An Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and IrelandWorsaae, Jens Jacob Asmussen
History
An Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and Ireland
Worsaae, Jens Jacob Asmussen
Great Britain -- Civilization -- Scandinavian influences; Northmen -- Great Britain; Northmen -- Ireland
the year 1258 conveys a gift of some ground in the suburbs of Dublin, in
“Thengmotha” (from “mote,” a meeting), which the Irish publisher of it
(the Rev. R. Butler) correctly explains by “the place of legal assembly
in the Danish times of Dublin.” The _Thing_ place, which seems to have
been not far from the present site of Dublin Castle, where the
Norwegians had erected a strong fortress, gave to the surrounding parish
of St. Andrew the surname of “de Thengmote.”
One of the chief causes that the Norwegians in the Irish cities
maintained uninterruptedly their Scandinavian characteristics, and
consequently their independent power likewise, was that they not only
lived in the midst of the Irish, but that, as Giraldus Cambrensis
expressly intimates, they erected in every city a town of their own,
surrounded with deep ditches and strong walls, which secured them
against the attacks of the natives. They built a rather extensive town
for themselves on the river Liffey, near the old city of Dublin, which
was strongly fortified with ditches and walls, and which, after the
Norwegians and Danes (or Ostmen) settled there, obtained the name of
Ostmantown (in Latin, “vicus,” or “villa Ostmannorum”), _i. e._ the
Eastmen’s town. Even the Irish chronicles, which attest that, as early
as the beginning of the tenth century, the Norwegians in Dublin had well
intrenched themselves with walls and ramparts, also state that in the
art of fortifying towns they were far superior to the Irish. Ostmantown
continued through the whole of the middle ages to form an entirely
separate part of Dublin, and the gates of the strong fortifications with
which it was surrounded were carefully closed every evening. The walls
were at length razed, and Ostmantown, or, as it was now corruptly
pronounced, “Oxmantown” (whence an Irish peer has obtained in modern
times the title of Lord Oxmantown), was completely incorporated with
Dublin. But to the present day the name of Oxmantown remains an
incontrovertible monument of an independent Norwegian town formerly
existing within the greatest and most considerable city of Ireland.
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SECTION IV.
Norwegian Names of Places, near Dublin.—Norwegian
Burial—Places.—Norwegian Weapons and Ornaments.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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