and the Western Islands, from Scotland and the Orkneys, and even from Iceland. Dublin was fixed as the trysting-place and Palm Sunday 1014 was to be the time of meeting. Brian mustered all the forces of Munster and Connaught and was joined in half-hearted fashion by Maelsechlainn, who was really waiting to see which way the fortunes of war would turn. Brian advanced into the plain of Fingall, north of Dublin, and the two armies faced one another at Clontarf all Passion week. The Norsemen had learned by magic incantations that if the fight took place before Good Friday their chiefs would perish and their forces be routed, while if the fight took place on Good Friday Brian himself would perish but the Irish would win the day. So they waited until the Friday and then made their attack. The fight was long and the slaughter was terrible. Brian and Sigurd were themselves numbered among the slain. In the end the Norsemen were defeated and Maelsechlainn completed their discomfiture when he cut down the fugitives as they tried to cross the bridge leading to Dublin and so reach their ships. No fight was more famous in Irish history and it seems to have appealed with equally strong force to Scandinavian imagination. Clontarf and Brunanburh are the two great Viking battles which find record in Scandinavian saga, and in the story of Burnt Njal[8] we have a vivid account both of the actual battle and of the events leading up to it. Yet more interesting perhaps is the old lay preserved to us, the _Song of the Valkyries_, who that same day were seen in Caithness riding twelve together to a bower where they set up a loom of which men's heads were the weights, men's entrails the warp and woof, while a sword was the shuttle and the reels were arrows. They wove the web of war and foretold the fate of king Sigtryggr and Earl Sigurd as well as the sharp sorrow which would befall the Irish[9]. The Norse world was full of this and like portents and there can be no question that the Vikings were themselves conscious that the battle of Clontarf marked a very definite epoch in the history of the Vikings in the West and in Ireland more particularly. The Norsemen remained in possession of their cities, Sigtryggr continued as king of Dublin, but gradually the fortunes of the Norse settlers tended to become merged in the history of the nation as a whole and there was no further question of Scandinavian supremacy in Ireland. FOOTNOTES: [8] English version by Sir G. W. Dasent. [9] This song was probably composed soon after the events with which it is concerned and was first rendered into English by the poet Gray under the title _The Fatal Sisters_. CHAPTER VI THE VIKINGS IN THE ORKNEYS, SCOTLAND, THE WESTERN ISLANDS AND MAN