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Viking defeats at The Battles of Tara and Clontarf
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I think the IT staff writers have been dipping into H & H for ideas again.The Irish Times - Saturday, October 15, 2011What have the Vikings ever done for us?
Destruction reconstruction: Viking enthusiasts re-enact the burning of a longboat. Photographs: Danny Lawson/PA and NRA/Studio Lab
As A History of Ireland in 100 Objects enters a new era, FINTAN O'TOOLE explains how Norse raiding, trading and settlement affected Ireland from the ninth century
COMPLAINING ABOUT THE bad weather is a favourite Irish pastime. But in the early ninth century, an Irish monk wrote a short poem giving thanks for a stormy night. It reads, in Proinsias Mac Cana’s translation, “Bitter is the wind tonight, / It tosses the sea’s white tresses; / I do not fear the fierce warriors of Norway, / Who only travel the quiet seas.” Cold gales were a lot more fun than Vikings. Or, to look at it from the other side, a Norse saga describes the pattern of life of one Svein Asleifarson, a Viking settler on the Orkney Islands: “In the spring, he had more than enough to occupy him, with a great deal of seed to sow . . . Then when the job was done, he would go off plundering in the Hebrides and in Ireland on what he called his ‘spring trip’, then back home just after midsummer where he stayed till . . . the grain was safely in. After that, he would go off raiding again, and never come back till the first month of winter was ended. This he used to call his autumn trip.” One man’s terror was another’s trip.
The explosion of raiders, traders and colonists out of Scandinavia in the eighth and ninth centuries is one of the most extraordinary phenomena in European history. Its influence stretched, at one point or another, to North America and Greenland, south as far as north Africa, Byzantium and Baghdad and as far east as Russia, whose very name derives from the local name for the Swedish traders and colonists, the Rús.
In this, the Russians are not alone. In the forms we now use, the names Ireland, Munster, Leinster and Ulster are of Scandinavian origin. It is arguable that the Vikings transformed Ireland more radically than any other set of invaders. They brought, among other things, cities, money and serious military technology. They posed a profound challenge to Irish society, which had to change profoundly in response.
Why did the Scandinavians suddenly become such aggressive expansionists? Until relatively recently, the favoured explanation was overpopulation and consequent pressure on resources in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In fact, there’s no evidence that Scandinavia was especially heavily populated in this period: the large-scale clearance of forests to create more arable land in Denmark (an obvious mark of the need for more resources) doesn’t get under way until the 11th century.
The explanation is probably simpler: there was an awful lot of money to be made and the Scandinavians had developed both the technologies and the forms of social organisation to exploit these opportunities. Trade with the thriving Islamic world could bring in enormous wealth: well over 200,000 silver Arabic coins have been recovered from Viking sites. The monasteries of the western isles and then the church and secular centres of the Frankish empire offered equally rich pickings. Fertile lands abroad could be seized by minor nobles, bumping up their status at home.
The Scandinavians were prepared to be flexible, functioning equally well as merchants, colonists, farmers, pirates and raiders. They had both the technological and organisational means to project themselves into distant societies. The longship was a new invention, developed only in the eighth century. It is not accidental that the Vikings began to expand aggressively thereafter: they did it because, now, they could. The longship was one of the great design classics, as flexible as its owners in two distinct ways. The ships had enough give not to be torn apart by strong waves and were able to traverse both the high seas and inland river systems. (It was through the great rivers of Poland and Russia that the Swedes gained access to the Black Sea, Byzantium and the Arab world.) Their weapons, especially the iron swords they adapted from the Franks, were fearsome.
On their own, these technologies would have had limited impact. The Vikings needed systems for passing on information about geography and sources of wealth. They needed the capacity to band together in flexible, often temporary alliances. They needed a culture that balanced a strong individual or family ethic with cults of loyalty, heroism and unity. One Frankish source refers to Viking companies overwintering on the River Seine as sodalities, or brotherhoods. Somehow, the Vikings were able to combine an adventurous, even reckless, spirit with a capacity for co-operation.
THE LATER ROLE of the Scandinavian incomers as traders, craftspeople and city-founders is rightly emphasised in current discussion, but it does not diminish the shock and violence of their initial appearance. Raiding and attacks on monasteries were by no means unfamiliar in indigenous Irish culture, and Irish raiders had terrorised Romano-British communities in the fifth and sixth centuries. But the Danes and Norwegians who descended on Ireland were both rapacious and cruelly destructive. Even sites of little economic value, such as those on the stark Skellig islands, off the Kerry coast, were ravaged. Murder, rape, enslavement and the destruction of saintly relics and holy sites were obviously deeply traumatic.
The first intimations of the coming storm may have spread through contact between monasteries. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the great monastery at Lindisfarne, on the Northumbrian coast, was attacked in 793, when “the ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God’s church . . . with plunder and slaughter”. The Vikings make their appearance in Irish history in 794, when “pagans” are recorded as raiding “all the islands of Britain” (probably meaning those off western Scotland and northern Ireland), including “Rechru”, which is probably Rathlin Island. Four years later, coastal raids by Danes and Norwegians had developed into incursions on to the mainland. In 802 and 806, the paramount monastery of the Irish Christian world, on the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, was attacked. The second raid was so devastating that the monks abandoned Iona and relocated the monastery to Kells, in Co Meath.
By 807, Vikings were even turning up on the west coast, burning Inishmurray, off Sligo, and Roscam, in Galway Bay. By 821, they are recorded as capturing slaves: a large party of Irish women were kidnapped from Howth. And by 840, it could be said that nowhere in Ireland was entirely safe from Viking raids. In 837, two fleets, each of 60 longships, sailed up the rivers Boyne and Liffey, harrying the rich valleys of Cos Meath and Kildare. In 839, raiders sailed up the Lee into Co Cork and also established a base on Lough Neagh.
These incursions were not unopposed, and they were not always successful. One Viking party was routed in Kerry in 812, and in the same year a victory by the Irish over “the Northmen” was considered significant enough to be recorded at the court of Charlemagne, the Frankish emperor. The first named Viking in Ireland, Saxolb, described as “leader of the foreigners”, was killed in battle.
This initial period of hit-and-run raids lasted until roughly 830. It was followed by an ebb and flow of Scandinavian colonisation, in which the Norsemen enjoyed periods of secure control over territory followed by periods of struggle with Irish powers and with other Vikings. Roughly, Viking settlement falls into two phases: the first between the 830s and the 870s, and the second from about 914 to the 940s.
IRELAND WAS ILL-PREPARED for this onslaught. Irish culture in the eighth century was supremely self-confident. It had its own style of Christianity, its own sophisticated legal system, distinctive and highly accomplished art, and a vernacular literature. Its agricultural economy and multitude of petty kingdoms did generate tribal and dynastic conflicts, but they were limited in scale. Indeed, one of the reasons Irish art is so spectacularly opulent in the eighth century is that this was a culture that could afford to put spare resources of wealth and craft into objects of beauty and devotional power rather than military technology and warriors.
The sudden eruption of an aggressive, pagan and initially destructive presence posed a real threat to this self-contained culture. It had to adapt or die. And there was a great deal to adapt to. Military technology had to be upgraded, most obviously by acquiring Viking weaponry. Kings had to develop at least a hard core of semiprofessional warriors. But the Vikings also changed the map of Ireland in ways that had long-term consequences for the natives.
The change can be symbolised by the shift in the centre of gravity from Tara to Dublin. The old Ireland looked, geographically as well as psychologically, inwards. It was the Vikings who developed not just towns but coastal towns: Dublin, Wexford, Cork, Limerick and Waterford. Not all of the Viking towns thrived: large settlements at Linn Duachaill, near Annagassan, in Co Louth, and Woodstown, just west of Waterford, both discovered only recently, lasted for relatively short periods.
There is a paradox here: the Scandinavians were no more an urban people than the Irish. Their own towns arose, in this same period of expansion, as merchant colonies. The founding of Ireland’s coastal cities was, moreover, as much a testament to Viking failures as to their successes. In Iceland, the Faroes and the Scottish islands, the Danish invaders simply occupied land. In northern England, they founded no cities, though they did occupy the old Roman town of York. What made them such prodigious founders of coastal towns in Ireland was the simple fact that they were unable to carve out large swathes of rural territory. They needed their fortified strongholds with quick access to the sea.
Yet, particularly as Irish power began to recover from the initial shock, native kings saw the value of this new way of life. They intermarried with the strangers and sucked them into their own quarrels and alliances. But they also tried increasingly to control and exploit the towns they had created. The Vikings brought with them a more developed commercial culture than Ireland had known: among the words that entered Irish from Old Norse is margad, market. And they gave the country one of the things it came to love more than all else: money.
An exhibition, Raiders, Traders and Innovators – The Vikings and County Louth opens next Friday at the County Museum, Dundalk, Co Louth. A Viking conference will be held at the Town Hall Theatre, Dundalk, on October 22nd and 23rd. dundalkmuseum.ie
A history of Ireland in 100 objects Oseberg ship, circa 815
Very few objects ever did so much to change the course of Irish history as the fearsome and beautiful Viking longship. In the eighth century, Danish and Norwegian shipbuilders developed existing techniques to create a vessel that could both traverse the high seas and navigate the great rivers of Europe. The longship was the spacecraft of its day, propelling adventurers across vast and hitherto unimaginable distances. In one raid in 858, a group sailed from Scandinavia to the coast of Spain, into the Mediterranean, on to Italy, up the River Rhône, raiding all the way, and then back home.
The Vikings didn’t invent the techniques that made possible these light, fast ships, but they did perfect them. The method involved splitting oak trunks with axes, chisels and wedges into long, thin and remarkably flexible planks. These were fixed with iron nails to a single sturdy keel and then to each other, with one plank overlapping the next to create the distinctive “clinker” effect. The low, sleek shape made the ships highly manoeuvrable when steered with a single rudder on the right-hand side of the prow. (This is why the right-hand side of a ship is still known as the starboard – ie steer-board – side.) The ship’s shallow draught meant that it could be rowed far upriver into the heart of the European continent – or, in the case of Ireland, of the island.
Built around 815, in the period when the Viking raids on Ireland began, the Oseberg ship is more than 22m long and 5m wide. Unlike earlier vessels, which had rowlocks on the gunwale, it has 15 pairs of oar ports placed low down so that the oars could strike the water at an efficient angle. Either rowed or sailed (the sail would have covered 90 sq m), it could reach a speed of 10 knots. It is preserved because it was eventually used for the burial of a very high-status woman. The prow and the stern, which rise in beautiful curves 5m above the waterline, have carvings of intertwined beasts, whose quality suggest this may have been a royal vessel. The image on the prow is not the dragon so beloved by film-makers, but a serpent, whose tail is represented by the stern.
It is unlikely that the ships that first raided Irish coasts were anything like as fine as the Oseberg vessel, which in any case would not have been rugged enough for the high seas. But the broad design would have been the same – the one that took Scandinavian raiders and traders as far west as North America and as far east as Kiev.
Yet, even with these masterpieces of functional beauty at their command, the Vikings still had to face into the unknown. Even 600 years after the Oseberg ship was built, an Icelandic navigational manual gives directions to Greenland: “Turn left at the middle of Norway, keep so far north of Shetland that you can only see it if the visibility is very good, and far enough south of the Faroes that the sea appears halfway up the mountain slopes.”
These voyages demanded not just great ships but intrepid sailors.0 -
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Well picked up P. Never noticed that - the rudder on the 'prow'.
Maybe F.O'T's educated guess was that's how the Vikings retreated
weren't the Vikings supposed to have taken various fungi before going into battle?
http://vimeo.com/95116990 -
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Frank? You could be right, definitely not Normanpedroeibar1 wrote: »Psilocybins – Hallucinogenic at least, deadly at worst. Our own druids were no strangers either. Reminds me of when I once met a neighbour on my way home with my collection of chanterelles, girolles and trompettes , ‘Jayzuz Pedro, don’t ate dem, you’ll wake up dead in the morning.’
Rs
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PS Yer man in the above clip is more like a Frank? 0 -
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pedroeibar1 wrote: »
Nonsense. For starters, the prow is the front and a steering-oar always was placed near the stern (sterrinboard quarter). A rudder is hung on the stern and was not used by the Vikings. Longships were manoeuverable because their shallow draft allowed them to cross sandbars easily and enter rivers. Their underwater profile probably would have made them more 'skittish' than manoeuverable under sail.
Unfortunately a couple of points I'd have to disagree with. A rudder does not necessarily have to be located on the centre-line of a boat although for thermodynamics it is the optimum location. The ON term for their rudder was stýri borð meaning either the board that was used to steer or the side of the ship from which it was steered. But the design of the "rudder" was such that it really had little capacity as a steering oar and so would instead fall into the sole category of rudder
pedroeibar1 wrote: »I doubt this claimed speed was regularly achieved. Longships were displacement craft and maximum hull speed is determined by the waterline length, in this case about 60 feet, so the theoretical max is probably 8 knots and the usual speed nearer to 5 knots due to the weight of stores, men, etc.. Dead downwind, with a following sea, speeds of more than 8 knots might have been achieved, but they would be the exception rather than the rule and certainly would have been a thing to brag about back home, if they reached there at that speed!
The theoretical max speed of any boat is only applicable when the hull is immersed in water. Once the hull begins to plane, then higher speeds may be achieved. This has recently been proved by the Danish replica ship The Sea Stallion from Glendalough on her voyage to Ireland and back "with 65 crew showed an average cruising speed of 5.5 nautical knots and a top speed of 15-20 nautical knots." source0 -
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Unfortunately a couple of points I'd have to disagree with. A rudder does not necessarily have to be located on the centre-line of a boat although for thermodynamics it is the optimum location. The ON term for their rudder was stýri borð meaning either the board that was used to steer or the side of the ship from which it was steered. But the design of the "rudder" was such that it really had little capacity as a steering oar and so would instead fall into the sole category of rudder
No problems with any disagreement, but you do not convince me on all points.
Firstly, it is not thermodynamics, it is hydrodynamics.
Secondly, ‘Steering oars remained the only means of directing the course of a ship up to about the beginning of the 13th century A.D. when they were gradually replaced by the vertical rudder hinged to the after end of the sternpost .’ (Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, page 832).
Some of the document seals of the Hanseatic League ports from the mid-13th c. show stern rudders, the earliest known examples. Any board/oar over the quarter of a vessel is just that, not a rudder. The main reason the rudder took so long in arrival is that carvel construction (butt-ending the planks) did not arrive in Northern Europe until about that date. Clinker-built hulls, like the longship, had a swept stern which precluded a rudder.The theoretical max speed of any boat is only applicable when the hull is immersed in water. Once the hull begins to plane, then higher speeds may be achieved. This has recently been proved by the Danish replica ship The Sea Stallion from Glendalough on her voyage to Ireland and back "with 65 crew showed an average cruising speed of 5.5 nautical knots and a top speed of 15-20 nautical knots." source
I thought that was implied in my post – any displacement craft would have to plane, although I believe that ‘surfing’ would be a more appropriate term. According to wave line theory, the theoretic max hull speed for a displacement craft of this size is about 0.8 x the square root of the waterline length. Planing would be an unusual event and depend on several exceptional factors arising at once. Getting the hull up on a plane would be influenced by wavelength (measured from peak of crest to base of trough), the frequency and consistency of those waves and sufficient wind at the correct time to start the ‘surge’ and then maintain it. I did say the usual speed nearer to 5 knots (ok, the Sea Stallion averaged 5.5, so I was out by 10%).
I also said greater speeds 'would be the exception rather than the rule, and certainly would have been a thing to brag about back home.' Rightfully, too, as it would have been an exhilarating ride. I don't know enough about Sea Stallion's passage to know how often they reached that speed.
Rs
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pedroeibar1 wrote: »No problems with any disagreement, but you do not convince me on all points.
Firstly, it is not thermodynamics, it is hydrodynamics. Secondly, ‘Steering oars remained the only means of directing the course of a ship up to about the beginning of the 13th century A.D. when they were gradually replaced by the vertical rudder hinged to the after end of the sternpost .’ (Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, page 832).
Who am I to argue with Oxford Companion to Ships and the Seapedroeibar1 wrote: »Clinker-built hulls, like the longship, had a swept stern which precluded a rudder.
A side note, but only until they saw the centre hung rudder, from then on the design was adapted to allow better hydrodynamics
pedroeibar1 wrote: »I thought that was implied in my post – any displacement craft would have to plane, although I believe that ‘surfing’ would be a more appropriate term. According to wave line theory, the theoretic max hull speed for a displacement craft of this size is about 0.8 x the square root of the waterline length. Planing would be an unusual event and depend on several exceptional factors arising at once. Getting the hull up on a plane would be influenced by wavelength (measured from peak of crest to base of trough), the frequency and consistency of those waves and sufficient wind at the correct time to start the ‘surge’ and then maintain it. I did say the usual speed nearer to 5 knots (ok, the Sea Stallion averaged 5.5, so I was out by 10%).
Can you explain why you have used the S/L ratio of 0.8 in the formula? I have only seen variations around the 1.34 figure used before.
As to how frequently double digit speeds could be achieved, only when sailing before the wind.With a square rig the viking ship will only point 60 degrees either side of the wind and with a low freeboard would have to reduce sail in order to avoid healing over and taking water aboard. But a combination of the relatively flat hull shape brought so far back and the theory that air trapped in the planking under the waterline would reduce the hull resistance, may mean the design would plane relatively easily.
(Surfing I think is an incorrect description as this implies that the wave height is exerting pressure on the hull to increase velocity, when it is in fact the propulsion of the boat, in this case the wind, that is increasing velocity)
So averages may be misleading as the windward performance is currently so poor due mainly to rig design (especially in the absence of evidence of the beiti-áss (cruising pole), a spar used to hold one corner of the sail further forward, allowing the ship to sail closer to the wind). But the hull itself may be well able to achieve much greater average speeds.0 -
I’m sorta reluctant to drag this out as it is going far off the OP –Mods (any) feel free to move this elsewhere if required.Can you explain why you have used the S/L ratio of 0.8 in the formula? I have only seen variations around the 1.34 figure used before. Can you explain why you have used the S/L ratio of 0.8 in the formula? I have only seen variations around the 1.34 figure used before.
The conventional multiplier figure for a ‘normal’ vessel is 0.8, the theoretical maximum is 1.4. A monohull racing yacht would be about 1.2. However, the speed = Z x Sq.root LWL (length water line) is a rule of thumb and is not very accurate as it is heavily influenced by hull dynamics, about which the Vikings knew nothing (what they did know very well was the art, craft & tradition of boatbuilding). The ratio changes because the speed of a vessel passing through the water creates and influences a wave pattern, with a bow-wave building up in front, another being dragged at the stern, and, depending on waterline length, a variety of wave crests in between caused by water friction on the skin of the boat. Go fast enough to create a big bow wave and effectively the boat is almost trying to climb a hill, which explains why the stern squats down. Get the boat up onto a plane, the hull leaves the water and those dynamics are changed.As to how frequently double digit speeds could be achieved, ............. a combination of the relatively flat hull shape brought so far back and the theory that air trapped in the planking under the waterline would reduce the hull resistance, may mean the design would plane relatively easily.
(Surfing I think is an incorrect description as this implies that the wave height is exerting pressure on the hull to increase velocity, when it is in fact the propulsion of the boat, in this case the wind, that is increasing velocity)
So averages may be misleading as the windward performance is currently so poor due mainly to rig design (especially in the absence of evidence of the beiti-áss (cruising pole), a spar used to hold one corner of the sail further forward, allowing the ship to sail closer to the wind). But the hull itself may be well able to achieve much greater average speeds.
I'll stick with surfing; at planing speed the boat would be travelling much closer to the apparent wind speed and considerably more than 20 knots and a very flat sea would be required to get a longship on a true plane.
beiti-áss (cruising pole) - cannot see how an effective aerofoil shape could be made on a squaresaile withthis device. It might make more sense to bring the yard forward and make it a lateen rig?
As for air bubbles minimizing friction, I don’t know, but I have my doubts. I never have sailed a longship, so can only apply experience acquired from dinghies and keelboats of all sizes, but if you have a longship lying about I would be delighted to have a go!
(I’ll bring the mushrooms; if I can't find some, Slowburner might oblige.)
Rs
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I sailed aboard Saga Siglar when she was in Dublin in 1988, but also sailed in company with Sea Stallion when she departed Dublin recently on a brisk Sunday morning and she accelerated very nicely and left all the yachts trailing in her wake. I think that SLR of 0.8 is a little on the low side and while it doesn't come up to the theoretical maximum of 1.34, (which gives a speed of around 12 knots for 80' LWL) in a decent wind I've seen these boats move along at a very good pace.
But I think you'll need to do your maths again becausemaximum hull speed is determined by the waterline length, in this case about 60 feet, so the theoretical max is probably 8 knots
does not compute with .8 or 1.34 0 -
But I think you'll need to do your maths again because
maximum hull speed is determined by the waterline length, in this case about 60 feet, so the theoretical max is probably 8 knots
does not compute with .8 or 1.34
I remember seeing the Saga back then. I probably have a photo somewhere....
The Oseberg boat is 21m overall, which is about 60 feet waterline, the figure I quoted/used above
Sq root of 60 = 7.745 x 0.8 = 6.2 knots or increase the factor to 1.0 and you have 8 near as dammit.:P Some Norwegian university probably has tank tests that could /would answer all......
So, with an average speed of 5.5 knots, (the Sea Stallion voyage) in ideal conditions it would take a minimum of three days non-stop hard going for Viking raiders to get from the Hebrides (Barra) to Dublin. Double that to be more realistic. With a southwesterly wind dominant in summertime, two thirds of the voyage would have Scotland as a lee shore – not a very enjoyable prospect. Wait for the autumn and easterlies, try to escape equinoctial gales and they would have a lee shore along Ireland. Not much of a choice, and a big fella with a sword waiting for you on arrival. :eek:
Before Viking bases were established here they probably had a season. Do we know?
Rs
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They definitely had a raiding season. I was reading about it just yesterday but can't find the reference for the life of me.
There is a well known verse by a monk, I think, celebrating the coming of dark and stormy nights because he knows they will be free from Viking raids. Someone here's bound to know it 0 -
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Destruction reconstruction: Viking enthusiasts re-enact the burning of a longboat. Photographs: Danny Lawson/PA and NRA/Studio Lab
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