[2] The name Finn-gaill survives in Fingall, the name of a district to the north of Dublin, while Dubh-gaill is the second element in the proper names MacDougall and MacDowell.
[3] The name Hiruath given by Celtic writers to Norway probably points also to a tradition that many of the Viking invaders of Ireland were Hörðar from Norway.
[4] A third explanation has recently been suggested by Dr Björkman, viz. that it is a Low German word meaning 'shipmen' which came to be used specially of the Vikings.
CHAPTER II
THE VIKING MOVEMENT DOWN TO THE MIDDLE
OF THE 9TH CENTURY
England was possibly the scene of the earliest Viking raids, but after the Dorchester raid, the sack of Lindisfarne in 793 (v. supra, p. [5]), and the devastation of the monastery of St Paul at Jarrow in 794 we hear nothing more of Vikings in England until 835. The fate of Ireland was different. Attacks began almost at the same time as in England and continued without intermission. Vikings sailed round the west coast of Scotland. Skye and then Lambay Island off Dublin were invaded in 795, Glamorganshire was ravaged in the same year and the Isle of Man was attacked in 798. Iona was plundered in 802 and again in 806. In 807 invaders appeared off the coast of Sligo and made their way inland as far as Roscommon, and in 811 Munster was plundered. In 821 the Howth peninsula near Dublin and two small islands in Wexford Haven were ravaged. The Vikings had completely encircled Ireland with their fleets and by the year 834 they had made their way well into the interior of the island so that none were safe from their attacks. They no longer contented themselves with isolated raids: large fleets began to visit Ireland and to anchor in the numerous loughs and harbours with which the coast abounds. Thence they made lengthy raids on the surrounding country and often strengthened their base by building forts on the shores of the loughs or harbours in which they had established themselves. It was in this way that Dublin, Waterford and Limerick first rose to importance.
Of the leaders of the Vikings at this time there is only one whose figure stands out at all clearly, and that is Turges (O.N. Ðorgestr) who first appeared in 832 at the sack of Armagh. He had come to Ireland with a great and royal fleet and 'assumed the sovereignty over the foreigners in Erin.' He had fleets on Lough Neagh, at Louth, and on Lough Ree, and raided the country as far south as the Meath district. Turges was not the only invader at this time: indeed so numerous were the invading hosts that the chronicles tell us 'after this there came great sea-cast floods of foreigners into Erin, so that there was not a point thereof without a fleet.' The power of Turges culminated in 841, when he drove the abbot of Armagh into exile, usurped the abbacy, and exercised the sovereignty of North Ireland. At the same time his wife Ota (O.N. Auðr) profaned the monastery of Clonmacnoise and gave audience, probably as a völva or prophetess, upon the high altar. Three years later Turges was captured by the Irish and drowned in Lough Owel (co. West Meath).
The early attacks on England and the first invasion of Ireland were alike due to Norsemen rather than Danes. This is evident from their general course, from the explicit statement of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, and from the fact that the first arrival of Danes in Ireland is definitely recorded in the year 849. The attack on Dorchester (c. 786-802), lying as it does near the centre of the south coast of England, is somewhat strange if it is assigned to the traditional date, viz. 787, but there is no authority for this, and if it is placed at any date nearer to 802 (before which it must have taken place), it is probable that the attack may be explained as an extension of Viking raids down St George's Channel and round the S.W. corner of England.