How the Barbarian Invasions Shaped the Modern World: The Vikings, Vandals, Huns, Mongols, Goths and Tartars who razed the old world and formed the new by Thomas J. Craughwell

Author:Thomas J. Craughwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Military History - Medieval, ISBN-10:1-59233-303-6
ISBN: 9781592333035
Published: 2009-09-15T23:48:39+00:00

T H E M E D I E V A L G L O B A L M A R K E T P L A C E

There has been a trend among historians in recent times to diminish the

violent aspect of the Viking incursion in Ireland. This is mistaken: It is unde-

niable that for the Irish the Viking raids were traumatic, painful events. It

could not have been otherwise when so many works of tremendous beauty,

sanctity, and cultural significance were wantonly destroyed, and when so many

Irish were slaughtered or carried off to slavery.

Bad as the Viking invasions were, however, they did not destroy tradi-

tional Irish society; the majority of the Irish preferred life in the country to life

in the Viking towns; they gave their primary loyalty to their family and their

clan; and the country was still ruled by a host of petty kings.

The Vikings had no interest in genocide, to use a modern term; even if

that had been their goal, given the vigor of Irish resistance to the invaders, the

Vikings never could have carried off a wholesale massacre. What the Vikings

did want was plunder and slaves and land—and they got all three.

But by settling in Ireland they actually brought a few benefits to the Irish,

too. At Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Arklow, Cork, and Limerick, the Vikings

established the country's first cities. Before the Vikings came, there had been

only embryonic communities at large ecclesiastical centers such as Armagh and

Clonmacnoise—little clusters of families and craftsmen who supplied support

services to the monasteries.

The Vikings introduced a new concept—the town or city as a thriving,

outward-looking commercial center where goods were manufactured or stock-

piled for eventual shipment to markets overseas, and that received goods from

foreign markets in return. Thanks to the Vikings the Irish began to participate

in this early medieval global economy.

But in addition to trading centers the Irish needed currency. The Vikings

O L A F T H E W H I T E W A S

supplied that, too, establishing a mint to produce the first coins in Ireland. It was

T H E M O S T SUCCESSFUL

the Vikings, then, who guided the Irish as they took their first steps away from

V I K I N G KING OF DUBLIN.

their insular, pastoral life and into the international marketplace.

T H I S SCENE DEPICTS

A LEGEND, THAT OLAF

DISGUISED HIMSELF A S

A M I N S T R E L T O INFILTRATE

T H E ENGLISH COURT.

F L O O D S O F D A N E S A N D P I R A T E S 1 7 1

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