Is Northern Ireland culturally Scottish or Irish?

recedite wrote: »

Except that their requirements were slightly different. They needed a safe place to moor ships in bad weather, and they could not afford to leave the ships unguarded, so they had to stay close by.

The native towns tended to form further upriver, where people and cattle could cross the river at a ford. Hence in the case of Dublin, the "black pool" longphort would have been a fair distance from the Ath Cliath ford. So the ford area may well have been a small native settlement already, but not as important as other settlements further north between the Liffey and the Boyne.

This article talks about Viking longphorts aong the east coast. Inbhear Dee is only ever mentioned in the Annals as a base for Viking raids inland. So either it wasn't an actual settlement before, or it was too small to mention.
In the article they say but actually the name survives in local lore and in the "norsified" name of the river Vartry.
Arklow estuary area had its own previous gaelic name; Inbhearr Mor. As with Wicklow it was unlikely to have been much of a settlement before the longships arrived, even though there were a lot of people at the time living further inland.