christ’s torment is marked today by the presence of ‘Dysart’ or ‘Dyserth’ place-names in Ireland and Wales. The search for extreme isolation is epitomised by the tiny monastery and ‘beehive’ prayer cells clinging to flat steps of rock amidst the towering offshore precipices of Skellig Michael (Co. Kerry). Although free of landward concerns and entanglements, the coastal monasteries proved to be a tempting target for seaborne Viking attacks, which began with a raid on an island called Rechru (identified as Rathlin or Lambay) in 795 (below, Chapter 2).

Sources of evidence for the Viking period

The early raids were dramatic but sporadic. However, the ninth century saw increasingly long-term Viking involvement in Ireland. Historically, Dublin was settled as a defended enclave or longphort from around 840, but archaeological evidence (below, Chapter 2, Chapter 5) is now forcing us to question whether this may have occurred in the earliest decades of the ninth century. The latter decades of that century saw reverses for the Vikings in Ireland, which culminated in their exile from Dublin during the period 902–917, although recent evidence from Temple Bar West, Dublin (below, Chapter 2), suggests that not all Viking settlers were evicted. The period 902–37, between the Viking expulsion from Dublin and the battle of Brunanburh, has traditionally been accepted by most historians and archaeologists as the most likely period when the imprint of permanent Scandinavian settlement occurred on the Isle of Man and the British shores of the Irish Sea. With the fugitives from Dublin seeking such territorial footholds as were readily available after 902, an intense phase of entanglement with Northumbria, the Danelaw and Mercia followed. North-west England in particular, and perhaps parts of the coast of south-west Scotland and the Isle of Man, may have already experienced some Scandinavian settlement prior to 902, coming from east of the Pennines and the Kingdom of York, which was settled by Vikings after 876 when (as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) the Danish leader Halfdan and his followers ‘shared out the lands of the Northumbrians and they proceeded to plough and support themselves’.20

The heterogenous mixture of Vikings and their followers from Ireland and the Danelaw found new allies and adherents of English, Manx, Cumbrian and Welsh backgrounds. After 917, settlement activity in Ireland developed further, following the recapture of Dublin by returning Vikings. Dublin’s development into a major trading town was accompanied by the growth of strategic and permanent coastal settlement clusters in urban hinterlands and along the major trade routes. Enclaves of Viking settlements were established in the Irish Sea coastlands at different times throughout the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries. Some, such as attempts by Vikings to establish settlements in Ulster during the mid-ninth and early tenth century, were not destined to be permanent or long lasting. In each local and specific case, as they gained a hold on new territories, the incoming settlers appear to have struck different balances between maintaining their ancestral affiliations and maritime links to the Viking world, and assimilating the ways of life and beliefs of their new neighbours. Traditional political loyalties, as well as identities and beliefs, were far more fluid than we might assume.

Vikings who raided and settled in the Irish Sea region from the eighth to the eleventh centuries left almost no contemporary written record themselves, apart from runic inscriptions, largely concentrated in the Isle of Man and Dublin, which rarely extend to more than a few words (below, Chapter 8). The earliest developed accounts of the period actually written in the Norse language are the Icelandic sagas of two to three centuries later (their historical accuracy for the Viking period has endlessly been debated, but is coming back into fashion again after a long period of scepticism). The main source of information on Vikings is found in contemporary Irish, Anglo-Saxon and Welsh annalistic sources, which sometimes mention the same events and therefore corroborate each other. The annalists were supportive of their own rulers and patrons and therefore tended to produce oppositional and coloured accounts of Viking activity. These are complex sources which use and re-use many versions of events: the Irish annals have recently been synthesised to reconstruct what may originally have been a ‘Chronicle of Ireland’,21 but this unified concept remains contentious amongst historians. Charters sometimes obliquely mention ‘pagans’ or ‘pirates’ without giving any further information (below, Chapter 4). To these we may add histories of varying reliability, composed after the Norman Conquest of England, such as those of William of Malmesbury, Simeon of Durham, and John of Worcester. Even so, large areas of the Irish Sea region remained in the historical shadows. The British kingdom of Strathclyde, which dominated the area from the River Clyde to the Solway Firth, has left little documentary record of its own, having been eclipsed in the eleventh century by the Scottish Kingdom of Alba. The Isle of Man leaves perhaps the most intriguing gap in the early historical record. Its long association with the Scottish Isles, which ended in 1266, has led many historians to assume that kings of Innse Gall (the islands of foreigners) mentioned in the 960s and 970s may have ruled the island (below, Chapter 3), but the Isle of Man’s own Scandinavian dynasty is not recorded until the mid-eleventh century.

Warfare and dynastic competition provide an essential historical dimension to the period, which has been amply and ably covered by other recent writers.22 The ebb and flow of high politics provides only one aspect of the picture, however. We may know who succeeded whom and the date of victories and defeats, but we struggle to find comparably informative historical accounts of the lives of lesser-ranking people, and of the topography and economy of the Irish Sea region in the Viking period. Domesday Book, composed in 1086, provides a record of English towns and manorial lordship on the eve of, and just after, the Norman Conquest. Somerset, Gloucestershire and Cheshire (which included the land between Mersey and Ribble and parts of eastern Wales) received county coverage. Under the entry for Yorkshire are the parts of central Lancashire and southern Cumbria that had previously been linked to the Kingdom of Northumbria. Domesday also provides an early historical validation for the date of place-names in the areas that it covers. Place-names are perhaps the most obvious remaining trace of Vikings in the landscape of modern Britain and the Isle of Man, and Ireland, although to a far lesser extent in the latter (fig. 2). The reason for this imbalance is not necessarily a mismatch of original settlement, but an indication of the different extents and ways in which Scandinavian terms have survived in different languages in later centuries.

2. Scandinavian place-names, mapped from the publications of Gillian Fellows-Jensen and others