The story of the Norse settlers in Ireland and the Western Islands in their relation to Christianity was very much that of the Danes in England. Celtic Christianity had a firm hold in these countries, and from the earliest period of the settlements many of the Vikings adopted the Christian faith. Among the settlers in Iceland who came from the West were many Christians, and Auðr herself gave orders at her death that she should be buried on the sea-shore below the tide-mark, rather than lie in unhallowed ground. Most of the settlers undoubtedly remained heathen--in 996 a ring sacred to Thor was taken from a temple in Dublin and in 1000 king Brian destroyed a grove sacred to the same god just north of the city. But side by side with incidents of this kind must be placed others like that of the sparing of the churches, hospitals and almshouses when Armagh was sacked in 921, or the retirement of Anlaf Cuaran to the monastery at Iona in 981. In Ireland as elsewhere there seems to have been a recrudescence of heathenism in the early years of the 11th century and the great fight at Clontarf was regarded as a struggle between pagan and Christian. Outwardly the Scandinavian world had largely declared its adhesion to Christianity by the close of the Viking period, but we must remember that the medieval Church was satisfied if her converts passed through the ceremony of baptism and observed her rites, though their sentiments often remained heathen. Except in purely formal fashion it is impossible to draw a definite line of demarcation between Christian and heathen, and the acceptance of Christianity is of importance not so much from any change of outlook which it produced in individuals, as because it brought the peoples of the North into closer touch with the general life and culture of medieval Europe. Leaders freely accepted baptism--often more than once--and even confirmation as part of a diplomatic bargain, while their profession of Christianity made no difference to their Viking way of life. Even on formal lines the Church had to admit of compromise, as for example in the practice of _prime-signing_, whereby when Vikings visited Christian lands as traders, or entered the service of Christian kings for payment, they often allowed themselves to be signed with the cross, which secured their admission to intercourse with Christian communities, but left them free to hold the faith which pleased them best.