The Battle of Clontarf

1014: Brian Boru's last battle, and far less a fight between Irish and Vikings than the old story has it.

On Good Friday 1014 an army under Brian Bóramha, high king of Ireland, met an alliance at Clontarf north of Dublin and beat it. Brian was killed in the hour of his victory, by tradition cut down in his tent after the fighting had moved on.

The story most people are told is that this was Ireland against the Vikings, and that Brian broke Norse power on the island for good. Historians have been chipping away at that for a long time, and not much of it survives.

The quarrel began not with Vikings but with Máel Mórda, king of Leinster, who would not accept Brian's claim to be king of all Ireland. The alliance that formed against Brian was Leinster, the Norse kingdom of Dublin, and fighters brought in from overseas. There were Norsemen on Brian's side and Irishmen on the other. It was a war about who ruled, fought by whoever each side could muster.

As for breaking Norse power, Sitric Silkbeard, the king of Dublin, watched the battle from the city walls rather than fighting in it, survived the day, and went on ruling Dublin for another twenty eight years. The town stayed Norse, stayed rich, and stayed a power in Irish politics.

The version we inherited comes largely from Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh, "The War of the Irish with the Foreigners", written roughly a century later by people with an interest in Brian's descendants and in making his last fight the saving of a nation. It is a tremendous piece of writing. It is not a report.