Discover Ireland With The GCI Advanced Team: Norsemen in Ireland

When the Scandinavian countries became more and more overpopulated, the Vikings / Norsemen decided to explore new lands to see what was beyond the horizon. So they started to travel.

In 795 they came with their beautifully crafted ships to the shores of Ireland. Their intentions were to slaughter the population and to burn down the churches, as they had no attachments to any of the gods worshiped upon this small island.

In Irish history these invaders were known as the “Danes”, meaning the dark foreigners.

The Norsemen arrived on the coast of Dublin, which is where the Norsemen’s invasion of Ireland began. Records show that there was at least one major battle a year for as long as 30 – 40 years in cities and villages around Ireland.

Around 1836 the Norsemen started to get deeper in the country. They were no longer satisfied with the towns which they had plundered along the East coast and started to dig deeper inland.

In the year 841 Dublin was raised as a colony for the Vikings but they didn’t want settle down there permanently. In 851 and 856 they created new settlements at Waterford and close to Cork.

The monasteries were one of the first things that the Vikings attacked. As a defence mechanism, the Christian monks built large and tall round towers, which came equipped with a high entrance which was reached by means of a ladder to reach the door that was placed several meters above the ground. With these round towers, the people in the monastery were able to secure themselves out of reach of the the Vikings who couldn’t get up to the doorways. They also couldn’t burn them down because it was build of stones. These constructions are an example of how the early Christian monks had to adapt to survive the brutal nature Ireland at the time.

In 902 the Irish tribes got tired of the Vikings and managed to drive them away to Wales, this was to spell the end of the Scandinavian invasion of Ireland.

Some Norsemen, however, became part of the Irish population as they stayed and also started a new life in this “new” country. That means that even today, some of the Irish population can claim that they have roots planted in Scandinavian soil from many generations ago.

Below you can see the different paths the Vikings traveled.