_Papýli_, _Papey_; Ir. ‘papa,’ ‘an anchorite.’ _Patreksfjörthr_; Ir. personal name _Patraic_. CHAPTER VII. THE VIKINGS AND THE CELTIC CHURCH. Beyond a few meagre allusions the Irish Annals throw no light on the progress of Christianity among the “foreigners” in Ireland during the ninth century. Fortunately, however, the Icelandic Sagas and the _Landnámabók_ have preserved some interesting details concerning a small number of the Norse settlers in Iceland, who had previously come under the influence of Christianity in Ireland and in the Western Islands of Scotland. As far as we can gather from these sources the new faith seems at first to have made but little headway; heathenism retained a strong hold on the majority of the Norse people, and there can be little doubt that this form of religion was extensively practised in Ireland during the Viking age. Evidence of this is to be found in _The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill_, which describes how Authr, wife of Turgéis, sat on the high altar of the church in Clonmacnois, and gave audiences as a prophetess.[176] In this instance the high altar would seem to have corresponded to the _seithr hjallr_ or platform which it was customary to erect in Icelandic houses when a _völva_ or prophetess was called in to foretell the future.[177] Some writers[178] also point to the numerous raids on churches and religious houses as a proof of the Vikings’ hostility to Christianity, but these attacks were much more likely to have originated in the amount of treasure which the raiders knew to be stored in these places. It is rather in this light, too, that we must regard Turgéis’ expulsion of the abbot Farannan from Armagh (in 839), and his subsequent usurpation of the abbacy,[179] than as an attempt to stamp out Christianity and establish heathenism in its stead.