Without actually amalgamating, the Danes seem to have drawn gradually closer to the native Irish. A royal heir of Ulster received the name of Ragnal less than half a century after Clontarf, and in 1121 a bishop seems to have been temporarily appointed at Dublin by the joint election of Irish and Danes. But quarrels were frequent even after the Danes had become fully Christianised; and when the men of Munster invaded Fingal in 1133, they burned the church of Lusk when it was full of people and treasures. Nor did fresh invasions quite cease, for Magnus, King of Norway, made two expeditions to Ireland, in the latter of which, in 1103, he lost his life. The separate history of the Irish Ostmen was drawing to a close, even at the date of the Anglo-Norman invasion; but they have left indelible traces upon the map of Ireland and on the traditional lore of her people.
The Danes were traders.
Giraldus informs us that the Scandinavians who settled at Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick, came under pretence of peaceful trading. The Irish, he says, were prevented by their innate sloth from going down to the sea in ships, but were ready to welcome those who would trade for them, and thus allowed the fierce strangers to get a strong footing. However this may be, it is certain that the Irish are deficient in maritime enterprise, and equally certain that the Northmen had a constant eye to trade as well as to war and plunder. Unerring instinct pointed out the best stations, and on the sites thus chosen the chief cities of Ireland were reared. The Kaupmannaeyjar or merchant isles, probably those now called the Copelands, may have been a rendezvous for passing vessels. Arabic coins, of which more than 20,000 pieces from more than 1,000 different dies are preserved at Stockholm, have been found in Ireland, and the Irish Northmen certainly had a coinage of their own, when the native princes had none. Pieces have been found which were struck by, or at least for, a Scandinavian king of Dublin as early as the ninth century, and all coins minted in Ireland up to the Anglo-Norman invasion were perhaps of similar origin. Many such pieces have been found in the Isle of Man, and some as far off as Denmark.[24]
They were superior to the Irish in peaceful arts.
The Irish annalists constantly dwell on the superiority of Norse arms and armour as a reason for their success in war. Ringmail in particular shows a high degree of manufacturing skill, and they wore it at Clontarf both in brass and iron, while none is mentioned in the pompous Irish catalogue of the arms worn by Brian’s troops. Nor was this costly harness worn only by the Scandinavian leaders, for they are said to have had 1,000 coats of mail in that one battle. Danish swords which have survived from Brian’s days are of superior workmanship to Irish blades of the same date; and the Northmen had perhaps a superiority in bows also, though on this point the annalists are less explicit. The turgid verbosity of these writers makes it doubtful whether the Danes used poisoned arrows, but no such thing is mentioned in the Saga.
They built the first cities. Dublin, Waterford.
The flotillas which Brian maintained on inland waters, and the sea-going vessels which attended his army in the North, were all manned by Danes, and a mercantile marine has in every age been the best nursery of naval power. No doubt the Irish felt the advantage of having commercial emporiums on their coast, as other shore-going people profited by Greek and Phœnician colonies. The analogy might easily be carried further, and Dublin and Waterford might be represented as standing between the Anglo-Normans and Celts of Ireland, as Massilia stood between the Romans and Celts of Gaul. It is at all events clear that the Scandinavians built the first cities and coined the first money in Ireland.
Brian’s monarchy soon fell to pieces.
High as Brian towers above other mediæval Celts—one annalist calls him the Charlemagne of North-western Europe—it cannot be said that he laid the foundation of an Irish monarchy. He lived to be eighty, yet none of his work lasted. Malachi received the honorary office of chief king, from which his rival’s personal prowess had driven him, and the years of his reign are counted by some annalists without noticing Brian’s intervention, as in the modern case of Charles II. Brian was indeed doubly a usurper, in wresting Munster from the race of Eoghan, and in wresting Ireland from the race of Nial, in whom royalty had been vested for centuries. With all his ceaseless exertions he was little more than a levier of black mail, who left intact the internal government of weaker princes. Borumha, or the tribute-taker, if that be really the meaning of the term, describes his position with sufficient accuracy. When he died Donnchadh, or Donogh, his son by Gormflaith, became head of his tribe, and claimed the succession to the Irish monarchy. The Eugenians repudiated his claim, alleging that their turn, which had been wrongfully passed over, had now come to reign in Munster. Not satisfied with this, their two principal chiefs fell out among themselves. The Ossorian followed suit, and thus Brian’s creation crumbled at once into dust.
More than 150 years elapsed between the battle of Clontarf and the landing of the first Anglo-Norman, and they were years of almost constant war and confusion. Had Ireland been left to herself a prince might in time have arisen strong enough to establish such a monarchy as Brian failed to found. The Danes had ceased to be a seriously disturbing influence, but there is no evidence that any such process of consolidation was going on, and a feudal system, which had lost none of its vigour, was at last confronted with a tribal system which had lost none of its inherent weakness.