On the other hand, the concentration of the wiking forces upon Britain had given to the Irish an advantage which enabled them to check the spread of wiking settlements in their country; and the failure of all attempts to establish a Scandinavian dominion in Britain destroyed all chance of a Scandinavian conquest of Ireland. The Ostmen never even gained such a footing in Ireland as the followers of Hrolf gained in Frankland: their presence never received the sanction of any Ard-Righ; they were not a compact body occupying the whole of an extensive and well-defined territory, but a number of separate groups settled here and there along the coast, and holding their ground only by sheer hard fighting against a ring of implacable foes. The long struggle may be said to have ended in a defeat of both parties. The Irish kings of Munster succeeded in establishing a more or less effective overlordship over the Scandinavian communities of Limerick and Waterford; and in 989 Malachi II., supreme monarch of Ireland, reaped his reward for nine years of desperate fighting in the submission of the Ostmen of Dublin. The city was blockaded and starved into surrender, and a yearly tribute was promised to Malachi and his successors.[373] Six years later “the ring of Tomar and the sword of Carl”--two heathen relics probably of ancient heroes, which seem to have been treasured as sacred emblems of sovereignty by the Ostmen[374]--were carried off by Malachi as trophies of another victory;[375] and in 999 or 1000 a renewal of the strife ended in a rout of the Ostmen and a great slaughter of their leaders, and Dublin was sacked and burnt by the victorious Irish.[376] [373] Tighernach, a. 989 (O’Conor, _Rer. Hibern. Scriptt._, vol. ii. pp. 264, 265). [374] See O’Donovan’s introduction to the _Book of Rights_, pp. xxxviii, xxxix. [375] Tighernach, a. 995 (as above, p. 267). [376] _Ib._ a. 998, 999 (p. 268). _Wars of Gaedhil with Gaill_ (Todd), pp. 109–117.