The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are
“Settling ‘If a hundred iron heads could grow on a single neck, if each head had one hundred tongues of well-tempered and indestructible metal and if each tongue shouted ceaselessly with a powerful and unstoppable voice, it would never be enough to list all the pain the people of Ireland – men and women, laymen and clerics, young and old – have suffered at the hands of these pitiless pagan warriors.’1 So a twelfth-century chronicler told the world. It is true the Vikings came to Ireland with the... overture you expect in legends: drought, monstrous thunderstorms, famine, floods, murrain, dysentery and smallpox. All this, along with a nasty outbreak of rabies and the constant problem of bloody flux, filled fifteen years towards the end of the eighth century with proper, apocalyptic thinking.2 Then the real troubles began. St Patrick’s Island was burned, the monastery at Inishmurray went up in flames, Iona was attacked and attacked again in a murderous kind of reconnaissance. Local lords fought back, and so did local clergy, who were often the relatives of local lords.MoreLess
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