← In Our Time
In Our Time
The Battle of Clontarf
00:51:40
Brian Boru's celebrated defeat of Hiberno-Norse forces and allies outside Dublin in 1014.
Loading summary
Transcript82 lines
- [00:01]
Melvin Bragg
BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts.
- [00:05]
Sean Duffy
This is in our time from BBC Radio 4 and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this edition, you find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello. The Battle of Pontarf, 1014 is one of the best known dates in Irish history, akin to 1066 for England in significance but not in outcome. As in 1014, the Irish won. As medieval chronicles relate, Brian Boru, King of Ireland, led this fight against the Vikings near their Dublin stronghold. And he gave up his life defeating the foreigners. While, as we'll hear, the fence are disputed, the Battle of Clontarf became a powerful symbol of what united Ireland could achieve militarily if politics and diplomacy failed. With me to discuss the Battle of Clontarf, Sean Duffy, professor of Medieval Irish and Insular History at Trinity College, Dublin. Alex Wolf, professor of Medieval Studies at the University of St Andrews, and Moira Nifweni, professor of Celtic and Medieval Studies at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. Moira, what were the different powers in Ireland in 1014? Who ruled what?
- [01:20]
Melvin Bragg
Well, it was starting farthest south in Munster, the main power, there was a group called Thal Gash who were ruled by the king that we're going to talk quite a lot about today, I imagine, namely Brian Boru. They were relatively newcomers to the scene. Brian's grandfather was the first person in his dynasty to have become powerful. His name was Knadig, and Brian's brother Matravan also gained some degree of power. So they were in the very far south of the country. And Brian was certainly trying to kind of extend his power northwards, I suppose his main rival, they were the o' Neills, the O Nail, and particularly the Southern o' Neill that were around the kind of the area that we might think of as Meath and Westmeath today. The main kind of ruler there was a man called Moelchachnell Machdownall, and he really was Brian's main opponent. So that was in the northern part of the country. I suppose between them, we have the Vikings of Dublin who really had built up a very, very powerful centre and an extended trading network, and because of that had come contention with all of the groups around them. Immediately south of the Dublin Vikings were the Leinster men, and they allied with these various groups in turn. Then in the middle of the country, we have a group called Osriga or Ossory. And then I Suppose in the far west, but not as significant from a power point of view in this period were the men of Connacht. So a kaleidoscope really, of groups and alliances.
- [02:54]
Sean Duffy
Was it a warring kaleidoscope?
- [02:56]
Melvin Bragg
I suppose it was a shifting kaleidoscope and there's no doubt that alliances, allegiances were constantly moving. And I suppose you were only really as good as your last battle or as your last strategic maneuver. So I think it is fair to say that, yeah, alliances, both military alliances, political alliances and indeed marital alliances, were constantly shifting. So certainly the power groups were unstable. But there's no doubt but that Munster, the southernmost territory, and the southern ye nail, they were the kind of the two most stable power blocs immediately in the period coming up to the Battle of Clontarf.
- [03:31]
Sean Duffy
Are we talking about, about this, the early in the century, constant skirmishes and wars between these different areas?
- [03:38]
Melvin Bragg
Certainly constant skirmishes. That's certainly what the chronicle sources would lead us to believe. I mean, you know, not a constant state of warfare, but certainly constant skirmishes. But there were other kinds of, you know, there were other kinds of engagements as well. Well, so defences, for example, were being built or indeed bridges over the Shannon to try and get across strategic areas. But also we do have references to formal alliances. It wasn't just a warring state.
- [04:06]
Sean Duffy
Thank you, Sean. Sean Duffy, the battle was going to take place just outside Dublin, and Dublin plays a very significant part in all of this. Can you tell listeners about Dublin at that time, around 10:14ish, or just before?
- [04:20]
Moira Nifweni
Yeah, I mean, Dublin as. As Moira said, Dublin was controlled by Vikings. It was. It had been established.
- [04:26]
Sean Duffy
Sorry, when you say controlled by Vikings, what do you mean by that?
- [04:28]
Moira Nifweni
Well, I mean, in early medieval Ireland, there were no towns, there were no cities, towns, villages. It's a consequence of Ireland never having been part of the Roman Empire. So it had been an entirely rural landscape until the first Viking raids began around the year 800. And they tended to initially to make just sort of smash and grab raids, as it were. But before long, they were bedding themselves in and building camps for their ships from which they could raid further inland in Ireland. And there are a number of them, therefore, established around the coast. And very quickly, Dublin became the lead center of Viking activity in Ireland. So I'm not sure if the explanation for that was geographical. Dublin, of course, is contrast, a magnificent bay on Ireland's eastern seaboard. Whether they were strategic because of the fact that Dublin is geographically in Ireland, it's right at the very center of the country. And in early medieval Ireland, there was a kind of a symbolic division of the country between the northern half of the island and the southern half of the island. And that boundary was. Was formed by the River Liffey, on which the Viking settlement in Dublin was located. So strategically and geographically, it was significant militarily. It became very important because the naval camp that they established quickly developed into a trading base, some kind of a trading emporium. And by the 10th century, say the 930s, the 940s, the 950s, we can certainly begin to think of that as a town and being Ireland's first and most significant town, it was the single greatest concentration of economic wealth on the island of Ireland. And therefore, that inevitably leads to a political importance for it, because you are nobody in Ireland if you don't control the levers of wealth and if they are largely concentrated in Dublin. The Irish king, who wants to be the paramount lord on the island, must gain control of Dublin if he's to be, you know, if he's able to achieve his objectives. So it was a significant goal for Irish Kings in the 10th and the 11th centuries, and that feeds into the background of the Battle of Clontarf.
- [07:03]
Sean Duffy
Can you tell us something about Brian Barrou and his powerhouse and why that is significant at this time, when Moira.
- [07:11]
Moira Nifweni
Referred to his origins, which are in Munster in the southwest of Ireland, I think it's significant that his family, they were a relative. Even if you go back a hundred years, they were a relatively minor dynasty based in what is now County Clare, just across the Shannon, at the base of the Shannon. One of the few permanent Viking bases that were established in Ireland was at Limerick in the Shannon estuary, which controlled the entrance to the River Shannon, which is the largest river in either Britain or Ireland, and therefore a hugely important strategic routeway. In an age before roads and bridges, if you can control the river network, you can penetrate to the very inland heart of the country. His dynasty emerged fairly rapidly in the early 10th century. And I can't help thinking that that has to do with their interrelations with the local Vikings in Limerick. Their capacity to get. Having got control of them, they had access to much more sophisticated Viking naval craft, which Irish kings, even though we are an island people, we were not a particularly maritime nation. So we acquired Viking fleets. We acquired a more sophisticated, probably a more sophisticated way of behaving militarily in battle. You know, more organized battle tactics and very significant access to trade and therefore wealth and, for example, to things like armor, chain mail. If you control the Viking towns, you had a very significant military and political advantage over your opponents. And I think that is the thing that explains how this man from a relatively minor dynasty was able to begin to threaten the hitherto dominant forces on the island.
- [09:05]
Sean Duffy
Thank you, Alex. Wulf, how intertwined were the families that might, in the face of it, be clear rivals?
- [09:12]
Alex Wolfe
They're actually extremely intertwined. If we start with the Viking king of Dublin, Sigtryg, or Sitric, as he's called in Irish sources, his mother, Gaumler, was the sister of the King of Leinster, his immediately southern neighbour, and she had been married to Brian. And Sitric was married to Brian's daughter, Slania. So his mother was his wife's stepmother. And his sister was married to Moyal Sheknal, the King of Mither the Southernly Nail, who we heard about from Moira. And to make things even more complicated, his predecessor as king of Dublin, Gluniarl, who was Sitric's half brother, was also Malshechnal's half brother. So Malshechnal's wife was the half sister of her husband's half brother.
- [10:02]
Sean Duffy
I'm sure everybody's followed that very clearly.
- [10:03]
Alex Wolfe
Exactly. But the point is that when we think about these people, it's very easy to think about them as kingdoms or peoples that are sort of essentially against each other, like orcs and elves in Tolkien. But in reality, the leadership were one family. All of them will have sat and eaten and drunk together at one time or another. So this is really a family at war. We have to be very careful about thinking about these people as sort of essentially ethnically opposed. They're extraordinarily closely interwoven. And Brian and Sitric and Maelmurda of Leinster and Walsh Eklund will all have broken bread together at one time or another.
- [10:41]
Sean Duffy
So were they obviously all. They were gathered together. They're intertwined, they're married to each other. They didn't seem to be afraid to fight each other.
- [10:49]
Alex Wolfe
No. But I suspect it wasn't personal. As Moira said, it's all about power and it's a kind of game. And of course, in most battles of this sort, it isn't the kings who die, you know, it's what did they.
- [11:02]
Sean Duffy
Need from the back?
- [11:04]
Alex Wolfe
Well, Sitric certainly did because as we'll see, he never actually left the city during the battle and got away with. With no problems at all. But kings did die in battle sometimes. But I think they were just jockeying position for this dominance, a hierarchy of rulers and. And so on. And what they thought they were going to get out of it. How many of these campaigns might have been more bluff than anything else, with somebody then doing a ritual submission and not much fighting happening? That happened, for example, in 1002, when Brian first really challenged Mel Shecknell for dominance. Mel Shechnal submitted and handed over dominance to Brian. So sometimes these things didn't lead to bloody battles. One thing that's curious about Clontarf is that it was so bloody and so many people died. That's unusual.
- [11:53]
Sean Duffy
But the Vikings, you've mentioned that word a great number of times, had a very emphatic influence on all this, didn't they?
- [12:00]
Alex Wolfe
Oh, certainly, as Sean has said, they changed the economy completely. As well as there being no towns in Ireland before the coming of the Vikings, there was no coinage. From about the middle of the 10th century, we start seeing vast amounts of English coinage turning up in Ireland. That's probably coming through places like Dublin and Limerick as part of the slave trade. Initially, the Vikings are doing the raiding, but soon they set up symbiotic relationships with kings like the kings of Mither or the kings of Munster, and they're the people who are providing them with slaves and they're selling them on. But you do have to remember that Sitric, the Viking king of Dublin, is a fifth generation immigrant. He's been there for a long time. His mother is Irish. And so these people, I suspect people like Sitrick, who almost certainly spent part of his youth at the court of his uncle, the King of Leinster, he was probably able to code switch. He could probably comb his hair a different way, change his clothes, and pass for being Irish, Whereas he would probably also equally wearing different clothes and speaking a different language, pass for being a Norseman. And I think that's the way we have to think about the people who modern scholars often call Hiberno Norse to represent this hybridization.
- [13:12]
Sean Duffy
Thank you very much. Well, let's gather our forces for this battle. Moira, why were they gathering at Clontarf in 1014? Who was gathering and why were they gathering?
- [13:22]
Melvin Bragg
Why they were gathering had had to do with these kin relations and also this power politics that we've been talking about and. Or I suppose really the ambition of Brian Boru. And what would have been considered increasingly bold moves on his part. So about 1005, for example, he marched to the north of the country and went to the church of Armagh, you know, ostentatiously laid, you know, 20 ounces of gold there on the altar and took the hostages of the northern part of Ireland. And I think for some that would certainly have been deemed a kind of a move too far. So he was getting increasingly bold. But I think also why they were gathering and what lay at its heart was really a desire for control over this Hiberno Norse trading emporium we've been talking about. Dublin, as Sean has discussed, was getting increasingly powerful. So there's no doubt that Brian also wanted control of Dublin and Leinster. And indeed the Vikings of Dublin and their Leinster neighbours were absolutely sure that they were going to try and stop him from, from getting it. So that led to, well, first of all a three month siege around Dublin and they all returned home and then they returned and the Battle of Clarf ensued.
- [14:34]
Sean Duffy
Sean, you want to come in on Brian Barud.
- [14:36]
Moira Nifweni
He was a very old man, as we get towards the time of the Battle of Clontarf. Some sources say in his late 80s, probably in his, in his early to mid-70s. But in the final years of his life he did actually manage to get every single other king in Ireland of note to accept him as his overlord, finally, even the people of Donegal. And it's very hard to get the people of Donegal to agree with anything. But they agreed ultimately to accept Brian as their king. But the trigger for the Battle of Clontarf was when this man, Citrix Silken Beard that we heard about from Alex earlier, the King of Dublin, decided to reject Brown's overlordship and then to ally with the King of Leinster and to ally with other forces from outside Ireland. We don't entirely know, to be honest, what Citric Silkbeard's ambitions were at the time of the Battle of Clontarf. But quite possibly they were to do what his father had tried to do back in the 980s, a man called Olaf Cuaron, to seize the kingship of Ireland for himself. So the Battle of Clontarf is not a minor inter provincial contest between the King of Munster and a local Irish rival, the King of Leinster. There is much more going on than that.
- [16:00]
Sean Duffy
Yeah, Alex, you want to take that up?
- [16:02]
Alex Wolfe
Yes. I mean, one of the things that we haven't talked about much is the external people who turned up. The one we know for certain the most about is Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, who is the ruler of the Orkney Islands, probably also Shetland and Caithness in the north of Scotland. He's from a very Scandinavian background. But we're also told that there's another major Viking leader who the sources all call a name something like Brother, which is slightly odd name. It doesn't appear in any other Scandinavian sources. And he's sometimes said to be an apostate deacon, but he's supposed to be a Viking, maybe based on the Isle of Man, maybe in the Hebrides, maybe coming from Norway. And also there are supposed to be a thousand male clad Norwegians, Lochlannach as they're called in the Irish sources. And sometimes they're said to be brothers, men, sometimes they're said to be an additional group. What's really odd is that this battle took place at about this time of year in April. And if they've come from Norway, it's not really the time of year that you would sail either from Norway or Orkney. Usually you'd expect people to be sailing later in the year when the weather was better. It's quite risky sailing in the North Atlantic in the early spring. So one possibility is that it's connected to what's happening in the wider insular world, because in late 1013.
- [17:18]
Sean Duffy
What do you mean by insular here?
- [17:20]
Alex Wolfe
I mean Britain and Ireland and the various islands associated with them. Yeah, so insular as opposed to continental. And in 1013, the end of 1013 said Forkbeard, the king of Denmark, had conquered England. But then at the end of February, he died mysteriously and unexpectedly in Lincolnshire. And the English recovered their independence briefly for a couple of years before his son, the famous Cnut, came back. And it seems to me quite likely that some of these Scandinavians who are available for Sigtric to hire are perhaps people who were expecting to be or had been part of Sweyn's army and that they want to get out of England because things are going pear shaped there.
- [18:03]
Moira Nifweni
I was just going to add to that. I mean, if we think about contemporary England and contemporary Ireland, England is a much wealthier country than Ireland, and yet it was conquered by the Danes. Then it was conquered by the Normans in 1066. The Swedes regularly contemplated its conquest throughout the 11th century, as did the Norse. And so in the 11th century, these islands were up for grabs by people from a Scandinavian background. So there's no reason to think that the experience of Ireland would have been any different from the experience of England at the time. That's to say there were people from the Scandinavian world who had political and economic ambitions here. So if we are to understand the Battle of Llontar fully, we can't allow ourselves to look at it in an entirely insular way. In other words, to confine ourselves just to thinking of the island of Ireland. What is happening in England must be significant. Historians do not believe in coincidence. And the fact that England was conquered a matter of months beforehand and that the Danes who had been kicked out of England about 10 weeks before the Battle of Clontarf is not just happening at the same time. These matters are all interrelated.
- [19:19]
Sean Duffy
Yeah. Can we take on that battle now? Do you want to start with you, Alex, or.
- [19:25]
Alex Wolfe
Well, some people say it went on for three days, but let's start with who's on whose side. The principal people on the right hand side are the King of Leinster, Mwelmorda, and his nephew, Sitric of the Silken Beard, the King of the Hiberno Norse in Dublin they have brought to their to help them. And who are camped north of Dublin near the shore, the Earl of Orkney and other Norsemen of various backgrounds. Against them is Brion himself and many of the other lesser kings of Ireland. And then there's a slight mystery about how Melchlan fits into this. And different accounts give different things. He seems to have arrived late and whether that was deliberate or not is a question. So he seems to have been on paper on Brian's side, but he didn't do very much on the day of the battle. The Leinsterman and the mercenary Vikings, should we call them that, seem to bear the brunt and to begin with, do very well. Sitric decides not to leave the city and keeps the gate shut and stays.
- [20:30]
Sean Duffy
Inside, city being Dublin.
- [20:31]
Alex Wolfe
City being Dublin, yes. And so he stays inside Dublin and the Leinstermen and the mercenary Vikings attack Brian's camp. Brian has sent one of his sons, Donnacha, south to ravage Leinster. So part of his army isn't there. And so that's how the battle starts. That's the. The opening sort of phase of the battle.
- [20:50]
Sean Duffy
That's sometime in the morning, is it?
- [20:51]
Alex Wolfe
Sometime in the morning, yes.
- [20:52]
Sean Duffy
Moira, do you want to take it up?
- [20:54]
Melvin Bragg
One of the things I think that's really, really important to stress is that we don't have any neutral sources. So even contemporary sources in effect show bias. So there's a Munster Chronicle that gives a very, very brief account of the battle. All it says is that it was a great battle between Munster and Vikings. And then in the list of slain gives us a couple more. But what we might expect to be a neutral chronicle, the Annals of Ulster again already has a very dramatic flourish at saying that this was a battle, you know, the like of which never before had been encountered. So I think it's really important to acknowledge all the time that really we don't know fully what happened on the day of the battle. Nor can we know, because all of the sources, even contemporary ones, are really being driven by one agenda or another. I mean, in terms of its significance, and I couldn't agree more that we have to see it in a kind of a wider context. It very, very quickly news of the battle spread. And for example, there's a set of Latin annals from Wales and the Annales Cambria that make mention of it. About a decade after the battle, there's a French chronicler, Ademar of Chabin, who is again presenting an account of a three day battle. You had mentioned that the three days where, you know, Norse women and children were drowned, where all of the Norse men had to flee. We don't know where he's getting his information other than that we know from elsewhere that he does kind of make things up, but he must have been at least drawing on some kinds of sources. But I think it's really, really important to always acknowledge that all of the sources we have are biased. So we're just trying to, I suppose, piece together as best we can, little bits and pieces from kind of fragmentary sources.
- [22:35]
Alex Wolfe
Yes, because some of the most graphic stories that you see represented in popular retellings actually come from icelandic sagas written 200 years later in Iceland, because a number of Icelanders were said to have been present at the battle in the retinue of Earl Sigurd of Orkney. But the. These are the very graphic details of exactly how different people died. Nearly all come from that kind of source.
- [22:55]
Sean Duffy
But there are simple facts that have some sort of ring of truth, or don't they? One is that battles of that kind usually took two or three hours. This took an entire day with enormous inordinate slaughter going on. Do you think there's any truth in that?
- [23:09]
Moira Nifweni
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the main sources that we use is a text called the Kuggle Regal, which is the war of the Irish with the Vikings. And now it's written at the very earliest, about two generations later, maybe upwards of a century later. But it has interesting details which have actually subsequently been corroborated, if one can do that, by science. So it says, for example, that what happened very early in the morning was that the Viking fleet landed taking advantage of a full tide very early on, just at dawn. And you can't check what the tide is on such and such a day, even a thousand years ago. And apparently the full tide there was on that Day was at half five in the morning, so they were able to use the full tide, apparently to land. Then what happened, of course, is the tide went out, their ships began to float around, got scattered in the bay. So when the battle started to go against them, the problem was that they could not access the ships. And as the battle went on during the course of the day, the tide, of course, was coming back in. Now, if you are struggling at Clontarf, this place called Clontarf, which is about three or four miles north east of Dublin of the city of Dublin, on the way to Howth, the only way you could get it, because Mulaghlan and Walshachlan's army seems to been to the west you could get. There was a forest up towards Howth, to the north, but the tide had come in, preventing them going there. If they were to try to make it back to Dublin, the walled city of Dublin, for protection there, they had to cross a little river called the Tolka, which was linked by one bridge. It's near. If any of our listeners are familiar with the Fairview Strand in Fairview park in Dublin, it was located there. The tide came in there also. So what they ended up doing was standing with their backs to the sea, trying to defend themselves. This is the Viking force. And of course, as the tide came in, they were up to their knees in water gradually. And so all of the accounts are very clear that many of them were not killed in battle so much as drowned.
- [25:28]
Sean Duffy
What did it matter that Brian Baru was killed in battle? And how was he killed in battle?
- [25:32]
Melvin Bragg
The contemporary sources simply say he was killed. But these later sources, like the Kogugo Regalov that Sean has just mentioned, and indeed later Norse sources give us very, very detailed depictions of what was happening. He was a very, very old man, apparently. So this 12th century source tells us that he himself couldn't take part in the battle. So he'd handed over kind of leadership to his favoured son. And he was outside the battlefield in a town tent, praying. He had a psalter in his hand. And as I say, this 12th century story then tells us that brother, this man, this Viking that Alex mentioned came along and thought he was a priest. And it was only then, later that he realized that this wasn't a priest, that this was a king. So he jumps from saying something like priest, priest to king, king, according to the source. And it's presented very much as a kind of animal opportune killing. He then kills him, but not before Brian Boru manages to be utterly Heroic in death. But that really is a later. I mean, that's. That's an example of one of these kinds of embellishments. So very, very quickly he became, I suppose, a saint, a holy martyr. And this particular theme is developed and exemplified particularly in Old Norse sources. We get a reference to it already in about the middle of the middle, kind of towards the end of the 11th century, an Irish chronicler called Mariana Scotus, who moves from Ireland to Mainz. In his account of the battle, he doesn't really talk about the battle of Clintarf at all, but he does talk about Brian dying with his hands lifted to prayer. So very, very quickly, he becomes this holy, saintly figure. But this is all part of the development of the. Of the legend of Brian. And, you know, an awful lot of that has to do with his own followers, with his own descendants who, you know, clearly want to bask in the glory of this construction leader.
- [27:26]
Alex Wolfe
Yes. And it's interesting that that martyr model may be one of the reasons why the sources often present Brother as an apostate or a pagan, because most of the people like Sitrich were Christians. His father had died as a penitent on Iona. So in order to make Brian a martyr, you have to have the guy who kills him as a non Christian or a heretic or an apostate. And so part of the mythology and the rather bizarre stories that are told about Brother's backstory, which is never very clear but always very graphic with visions of hell and so on, probably relates to emphasizing this idea that Brian is a martyr. But I think we could probably be fairly certain that the core element that is true is that he probably wasn't. He was probably too old to actually fight and is killed in some sort of side action.
- [28:15]
Sean Duffy
Who would we say won?
- [28:16]
Alex Wolfe
Mer Sheklin won because he dodged the bullet. He dodged the bullet. He didn't actually really get heavily involved. He had his army, as Shaun said, to the north, arriving a bit late to get involved. And of course, he was the person who, as I mentioned earlier, about a dozen years earlier, had ceded the over kingship to Brian. And with Brian out of the way and most of the other, and Brian's favorite son also dead, he was able to just resume as the leading king and had another. Well, he continues as the dominant king in Ireland until 1022. So I would say he sort of wins, but he wins by default.
- [28:53]
Moira Nifweni
Yeah. I mean, obviously it seems like an extraordinary thing because most people assume that Brian Baru won the battle of Clontarf. It means if you stopped a hundred people in the street in Ireland and asked them about Brian Boru, they'd say, well, he was the guy who won the battle of Clontarf. But some historians seem to doubt it. I personally don't have any doubt of it. I mean, it is the case that the contemporary sources, insofar as there are contemporary, strictly contemporary sources, they don't clearly state that he won the battle. But to my mind, it is implicit in all accounts and it is stated in, you know, there's an early Norse, Norse text that I think it's a poem that refers, that says Brian fell and won the day. I forget what the precise wording of it is, but. So this man seems to have died and yet is considered a victor. And I think he's a. He's considered a victor because of what he achieved. I mean, it is the case that you can argue that if he had won, if his side had won, they would have done as all victors do and pressed home the advantage and they would have marched on Dublin and so on. But if the numbers killed on both sides were so severe that they were both so heavily depleted that nobody was capable of continuing, then you can understand why nobody pressed any advantage home from it. And so I think one of the problems with history is it's very hard to argue from silence, you know, to argue that Brian achieved what he sought to achieve while dying in the process. You have to accept that the reason contemporaries implicitly viewed it as a success is because he helped avert what would have happened had he not died on that day. So in other words, Ireland, it seems to me, was being hostilely invaded by people intent upon seizing the kingship that he was claiming. By the end of that day, they had abandoned that hope within a matter of months. Cnut had done for the Danes what they had failed, what the Scandinavians failed to do in Ireland and England was comprehensively conquered for a generation by the Danes. That did not happen in Ireland. And Ireland was not conquered for another 150 years until the descendants of the Normans did it in the late 1160s. So I think it was a major achievement on Brian Boru's part. In other words, Brian Barroo has been deemed a hero implicitly by a thousand years of Irish people and Irish scholars and Irish writers writing about it, because there is no more plausible explanation for what occurred on the day than that his side, you know, whilst suffering great losses, achieved what they wanted to achieve. And the death of this elderly king was a price worth Paying.
- [31:56]
Sean Duffy
Let's bring it back to Dublin, Alex. Let's bring it back to Dublin. What happened to Dublin?
- [32:00]
Alex Wolfe
Well, Dublin, as Sean has implied it wasn't sacked Dublin. But from this time onwards, the kings of Dublin were always second division leaders. And over the next hundred and fifty years, between the time of Clontarf and the Anglo Norman invasion in the 1160s that Sean just mentioned, Dublin becomes a kind of prize. It usually retains its own kings, although sometimes the sons of Irish major kings are put in in lieu of Hibernian Norse kings. The fleet is an important asset, but it's the first thing that people go for now when they're trying to assert their dominance over Ireland. So, for example, Brian's great grandson Murkchuk, who's probably the patron behind the Cogarth text that Moira and Sean have talked about, one of the first things he did was seize Dublin when he wanted to become king of Ireland. Another 11th century king from Leinster, Geomat Macmull Nabo, does the same thing. And this is become rather than one of the symbolic ritual centers in the middle of Ireland, which in the earlier times were the places people went to. Like the Hill of Tara, Dublin is now the prize that gives people the right to the sovereignty of Ireland. But the Dubliners themselves are no longer major players. They just have a supporting role in the competition between Irish provincial kings for over kingship.
- [33:22]
Sean Duffy
Moira, how did this story of the battle spread? Who spread it and what effect did that have?
- [33:28]
Melvin Bragg
The spreading started very, very quickly because of the fact that Ireland, as we've been saying, was very much part and parcel of this connected world. I've already mentioned this French chronicler who got wind of it and certainly took it up relatively quickly. I think what we also have then are, you know, very, very skillful, sophisticated Irish scholars, you know, writing detailed accounts of the battle. And this text that we've mentioned, Kogo el Ragalov, is extraordinarily sophist and skillful in that regard because in effect, not alone does it draw on chronicle evidence to build up Brian as this, you know, major fighter against Vikings leading up to the kind of the battle of Clintarf. But it presents him and his son very much in Trojan mould. So his son, for example, is presented as Hector. And in Brian's own obituary in this text, he's identified with Augustus, with the Roman Empire, he's identified with David, he's identified with Solomon. So what these scholars are trying to do is in effect claim for Brian, you know, the same kind of power as These extraordinary kind of biblical and classical characters had. And that of course, had resonance. And that absolutely spread because of course, Dublin in particular was a. Was a bilingual milieu. The story of Clantar moved from an Irish milieu into an Old Norse one. And Alex has already mentioned the number of Old Norse sagas and indeed one particularly powerful kind of prophetic poem that may be concerned with the. With the battle. So I suppose it spread as part of this interconnected world and because of its significance.
- [35:10]
Sean Duffy
I'll ask each of you in turn on this one, but start with you, Sean. When did it become such thought of more generally as such a defining moment in Irish history?
- [35:22]
Moira Nifweni
Yeah, I mean, it is extraordinarily powerful thing in the Irish psyche, I think, still, I think there's a tendency of some people to assume that this is a relatively modern thing, that all modern nation states look back on some romantic battle as being a pivotal moment. So for the Scots it may be Bannockburn, or for the English it might be Agincourt or something like that. But it seems to me that throughout the Middle Ages, from a very early stage, Clontarf was perceived in those terms. So there's lots of bardic poetry from the Middle Ages which looks back on Clontarf as a truly national thing. And there's a famous. I think it's by Murdoch, Alba nicodol, a early 13th century poem which talks about what Brian succeeded in doing at the Battle of Clontarf and how now, 150 years later, now what he prevented happening has now happened. Ireland has been conquered by the Anglo Normans and every year it says that another fleet load of foreigners is coming into Ireland. But Brian is the one. And it says what we need is another Brian who will achieve what Brian achieved. And I'm always struck by one of the. We talked a lot about the Irish Annals today. One of the most important late medieval collections of annals are called the Annals of Loch Cay and the Annals of Loch. The authors of those were professional family of historians. They probably had access to all sorts of data relating to early medieval Ireland going all the way back to the time of St. Patrick. But the book actually begins with the year 1014. They could have started a century earlier or half a millennium earlier, but they start with 1014 because as far as they were concerned, that was the start of a whole new era in, in the Irish story. So it is not a modern nationalist myth to imagine that Clontarf was a, you know, one of these epic moments in the Irish story. It is something that was generated from, you know, within a decade or two of the battle itself taking place.
- [37:34]
Sean Duffy
Alex, would you like to take that?
- [37:36]
Alex Wolfe
Yes. I think a key moment is the period when the Kogath is written for Brian's great grandson, Murchow. Murchow also becomes effectively king of Ireland, but I think importantly for the sort of national myth element is that he enters into a quite sticky relationship, kind of Cold War with Henry I of England. Henry tries to blockade Ireland and stop trade coming in because certain rebels have been given. At Murkatsak's court, he faces a Norwegian invasion which he deals with. This is Magnus Baerleg, King of Norway, arrives with a fleet. Murkchok deals with that by meeting him in Dublin, having a feast with him and marrying his daughter to his son. And he also sends fleets out and asserts his control over the Isle of Man and maybe some other parts of what's now southwest Scotland. And so I think he's someone who presents himself as representing Ireland on an international stage and seeing off potential existential threats from Henry of England and Magnus of Norway. And so I think for him, it's important to say, this is my heritage. This is what my great grandfather did as well. And the claims I'm making to get other Irish people to help me in this project is a just one. There's precedents in the past.
- [38:50]
Sean Duffy
And Moira, what's your view on this? What would you say about it, based on the sources?
- [38:54]
Melvin Bragg
Yeah, no, I absolutely agree that that moment at the beginning of the 12th century when this text comes into being is very important, but it's, I suppose, more important almost for the significance of this particular group, the descendants of Brian Boru, rather than for a kind of an all Ireland, an all Ireland movement at that stage. I think what's significant in that regard is perhaps much later when after the English invasion and settlement, and I think it's significant there that the war used for foreigner in Irish. So the word used for Viking, namely Gyl, is exactly the same word that's used then later for English. So the nature of the foreigner changes. But I suppose you could then use the same rhetoric. If the word for foreigner, the word you use for Viking, is the same as the one you use for English, then of course, it's very, very easy to adopt that rhetoric after the English have come. So I think looking back to path, rhetorical models, looking back to past literary resources, becomes very important. From the time of Murray Albanach that Sean mentioned, and indeed much, much later as well.
- [39:57]
Sean Duffy
Sean, we're coming towards the end. Now, how has Brian Barouw's reputation developed over the centuries?
- [40:04]
Moira Nifweni
I suppose one of the things that Brian his death at Clontarf. It did, I suppose, begin the idea that dying for Ireland was a noble thing. So there's been a long history in Ireland of viewing the world as a war between the Irish and a foreign oppressor. The very title of that text that we have been talking about a lot, which is, you know, about events that happened a thousand years ago. Cugu Gael Rugal of the War of the Irish with the Foreigners. It's like a motif that you could that applies all the way through Irish history afterwards. And that began with Brian Barrou and this battle. There are several contemporary, near contemporary sources that date that it happened on Good Friday. And on Good Friday Christ died to save humankind and he was resurrected on Easter Sunday. So Brian and that poem that we talked about by Murdoch, Albinoqdolik, actually likens him to Christ, his death, his sacrifice. As Christ saved humankind. Brian died to save the Irish. And that feeds all the way through the Irish story of resistance to their perceived oppressors through the centuries. So that, for example, most Irish people will think of the 1916 Rising against British rule as a pivotal moment in Irish history that took place at Easter by people who felt that they were giving their lives for Ireland. And it is whether it was stated at the time or not, what was motivating them, in part at the back of their mind was the idea that they were following in the footsteps of Brian Boru.
- [41:49]
Sean Duffy
Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Moira Nimweni, Sean Duffy and Alex Wolfe. And next week, how people and events in the Old Testament are seen as foreshadowing those in the new that's typology. Thanks for listening.
- [42:04]
Melvin Bragg
And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.
- [42:11]
Sean Duffy
I'd like to say. What didn't you have time to say that you would like to have said.
- [42:15]
Melvin Bragg
Oh, I think we need to talk about Gorhamla, surely. Yes, yes.
- [42:20]
Sean Duffy
Sorry, where you go?
- [42:22]
Melvin Bragg
I suppose one of the characters who's become highly developed in her own right is one of Fran's wives, Gormla. And she's presented both in the Irish 12th century Source this text we've been talking about Coco Gaelwa Gallow, and indeed in particularly one of the old Norse sagas, namely Njald's saga. She's presented very much as kind of the villain of the piece. But in very, very different ways. And I suppose in a way, I think that all has to do with also how Brian is being developed, because certainly in the Old Norse material, she's the villain to Brian's holy man. You know, Brian wouldn't do anything bad to anybody, we're told. And yet she was so evil and malicious. And she. In the Old Norse material, she said to be working in consort with her son, Citric Silkenbeard, the king of Dublin. And what she says there is that he may promise. She's supposed to be absolutely beautiful, and that he may promise her hand in marriage to anybody that will come and fight, fight for him. So, you know, she does to or he does in terms of Sigur of or Orkney as well. Whereas in the Irish material, she's very much presented as part and parcel of her own dynasty, which is the eastern dynasty of Leinster. And she taunts her brother, who's on a visit to Brian's court, and she's there as well, and she taunts him that in effect, he's accepting gifts that Brian Boru is giving her. And she does it very dramatically. She takes a kind of a silk and tunic, According to this 12th century text, and throws it into the fire. And in this dramatic account of the battle of Clintarf, she's very much presented as a catalyst, really. You know, her brother marches off then, and then we're told that he goes and gathers allies. But of course, this is a not unusual literary theme, but it's interesting how it's developed in different ways in different sources in Norse and Irish material.
- [44:12]
Alex Wolfe
Yes. I think one of the things that's really puzzled scholars, I read a lot of this material, is that the similarities between the Norse and the Irish material are very close. And you could argue that means they go. That means they're true. But as Moira has said, many of them have a very literary feel to them. And so people are puzzled over whether the Icelandic saga writers had access to Irish literature, whether there was a saga written in Old Norse in Dublin itself, or the Isle of Man or the Hebrides or somewhere. So this intriguing cross fertilization and the fact that of all the battles, the sort of major battles of the. Of the period, it's the one that has the highest profile in Icelandic literature, other than the one possible exception would be Stiklestad, where St. Olaf is killed. But even then, I think fewer Icelanders were present there. I think there's maybe only two Icelanders present there. Whereas this appears in several Icelandic sagas, several Icelanders were there. The detail is always quite thick. It's almost like they go on a big digression, even though these might be a saga like Njal saga, that's mostly about feuding farmers in a small part of South Iceland. But suddenly there's this big digression with a huge amount of detail about Brian's personal relationship and so on. And so it's a great puzzle as to why the Icelanders felt so strongly about this battle and why their version of it is so close to the Irish version.
- [45:37]
Moira Nifweni
What is the answer to that then? Why is it in the 13th century in Iceland they are fascinated in this, what. What should have been a very obscure encounter that had taken place in Ireland a quarter of a millennium earlier?
- [45:51]
Melvin Bragg
Well, I think one of the answers to that is because the Norwegian king, namely Haakon iv, was very much interested in all of Britain and Ireland and he certainly had pretensions and ambitions. So I mean, certainly I think it's in that context that we can see, you know, an old Norse account of the battle actually moving northwards. And of course that would be absolutely what we would expect, that it would be via Norway, that it would go to Iceland. So I think 13th century politics basically is the answer to that question.
- [46:19]
Alex Wolfe
Yes, because Haakon, this 13th century king, in the 1260s, he leads a fleet into the Scottish islands. And what we're told in his saga, which is written by a contemporary, Stella Thordason, who knew him personally, we're told that when he was in Kintyre, men came from Ireland and offered him the crown of Ireland if he would come and liberate them from the English. English.
- [46:43]
Sean Duffy
If I can make an unprecedented intrusion in this space which is supposed to be sacred to just the three of you, going through the notes and listening to you now and reading around a bit, the literary content of the reports on this are very extensive and very fluid. And is this a precursor of the written life in Irish culture? Do you think there's any connection there?
- [47:07]
Moira Nifweni
Well, I mean, I think, you know, obviously it is the case that something happened. The answer is yes, happened on that. That, you know, that fed into the imagination because there were all sorts of extraordinary phenomena in it. We mentioned earlier about this that, you know, the fact of it having happened on Good Friday, which I think, I mean, there are, as far as I'm aware, there are three different sources that tell us that. So I think we can believe therefore that it fed into sort of Christian ideas of their conflict with these, with non Christian Vikings. And the Vikings, it Seems have always thrilled the imagination. But I mean, one of the things that I think, and it's something I don't think we discussed earlier, was the, you know, if you like the negative, Brian Barou's negative achievements, you know, the. The bad stuff as opposed to the good stuff. I mean, he was. What had Brian Barru succeeded in showing during the course of his life? When you boil it down, he had kind of shown that might is right, you know, because he had come from nothing. He acquired the military resources to push his weight around and force himself to the top. So to an extent, after he died, I mean, he opened up the floodgates to anybody who felt that they were, you know, wealthy enough or brave enough or courageous enough or lucky enough to have a go at the top to do so. And so I think when you look at the, say, the 150 years between 1014 and 1169, when you have the Anglo Norman invasion of Ireland, what are those years? I mean, they seem to me to be years of near incessant warfare amongst the competing Irish province kings, each one of them trying to emulate Brian Barroo and, you know, elevate their province from having been a backwater to being at the center of Irish life. And so. So it did have that. I think it did have that. His career was an unhealthy exemplar in that way, I think, and we don't often pay enough attention to that.
- [49:22]
Melvin Bragg
I think I might just go back to the question about, I suppose, about this extraordinary corpus of writing that we have and certainly, as you suggest, influenced what came after. But I think what's also important to say is that it was influenced by a huge body of rich, varied literature that, you know, was composed in Ireland, you know, in the couple of hundred years before the Battle of Clontarf. I think medieval Ireland is extraordinary in terms of the variety and the extent of literary culture that has survived. Only I suppose, you know, there's a huge amount as well in Norse, but that's much, much later. So I think it's important that we look at this corpus of really imaginative stuff about Clontarf in the context of what went before as well. And the fact is that it ended up really, really quickly. So this text we were talking about, Coga, in a hugely significant manuscript from the 12th century, there's this large compilatory manuscript called the Book of Leinster, and it ended up in that alongside an adaptation of the destruction of Troy. So it was very quickly seen in that kind of way. So yeah. So it's, it's, it's, it's certainly not the beginning. It builds on what went before and absolutely influenced what comes after.
- [50:36]
Sean Duffy
Well, thank you all very much again. Thank you very much. That was terrific. Loved it.
- [50:41]
Alex Wolfe
Does anyone want tea or coffee?
- [50:43]
Sean Duffy
Tea, I love some tea. Lovely, thank you. Yes.
- [50:46]
Moira Nifweni
Nothing strong or. No, if not, I love tea.
- [50:52]
Melvin Bragg
Glass of water would be great.
- [50:54]
Alex Wolfe
In our time with Melvin Bragg.
- [50:56]
Melvin Bragg
It's produced by Simon Tillotson and it's a BBC Studios audio production.
- [51:01]
E
Hello, Russell Caine here. I used to love British history. Be proud of it. Henry viii, Queen Victoria. Massive fan of stand up comedians, obviously. Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor, that has become much more challenging for. I am the host of BBC Radio 4's Evil Genius, the show where we take heroes and villains from history and try to work out were they evil or genius. Do not catch up on BBC Sounds by searching Evil Genius. If you don't want to see your heroes destroyed, but if, like me, you quite enjoy it, have a little search. Listen to Evil Genius with me, Russell Cain. Go to BBC Sounds and have your world destroyed.