Ireland under the Tudors, with a Succinct Account of the Earlier History. Vol. 1 (of 3)Bagwell, Richard
History
Ireland under the Tudors, with a Succinct Account of the Earlier History. Vol. 1 (of 3)
Bagwell, Richard
Ireland -- History -- 16th century
Without actually amalgamating, the Danes seem to have drawn gradually
closer to the native Irish. A royal heir of Ulster received the name of
Ragnal less than half a century after Clontarf, and in 1121 a bishop
seems to have been temporarily appointed at Dublin by the joint election
of Irish and Danes. But quarrels were frequent even after the Danes had
become fully Christianised; and when the men of Munster invaded Fingal in
1133, they burned the church of Lusk when it was full of people and
treasures. Nor did fresh invasions quite cease, for Magnus, King of
Norway, made two expeditions to Ireland, in the latter of which, in 1103,
he lost his life. The separate history of the Irish Ostmen was drawing to
a close, even at the date of the Anglo-Norman invasion; but they have
left indelible traces upon the map of Ireland and on the traditional lore
of her people.
[Sidenote: The Danes were traders.]
Giraldus informs us that the Scandinavians who settled at Dublin,
Waterford, and Limerick, came under pretence of peaceful trading. The
Irish, he says, were prevented by their innate sloth from going down to
the sea in ships, but were ready to welcome those who would trade for
them, and thus allowed the fierce strangers to get a strong footing.
However this may be, it is certain that the Irish are deficient in
maritime enterprise, and equally certain that the Northmen had a constant
eye to trade as well as to war and plunder. Unerring instinct pointed out
the best stations, and on the sites thus chosen the chief cities of
Ireland were reared. The Kaupmannaeyjar or merchant isles, probably
those now called the Copelands, may have been a rendezvous for passing
vessels. Arabic coins, of which more than 20,000 pieces from more than
1,000 different dies are preserved at Stockholm, have been found in
Ireland, and the Irish Northmen certainly had a coinage of their own,
when the native princes had none. Pieces have been found which were
struck by, or at least for, a Scandinavian king of Dublin as early as the
ninth century, and all coins minted in Ireland up to the Anglo-Norman
invasion were perhaps of similar origin. Many such pieces have been found
in the Isle of Man, and some as far off as Denmark.[24]
[Sidenote: They were superior to the Irish in peaceful arts.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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