After keeping him without food and water for two days, the Vikings discussed what to do with him. Findan’s father sent him to the Vikings to arrange his sister’s ransom, but they immediately clapped him in irons and carried him off to their ship too. One relates to a Leinsterman called Findan whose sister was captured by Viking raiders some time around the middle of the ninth century. As mere commodities, the voices of slaves are rarely heard in the historical record, but two remarkable accounts have survived about the experiences of Irishmen who were captured by Viking slavers. The kidnapping and breaking-up of communities of learned monks must have had a far more serious impact on Ireland’s flourishing monastic culture than ever the destruction of books, sacred vessels and buildings did.
Its economic impact is harder to estimate but it is likely that Vikings targeted the young and healthy rather than infants and the elderly.
We know enough about the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade of the eighteenth century to guess at the human misery Viking slaving must have caused. THAT IS WHY TODAY, THE CARRUTHERS WOMEN ARE BEAUTIFUL. *** OUR THEORY ON FEMALE SLAVES THAT WERE TAKEN AS WIVES IS, OUR GOTLANDER ANCESTORS ONLY TOOK THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN FOR THEIR WIVES. This is usually presented as one of the positive impacts that the Vikings had on Ireland, but it is unlikely that their victims were quite so sanguine about it. Through developing the slave trade, the Vikings drew Ireland into fuller participation in the international trade networks. Anglo-Saxon England and the Frankish kingdoms both had active slave trades but most Irish captives probably finished up in Scandinavia or the Moorish kingdoms in Spain and North Africa. Irish captives who were not lucky enough to be ransomed by their relatives could expect to be sold abroad. Perhaps inevitably, Irish kings soon began to take captives during their wars and sell them to the Vikings. Plundering in wars between the Irish was usually confined to cattle rustling, so Viking slaving added a new form of suffering to the experience of warfare. Slavery was rare in pre-Viking Ireland – it was used mainly as a form of debt bondage – so there was no slave trade. The Vikings rounded up these people in their thousands to be ransomed or sold as slaves according to their wealth and status. Despite occasional famines caused by cattle epidemics and severe weather, the Irish population was generally well nourished and very few people were desperately poor. The Irish did not bother to gather hay in the summer as it was so rarely necessary. Thanks to the country’s mild winters, cool summers and reliable rainfall, grass grew all year round so cattle and sheep did not have to be kept inside during the winter. All of this was more than enough to justify the Vikings’ attentions, but their main interest was in Ireland’s people.Ĭrude estimates based on a count of known settlements suggest that Ireland’s population was about half a million when the Viking Age began. Kings, seeking the authority and safety that close association with the saints was believed to confer, often had residences, treasuries and garrisons in these monastic towns.
Secular communities of craftsmen and merchants grew up around the more important monasteries and by the eighth century a few were becoming small towns. Major Irish monasteries like Armagh or Clonmacnoise were much more than communities of monks, they were also centres of political power and economic activity. The hoards of magnificent gold and silver liturgical vessels from Ardagh and Derrynaflan stand testimony to the wealth of Ireland’s monasteries in the early Middle Ages. Pre-Viking Ireland did not play a large part in international trade so it had no trading towns to compare with the likes of Dorestad or York. That there was an exodus of Scandinavians from Ireland at that time is not in doubt, so this is probably evidence that Dublin had a significant Irish population living alongside the Norse and that they were allowed to remain: they may even have been the majority because genetic studies have found scant evidence of Scandinavian DNA in the modern Irish population.ĭublin owed its transformation to a town to trade. Significantly, following the Irish conquest in that year, Dublin was not abandoned: there is clear evidence of continuity of settlement through to its recapture by the Norse in 917.
THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND 795 – 1014 PART IIĪrchaeological evidence indicates that by 902 Dublin had begun to outgrow the longphort and become a true town rather than an armed camp. CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS
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