The Vikings
At the end of the eighth century broad ships
reached the Irish coast, wich were able to resist wild storms. Those ships
belonged to the Vikings, Scandanavian people from today`s Norway and Denmark.
They sailed upstream and invlicted devastation. The Vikings plundered and
destroyed monasteries, and killed all the monks and every Irish person they
saw.
In 841 AD the Vikings conquered two harbours,
Anagassan and Dublin, and changed them
into fortresses, because they had decided to stay on the island forever. The
natives did not put up tough resistance (they liked peace and, as there was no
big war before, they did not know how to fight !). The climate was not as bad
as in Scandinaia, and the land was much more fertible than the ground at home.
But in the long term the harbour in the north
founded by the Norwegian Vikings (Annagassan), could not survive, in contrast
to the more southern Harbour, Dublin, founded by Danish Vikings, wich expanded.
Gradually the power of the Danish grew more and more inland. However, they also
lost some of their warlike character and began to associate and marry the
Celtic inhabitants.
At the beginning of the 11th century, many
Celts became hostile to the Vikings at Clontarf (near Dublin), finally effected
when Scandinavian allies of the king of Dublin were defeated by High king Brian
Boru in 1014. The power of the Vikings
was broken. Yet there was no peace. After Brian Boru died the local kings
fought each other for the position of high king.
