TWH – Pagans who relate to and are interested in exploring Irish traditions, frequently depend on Irish medieval manuscripts to learn about that tradition’s gods. Some modern Pagans see those texts as preserving a Pagan past even though Christian monks wrote and copied those manuscripts.
That era of their writing and copying differed from that of the ancient Pagan past. Few, if any, physical manuscripts from the era of their initial writing have survived. Monks copied manuscripts. Originals decayed. What did survive were copies, and sometimes copies of copies, of the original texts. Like a game of “telephone,” at each iteration, changes could occur. Different versions of the same story do not always agree.
This article discusses the history and social context of some of those manuscripts. Part of that social context involves the Viking settlement in Dublin. Other parts involve Ireland’s role in the Viking trade network.
In the Medieval period, northern Europe experienced significant changes. Towns began. Christianity linked northern Europe to the Mediterranean. The Vikings established a trade network ranging from Greenland, through northern Europe, and into Bagdad. Northern Europe was globalizing, Medieval style. That change formed the larger social context in which those manuscripts were written, copied, and revised.
The early medieval period in Ireland, roughly 400 to 1200 C.E.
Archaeologist Rebecca Boyd wrote “Building Fences in Viking Dublin: Exploring Ireland’s First Urban Community.” She reported that Medieval Ireland had its own strict rules, and mobility was highly regulated. Only the “nemed,” an elite class, could travel freely. The nemed included royalty, clergy, lawyers, and poets.
Common people could not leave their “tuath,” a group like a tribe or clan. If they did, they risked becoming a non-person. The Viking raids and settlements disrupted that closed society. They began a process of moving to and from those towns.
Map of Viking settlements in Ireland – Image credit: Yorkshirian – CC BY-SA 3.0
Before the Vikings, the Irish landscape consisted of ring forts, farms, and monasteries. The Vikings built the first towns in Ireland. Over time, these Hiberno-Norse towns became the Irish cities of Cork, Dublin, and Waterford. Trade and towns began to change the Irish environment, culture, and society.
The Anglo-Norman invasions of the 12th century further increase urbanization and maritime trade. Fatefully, those Anglo-Norman invasions began to tie Ireland to the larger nearby island.
Archaeologists estimate that, between 1001 and 1100, Dublin had a population of 4,500. Compared with today’s megacities that the number of people would barely constitute a village. Compared with pre-Viking Ireland, a town of that size would have seemed huge.
“The Book of Invasions”
The Royal Irish Academy provides a history of The Book of Invasions (Leabhar Gabhála), a major Medieval “manuscript.” That title does not refer to a single, physical text but instead refers to many textual variants.
Saint Patrick died around 461 C.E. The Book of Invasions had its origins between 601 and 700. It was “extensively reworked in verse form” between 1001 to 1200. Gradually, prose versions replaced some of the poetic versions. Later, between 1632 and 1636, a team of historians, the Four Masters, revised it.
The dates of those revisions are significant. One major revision occurs, from 1001 to 1200 as towns begin to form. At that time, the Irish are absorbing the Hiberno-Norse. The other major revision occurs between 1632 and 1636, after the “Flight of the Earls,” but before Cromwell’s genocidal campaign. Many historians consider that flight to be the symbolic end of the Gaelic system. Historical correlation is not causation, but it does suggest social context.
Other Irish manuscripts have a similar history. Each iteration injected some differences into the stories. While monks wrote texts about gods for the literate elite, common people told folktales. Both provide valuable information, but both evolved.
The first ten verses of The Book of Invasions retell Biblical Genesis. It then gives a genealogy that links the Abrahamic creation myth to Irish myth.
Viking Dublin, a brief history
Examining Viking towns can help to understand the social context of early Medieval Ireland. Recently, archaeologist Rebecca Boyd took part in a podcast of Amplify Archaeology about the archaeology of Viking Dublin.
9th – 10th century Viking boatyard and house reconstruction at the Irish National Heritage Park – Image credit: David Hawgood, CC BY-SA 2.0
In 795, the Vikings began to raid the Irish coast. Those raids originated in Scandinavia. Next, the Vikings set up summer-long base camps in Ireland to launch raids. Mainly, they were looking for silver. In 840/841, they stayed year-round in Dublin. It had ceased to be a temporary camp, and the City of Dublin began.
Boyd stressed that the Viking raiders did not wear Wagnerian horned helmets.
Dublin grew into more of a trading center that a raiding center. Kings of Dublin appear. In the layers from 840 to 901, archaeologists mainly found burials, silver hoards, or ship camps.
In 902, the Vikings were exiled from Dublin. They went to England. Archaeologists have found that Dublin was continuously inhabited in this period, and had attracted non-Viking settlers. When the elites left, the life of the common people continued.
In 917, the Viking elite returned to Dublin. From 901 to 1000, Dublin becomes wealthier and more Hiberno-Norse. Between 1001 and 1100, Vikings founded town-like settlements in Cork and Waterford. Dublin became more involved with Irish politics than Norse politics. Ties with Scandinavia began to atrophy.
The archaeology of Viking Dublin
Boyd distinguished a road from a street. A road is a paved surface that goes somewhere. A street has buildings and people on either side. A street is a busy, dynamic phenomenon. Boyd focused on social ties as an organizing principle of urban areas. In the country, everyone is a farmer, but in a town, many occupations interact.
Each house sat in a yard with other structures. While houses tended to be between 6 and 7 meters (19.7 to 23 feet) long, the yards tended to be 20 to 30 meters (65.6 to 98.4 feet) long. Given the size of the structures, a lot of work had to happen outdoors.
The house would be set back from the street about 1 to 10 meters (3.2 to 32.8 feet) long. Some of these other structures, possible workplaces, had fireplaces. Others were sheds for storage or animals like chickens and pigs. In those days before indoor plumbing, every yard had to have an outhouse. Wooden pathways connected these structures.
Boyd reported that boundaries between properties lasted over generations. Some of those boundaries continued up to 1301. To mark those boundaries, Dubliners built fences. They built those fences of post-and-wattle.
In that type of fence, ”thin lengths of a flexible wood (usually hazel) are woven in between upright stakes (most commonly ash).” Dubliners would then top the hazel latticework fence with thorny branches. Irish builders frequently used this construction technique.
These fences would run the length of the property without a gap. They restricted the entrance and exits to the front and back of the building. Fences varied in height from waist high to 1.8 meters (5.9 feet).
The main house
The main house had a rectangular form. The short side faced the street. Each of the short sides of the rectangle had a door. A fireplace sat in the middle of the house.
Most of these houses had an area of about 40 sq. meters (430.6 sq. feet). The structures housed parents, children, grandparents, and maybe an unmarried aunt or uncle. By comparison, the city of Dublin has defined 40 sq meters (430.6 sq. feet) as the current minimum legal size for a studio apartment.
Class distinctions were not evident outside of the houses. Given the crowded conditions, privacy would be at a premium. Higher-status people would have more separate rooms within the house. Lower-status people would have fewer. Opportunities for privacy marked class distinctions. These patterns have similarities to houses in Iceland from 1001 to 1201.
Organic material rots
Dubliners built houses out of organic material, mostly post-and-wattle. They thatched the roofs. They packed the earth for a floor.
Archaeologists have found no stone houses in Viking Dublin.
Since organic material rots, the houses were in a constant state of needing repair. The smell of rotting wood would have been common. Organic houses lasted about 15 to 20 years but would be in a constant state of repair. Eventually, the decay would be too much. The family would tear it down, and build a new one.
No one can prove that the Viking settlement and trade influenced how these Medieval manuscripts evolved. Still, knowledge of the social context can broaden our understanding of those manuscripts and their various iterations. Those manuscripts did not just face the past. They spoke to their present.
If people want to read the manuscripts, The Celtic Literature Collection has many English translations of Medieval manuscripts available online for free. These manuscripts include those from Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Scotland, and Wales.
The Royal Irish Academy provides resources for understanding these manuscripts, and Amplify Archaeology provides free podcasts about Irish archaeology.
The Wild Hunt is not responsible for links to external content.
To join a conversation on this post:
Visit our The Wild Hunt subreddit! Point your favorite browser to https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Wild_Hunt_News/, then click “JOIN”. Make sure to click the bell, too, to be notified of new articles posted to our subreddit.