Vikings

cfuserkildare

Hey Folks,

Looking for some info here,

Am just back from Denmark, Went to Roskilde for a day and visited the Viking Ship Museum.
Surprised to find that the Havhingsten fra Glendalough or Sea Stallion of Glendalough was built in Dublin,

Are there any actual known Viking Ship-Building sites in Dublin?

Wondering because I stumbled upon an article that says that when the Museum in Roskilde was being built, the remains of 9 Viking ships were found in the mud.
Am curious to see if there is any such thing here.

Aelfric

As far as I'm aware, no ship-building site has been identified in Dublin, though the original Dubh Linn site would be quite likely. The timbers from the Sea Stallion were identified as having come from Ireland, and Dublin was the most likely place, although they could have been felled near Dublin and the ship built elsewhere I suppose.

ScumLord

I suppose the problem is the Vikings may not need much of an infrastructure to build their boats, they could build at the side of a river, dig holes, use logs and just roll the ships into the river, job done. When the vikings stopped trading slaves through Dublin it may have become a very attractive place to live with an incentive to eradicate anything viking.

cfuserkildare

Aelfric wrote: »

As far as I'm aware, no ship-building site has been identified in Dublin, though the original Dubh Linn site would be quite likely. The timbers from the Sea Stallion were identified as having come from Ireland, and Dublin was the most likely place, although they could have been felled near Dublin and the ship built elsewhere I suppose.

Apparently the wood was identified as having 2 sources,
1 was Dublin,
Other was Waterford!

Cool.

recedite

Wicklow is halfway (kind of) between Dublin and Waterford.

The first hint of permanent Viking settlement in Ireland may be in the annals for AD 835, when Cill-Dara was plundered by the foreigners of Inbher-Deaa and half the church was burned by them?. Inbher-Deaa was somewhere in Wicklow, possibly at the mouth of the River Vartry.

Quoted from an Interesting article here on the longphorts, or longship docks.
The name "Vartry" is probably a "norsification" of an earlier Irish name; Inbhearr Dee or estuary of the River Dee. if you check a map, you'll see this area is now known as Broad Lough at Wicklow town, and would be an ideal spot to shelter and/or manufacture ships on an otherwise exposed stretch of coast. Also there is a good supply of geese there on the marshes, as a potential food supply in the winter.

Its unlikely that any timber from that period would survive today, unless it happened to get embedded in oxygen deficient mud.

Woodstown, Wicklow, Arklow and Dubh Linn must have had similar longphort set-ups, in a sort of chain along the coast.