Picking up from where I left off in part one, we follow the story of Brian in the aftermath of his elevation to High King, all the way up to the abrupt end of his reign in 1014 AD. Ireland is already reverberating with the news of Brian's claiming of the High Kingship, and he has plans for yet more conquests. Listen to hear all about them.

If you have any questions about this episode or another of my videos, feel free to email me at: cianrowanyt@gmail.com. 

Thank you for listening!

Hello and welcome back to the story of Brian Baroo, the great Irish conqueror.

In my last video I left the story just as Brian achieved the position of High King, in a flagrant display of cheap cliffhanger tactics.

If you haven't watched that video then I'd recommend that you go back and do so, because there'll be plenty of returning characters and tensions that will be quite hard to follow otherwise.

Before I take up Brian's story again, I need to make some corrections regarding some of the points I made back in part 1.

Reddit user GaulGale made a good point when he said the video felt a little bit too much like Celts vs Norsemen in a kind of quasi-patriotic way, which more recent research has proved to be a bit of a misrepresentation.

Not to say that Brian and his contemporaries didn't often wage war against the Viking enclaves of Ireland, but to imply that it was some sort of grudge match isn't really correct.

The second correction I need to make is a simple case of mistake in identity.

In part 1, I introduced the Norse ruler of Limerick as Ivar the Boneless.

I would be very impressed, given as he was reported to be dead in 873 AD.

The Ivar of Limerick was a different man altogether.

My apologies for making such a silly mistake.

of the way, we can return to the narrative where we stopped last time.

We left things off last in 1002, just as Brian managed to wrest the title of High King from Mal Shacknall,

who had contested it with him for several years.

Brian was by this point in his early 60s and spent the remainder of the decade enforcing obedience to his kingship up and down the island.

Many high kings before him had been satisfied with lip service from the rulers they supposedly had lordship over, but not Brian.

He would settle for nothing but absolute authority, and he meant to have an oath of allegiance from every man on the island, extracted by force if necessary.

Many of the Irish sub-kingdoms presented resistance to Brian, but none of them were so troublesome as the northern kingdoms of Ulster.

Ulster was home to some of the most powerful rulers on the island, and it was to take Brian the rest of the decade to put a lasting regime in place there.

The geography of Ulster was 1 of the main barriers to Bryan's invasion.

When 1 is transporting a large body of men on foot, simple forest trails won't do.

Bryan had 3 feasible routes into the north that could realistically support the passage of an army.

All 3 of these routes presented favourable positions to the defender, providing easy choke points where just a few men could easily halt the progress of a much larger force by using surprise and the terrain to their advantage.

Brian was blessed with luck on his first expedition to Ulster.

As was common during the period, the 2 main kingdoms of Ulster had been at each other's throats for some time ahead of Brian's invasion.

The 2 northern kingdoms were the O'Neill and the Oulat, and they had thoroughly weakened each other with border disputes that cost the lives of many prominent members of the family.

In 1003, the Battle of Crabe Telca took place and proved devastating for both

The King of the Cainal Owen, a northern branch of the O'Neill, was left dead on the field, while most of the Oulad royal family met a similar fate.

The loss of the royal family led to further turbulence in Oulad as a succession war then took place.

The chaos reached even greater heights during this war as the O'Neill continued to make attacks on Ullud land from outside, attempting to carry off wealth and shave off pieces of the enemy territory during the confusion.

Into this unadulterated disaster for Ulster came a third party, High King Brian and a host of men.

By 1005, Brian had forced a submission from the Kienal Oan and many of the clans of Ulad.

I'm sure Brian would have been quite happy with his work had things ended there, but that would have been rather too simple for Medieval Ireland.

No sooner had Brian marched his troops south than the new King of the Kienall Owen began to make aggressive moves in Ulster.

Flabbertig O'Neill exploded out of his family's lands and marched into Oulad in an attempt to completely subjugate them in their severely weakened state.

During this assault, he killed yet more enemy leaders and extracted many hostages to use as bargaining chips.

The practice of hostage-taking was an everyday occurrence in medieval Ireland, and even happened in times of peace.

The widespread practice of fostering between powerful families functioned in much the same way, though it wouldn't have been thought of like that.

Flaubertig's actions forced Brian to return to Ulster in 1006 and again in 1007, to wrestle back control of the region and restore some semblance of order.

According to the Annals of Inishfahlen, on Brian's second visit he forcefully extracted the hostages Flabbertig had taken from Ullud and forced him to submit once again to the authority of the High King.

In the hopes of maintaining a lasting peace this time around, Brian also married 1 of his daughters to Flobbertyg, at last putting a stop to the aggression of

At least that's what Brian was probably thinking at the time.

Just 2 years later in 1009, Flobbertig once again violated the peace of the High King.

This time he directed his assault against the kingdom of Tirconnal, a Gaelic kingdom which corresponds roughly with the borders of modern County Galway.

Flobbertig captured and executed the King of Tyrconnel and then raided into the Midlands, burning and pillaging as far as the River Boyne.

After this insult, Brian began to play hardball.

He marched north once again and extracted many hostages from the Kienal Oam, threatening to execute every last 1 if there was any more trouble in Ulster.

This appears to have had the desired effect, as in 1011 Flobbertyg actually fought alongside Brian's sons Merkid and Donal in a sanctioned campaign against the Kingdom of Tírchonnal.

This campaign was initially unsuccessful, but once Brian himself took command, the kingdom was subjugated in short order.

By now, Brian was in control of almost the entire island.

In order to secure that power, Brian utilised a method that would have been familiar to European kings, but perhaps less so to Irish ones.

He courted the opinion of the church, in order to strengthen the legitimacy of his rule.

The Irish Church was more than a little eccentric when compared to its counterparts on the continent.

Rather than being centred around bishops of dioceses and archbishops of archdioceses, the Irish Church revolved around monasteries, which were headed by members of the dynasties whose lands they were situated upon.

The monasteries owed nearly everything they had to the ruler of the land they were sat on, and as such had a vested interest in maintaining good relations.

It is documented in the Book of Armagh that in 1005, Brian chose to donate 22 ounces of gold to the monastery at Armagh, an extremely ostentatious display of wealth.

In addition to this, he declared that the Armagh monastery was the religious capital of Ireland.

This entitled Armagh to a share in the funds collected by all the monasteries of Ireland.

This move, while financially costly for Brian, bound the destiny of Ireland's religious capital to him.

Armagh could only expect to maintain their primacy amongst the other monasteries as long as Brian and his sons held the title of High King.

As a result, it was in their interest to use both their financial and political power to back Brian's cause, which they did from 1005 on.

As I touched on earlier, this courting of the Church's favour was more of a European practice and may have been a telling sign of the sort of social order Brian was attempting to build in Ireland.

Significantly in the Book of Armagh, Brian is not referred to as High King, but as Imperator Scotorum, meaning the Emperor of the Gaels.

It may be that Brian's aim was to lay down the foundations of a feudal society more in line with continental Europe.

No High King ruling over a multitude of lesser kings, but 1 ruler and his vassals.

This is of course purely speculation, but there is evidence.

Whether as High King or as emperor, by 1011 Brian had brought all the regional rulers of Ireland under his direct authority, finally succeeding in a campaign that was decades in the making.

No sooner had he achieved this momentous feat than the Second Leinster revolt broke out.

Mael Morda MacMurcot, who you hopefully remember from earlier in this story, had only accepted Bryan's authority over Leinster with great reluctance.

The exact reasons for his rebellion are not entirely clear to us, but a story claims that 1 of Brian's sons insulted Mael Morda, and that he rose in revolt through sheer outrage.

Another, less dramatic reason is that the King of Leinster scented weakness in Brian's old rival, Mael Shacknall.

The former High King had maintained his hold on Meath following his defeat, but now his lands were threatened by the aggression of Mael Morda.

By knocking Mael Shacknall out of the picture, the King of Leinster could remove 1 of Brien's prominent subject kings and deprive him of the resources and manpower of Meath.

When Mael Morda rose against Brian in 1012, he found an ally in Flaubertig O'Neill, who you should also remember from the Ulster campaigns.

Flaubertig had evidently decided that Brian didn't have the guts to execute the hostages he had taken, and rose with Mael Morda seemingly without concern.

The 2 rebellious lords moved on Meath, and Mael Shacknall appealed to Brian for aid.

The next year, in 1013, Brian responded to the call and marched with the gathered might of most of Ireland into Leinster.

He and his men ravaged the countryside for months before finally meeting up before the walls of Dublin and settling in for a siege.

Despite managing to blockade the city with his fleet, it was Brian's army that ran out of supplies first, and so he was obliged to return home and plan a new assault.

Mael Morda had no illusions about Brian being finished, and spent the interim gathering support for his cause.

The various lords of Ireland were seemingly on the fence about who to support in the war, and so Mael Morda found few supporters at home.

Instead, he tasked his nephew Sig Trigg, the ruler of Dublin, with rallying support amongst the Norse rulers of Orkney and the Isle of Man.

Sigtrigg did as he was ordered and returned in 1014 with a host of Norse warriors to bolster the lines of Mael Mordor's army.

On the 23rd of April that year, the fateful confrontation that would put off the previous year materialized.

The armies of Bryan and Mael Morda met at Klontarf to fight a pitched battle that would prove to be decisive in more ways than 1.

Both sides brought significant forces to bear.

Brian is thought to have fielded 7, 000 troops, while Mael Morda is believed to have fielded a slightly smaller army of

In medieval Ireland, where warfare was so defined by raiding and small engagements, this meeting of armies was cataclysmic.

The High King's front line was held by his loyal Dalcassian retinue and commanded by his son Mercut.

Brian himself was in his seventies by this point, so it's likely that he was positioned further back if he was on the battlefield at all.

Mael Morda's forces meanwhile were fronted by the well-armed and armoured Norsemen from Orkney and Mann, notoriously ferocious fighters.

The annals claim that the battle of Klontarf was fought from sunrise to sunset, but it can be safely assumed that this was dramatic storytelling, meaning that the battle went on for several hours.

The casualty rates are also told to have been extreme, with between 7, 000 and 10, 000 deaths.

These huge estimates indicate to us that Clontarf was at the very least a bitter slugging match, and must indeed have dragged on for quite some time.

Just as with the rest of Brian's military career, actual details of the course of the battle are almost non-existent.

All we know is that towards the end of the day, the Leinster Line began to waver.

When it finally broke, the Irish contingent began fleeing into the nearby woods, while its Norse allies fledged their ships which they had left beached on the shore.

Much to the dismay of the fleeing Norse, the tide had come in and carried their ships out into the bay.

What followed was a bloodbath on an unprecedented scale, as is often the case when a total rout ensues.

The Norse were chased into the surf by Brian's men, and those who were not hacked down in brutal hand-to-hand fighting were forced under the water and drowned by their panicking comrades.

The sea must have run red with blood as the final clean-up of the Norse contingent began.

Clontarf, while a resounding defeat for the Leinster rebels and their Norse allies, was not much of a victory for the Dalkassians, who had come so far from the sub-kingdom of Tholmund.

The dead were beyond counting, and almost the entire royal family was among their number, including the High King himself.

The exact circumstances of Brian's death are murky to say the least.

1 story claims that the king went out in a blaze of glory, with sword in hand, laying about himself and reaping enemy soldiers like corn in a field.

Another story states that Brian was killed in his tent following the battle by a fleeing Norseman who had escaped the massacre on the beach.

As I mentioned earlier on, Brian was in his 70s by the time Klontarf was fought, so the second of these 2 explanations seems more likely to me.

The utter devastation of the Dalkassian royal family left the succession to the High Kingship abruptly open.

Brian's 2 remaining sons would both attempt to seize it, but in

the end it was Mael Shacknall who against all the odds managed to wrest back his old title.

He stayed on the throne until his death in 1022,

no doubt blessing his good fortune, although he never managed to exert the same amount of control on the island that Brian had once done.

It is generally agreed that the greatest legacy of High King Brian was the shattering of Norse power in Ireland.

Modern historians however attach a number of caveats to this idea.

As I mentioned, it was at 1 point the prevailing view that Brian's main goal was to eject the Norse from Ireland, which comes with all sorts of proto-nationalist connotations.

While Brian was by no means a friend of Ireland's Norse inhabitants, the lead-up to Clontarf and the battle itself were not some great battle of races.

The modern opinion is that the Leinster Revolt was a reaction to the centralisation of power under Brian, to the great diminishment of his subject kings.

That there were many Norse present at the battle is simply an indication that they too were threatened by Brian's all-encompassing kingdom.

In the interest of giving credit where credit is due, it cannot be denied that Ireland's Norse enclaves never again attained the same degree of power and influence following the resounding defeat of the Leinster-Norse coalition at Clontarf.

Brian can be pointed to as the final nail in the coffin, if not the sole reason, for the decline of Norse power in Ireland.

That brings us to the end of the fantastic story of High King Brian, a

man whose feats would never again be replicated, unless of course you count the English conquest, but we'll leave that be for now.

I hope you've enjoyed listening to this story as much as I've enjoyed researching and writing it.

Brian was a fascinating character and I thought that I knew more or less everything about him, and I was in corpse entirely wrong.

The story of Brian's life is full of detail, and would be even more so if more sources had survived to us.

If you have any questions about this episode, or have any corrections to point out about anything I touched on during this video, please feel free to leave me a comment or email me at kianrowenytyoutube at gmail dot com.

That's all from me for now, I'll be returning to the early modern period for my next video.


Speaker 0: Hello and welcome back to the story of Brian Baroo, the great Irish conqueror.

Speaker 1: In my last video I left the story just as Brian achieved the position of High King, in a flagrant display of cheap cliffhanger tactics. If you haven't watched that video then I'd recommend that you go back and do so, because there'll be plenty of returning characters and tensions that will be quite hard to follow otherwise. Before I take up Brian's story again, I need to make some corrections regarding some of the points I made back in part 1. Reddit user GaulGale made a good point when he said the video felt a little bit too much like Celts vs Norsemen in a kind of quasi-patriotic way, which more recent research has proved to be a bit of a misrepresentation.

Speaker 0: Not to say that Brian and his contemporaries didn't often wage war against the Viking enclaves of Ireland, but to imply that it was some sort of grudge match isn't really correct. The second correction I need to make is a simple case of mistake in identity. In part 1, I introduced the Norse ruler of Limerick as Ivar the Boneless. If Ivar did rule Limerick

Speaker 1: I would be very impressed, given as he was reported to be dead in 873 AD. The Ivar of Limerick was a different man altogether. My apologies for making such a silly mistake. With the corrections out

Speaker 0: of the way, we can return to the narrative where we stopped last time. We left things off last in 1002, just as Brian managed to wrest the title of High King from Mal Shacknall,

Speaker 1: who had contested it with him for several years. Brian was by this point in his early 60s and spent the remainder of the decade enforcing obedience to his kingship up and down the island. Many high kings before him had been satisfied with lip service from the rulers they supposedly had lordship over, but not Brian. He would settle for nothing but absolute authority, and he meant to have an oath of allegiance from every man on the island, extracted by force if necessary. Many of the Irish sub-kingdoms presented resistance to Brian, but none of them were so troublesome as the northern kingdoms of Ulster.

Ulster was home to some of the most powerful rulers on the island, and it was to take Brian the rest of the decade to put a lasting regime in place there. The geography of Ulster was 1 of the main barriers to Bryan's invasion. When 1 is transporting a large body of men on foot, simple forest trails won't do. Bryan had 3 feasible routes into the north that could realistically support the passage of an army. All 3 of these routes presented favourable positions to the defender, providing easy choke points where just a few men could easily halt the progress of a much larger force by using surprise and the terrain to their advantage.

However,

Speaker 0: Brian was blessed with luck on his first expedition to Ulster. As was common during the period, the 2 main kingdoms of Ulster had been at each other's throats for some time ahead of Brian's invasion. The 2 northern kingdoms were the O'Neill and the Oulat, and they had thoroughly weakened each other with border disputes that cost the lives of many prominent members of the family. In 1003, the Battle of Crabe Telca took place and proved devastating for both

Speaker 1: the Ulster kingdoms. The King of the Cainal Owen, a northern branch of the O'Neill, was left dead on the field, while most of the Oulad royal family met a similar fate. The loss of the royal family led to further turbulence in Oulad as a succession war then took place. The chaos reached even greater heights during this war as the O'Neill continued to make attacks on Ullud land from outside, attempting to carry off wealth and shave off pieces of the enemy territory during the confusion. Into this unadulterated disaster for Ulster came a third party, High King Brian and a host of men.

By 1005, Brian had forced a submission from the Kienal Oan and many of the clans of Ulad. I'm sure Brian would have been quite happy with his work had things ended there, but that would have been rather too simple for Medieval Ireland. No sooner had Brian marched his troops south than the new King of the Kienall Owen began to make aggressive moves in Ulster. Flabbertig O'Neill exploded out of his family's lands and marched into Oulad in an attempt to completely subjugate them in their severely weakened state. During this assault, he killed yet more enemy leaders and extracted many hostages to use as bargaining chips.

The practice of hostage-taking was an everyday occurrence in medieval Ireland, and even happened in times of peace. The widespread practice of fostering between powerful families functioned in much the same way, though it wouldn't have been thought of like that. Flaubertig's actions forced Brian to return to Ulster in 1006 and again in 1007, to wrestle back control of the region and restore some semblance of order. According to the Annals of Inishfahlen, on Brian's second visit he forcefully extracted the hostages Flabbertig had taken from Ullud and forced him to submit once again to the authority of the High King.

Speaker 0: In the hopes of maintaining a lasting peace this time around, Brian also married 1 of his daughters to Flobbertyg, at last putting a stop to the aggression of

Speaker 1: the Cunhal Owen in Ulster. At least that's what Brian was probably thinking at the time. Just 2 years later in 1009, Flobbertig once again violated the peace of the High King. This time he directed his assault against the kingdom of Tirconnal, a Gaelic kingdom which corresponds roughly with the borders of modern County Galway. Flobbertig captured and executed the King of Tyrconnel and then raided into the Midlands, burning and pillaging as far as the River Boyne.

After this insult, Brian began to play hardball. He marched north once again and extracted many hostages from the Kienal Oam, threatening to execute every last 1 if there was any more trouble in Ulster.

Speaker 0: This appears to have had the desired effect, as in 1011 Flobbertyg actually fought alongside Brian's sons Merkid and Donal in a sanctioned campaign against the Kingdom of Tírchonnal. This campaign was initially unsuccessful, but once Brian himself took command, the kingdom was subjugated in short order. By now, Brian was in control of almost the entire island. In order to secure that power, Brian utilised a method that would have been familiar to European kings, but perhaps less so to Irish ones. He courted the opinion of the church, in order to strengthen the legitimacy of his rule.

The Irish Church was more than a little eccentric when compared to its counterparts on the continent. Rather than being centred around bishops of dioceses and archbishops of archdioceses, the Irish Church revolved around monasteries, which were headed by members of the dynasties whose lands they were situated upon. The monasteries owed nearly everything they had to the ruler of the land they were sat on, and as such had a vested interest in maintaining good relations. It is documented in the Book of Armagh that in 1005, Brian chose to donate 22 ounces of gold to the monastery at Armagh, an extremely ostentatious display of wealth. In addition to this, he declared that the Armagh monastery was the religious capital of Ireland.

This entitled Armagh to a share in the funds collected by all the monasteries of Ireland. This move, while financially costly for Brian, bound the destiny of Ireland's religious capital to him. Armagh could only expect to maintain their primacy amongst the other monasteries as long as Brian and his sons held the title of High King.

Speaker 1: As a result, it was in their interest to use both their financial and political power to back Brian's cause, which they did from 1005 on. As I touched on earlier, this courting of the Church's favour was more of a European practice and may have been a telling sign of the sort of social order Brian was attempting to build in Ireland. Significantly in the Book of Armagh, Brian is not referred to as High King, but as Imperator Scotorum, meaning the Emperor of the Gaels. It may be that Brian's aim was to lay down the foundations of a feudal society more in line with continental Europe. No High King ruling over a multitude of lesser kings, but 1 ruler and his vassals.

This is of course purely speculation, but there is evidence. Whether as High King or as emperor, by 1011 Brian had brought all the regional rulers of Ireland under his direct authority, finally succeeding in a campaign that was decades in the making. No sooner had he achieved this momentous feat than the Second Leinster revolt broke out. Mael Morda MacMurcot, who you hopefully remember from earlier in this story, had only accepted Bryan's authority over Leinster with great reluctance. The exact reasons for his rebellion are not entirely clear to us, but a story claims that 1 of Brian's sons insulted Mael Morda, and that he rose in revolt through sheer outrage.

Another, less dramatic reason is that the King of Leinster scented weakness in Brian's old rival, Mael Shacknall. The former High King had maintained his hold on Meath following his defeat, but now his lands were threatened by the aggression of Mael Morda. By knocking Mael Shacknall out of the picture, the King of Leinster could remove 1 of Brien's prominent subject kings and deprive him of the resources and manpower of Meath. When Mael Morda rose against Brian in 1012, he found an ally in Flaubertig O'Neill, who you should also remember from the Ulster campaigns. Flaubertig had evidently decided that Brian didn't have the guts to execute the hostages he had taken, and rose with Mael Morda seemingly without concern.

The 2 rebellious lords moved on Meath, and Mael Shacknall appealed to Brian for aid. The next year, in 1013, Brian responded to the call and marched with the gathered might of most of Ireland into Leinster. He and his men ravaged the countryside for months before finally meeting up before the walls of Dublin and settling in for a siege. Despite managing to blockade the city with his fleet, it was Brian's army that ran out of supplies first, and so he was obliged to return home and plan a new assault. Mael Morda had no illusions about Brian being finished, and spent the interim gathering support for his cause.

The various lords of Ireland were seemingly on the fence about who to support in the war, and so Mael Morda found few supporters at home. Instead, he tasked his nephew Sig Trigg, the ruler of Dublin, with rallying support amongst the Norse rulers of Orkney and the Isle of Man. Sigtrigg did as he was ordered and returned in 1014 with a host of Norse warriors to bolster the lines of Mael Mordor's army. On the 23rd of April that year, the fateful confrontation that would put off the previous year materialized. The armies of Bryan and Mael Morda met at Klontarf to fight a pitched battle that would prove to be decisive in more ways than 1.

Both sides brought significant forces to bear. Brian is thought to have fielded 7, 000 troops, while Mael Morda is believed to have fielded a slightly smaller army of

Speaker 0: 6, 600.

Speaker 1: In medieval Ireland, where warfare was so defined by raiding and small engagements, this meeting of armies was cataclysmic. The High King's front line was held by his loyal Dalcassian retinue and commanded by his son Mercut. Brian himself was in his seventies by this point, so it's likely that he was positioned further back if he was on the battlefield at all. Mael Morda's forces meanwhile were fronted by the well-armed and armoured Norsemen from Orkney and Mann, notoriously ferocious fighters. The annals claim that the battle of Klontarf was fought from sunrise to sunset, but it can be safely assumed that this was dramatic storytelling, meaning that the battle went on for several hours.

The casualty rates are also told to have been extreme, with between 7, 000 and 10, 000 deaths. These huge estimates indicate to us that Clontarf was at the very least a bitter slugging match, and must indeed have dragged on for quite some time. Just as with the rest of Brian's military career, actual details of the course of the battle are almost non-existent. All we know is that towards the end of the day, the Leinster Line began to waver. When it finally broke, the Irish contingent began fleeing into the nearby woods, while its Norse allies fledged their ships which they had left beached on the shore.

Much to the dismay of the fleeing Norse, the tide had come in and carried their ships out into the bay. What followed was a bloodbath on an unprecedented scale, as is often the case when a total rout ensues. The Norse were chased into the surf by Brian's men, and those who were not hacked down in brutal hand-to-hand fighting were forced under the water and drowned by their panicking comrades. The sea must have run red with blood as the final clean-up of the Norse contingent began. Clontarf, while a resounding defeat for the Leinster rebels and their Norse allies, was not much of a victory for the Dalkassians, who had come so far from the sub-kingdom of Tholmund.

The dead were beyond counting, and almost the entire royal family was among their number, including the High King himself. The exact circumstances of Brian's death are murky to say the least. 1 story claims that the king went out in a blaze of glory, with sword in hand, laying about himself and reaping enemy soldiers like corn in a field. Another story states that Brian was killed in his tent following the battle by a fleeing Norseman who had escaped the massacre on the beach. As I mentioned earlier on, Brian was in his 70s by the time Klontarf was fought, so the second of these 2 explanations seems more likely to me.

The utter devastation of the Dalkassian royal family left the succession to the High Kingship abruptly open. Brian's 2 remaining sons would both attempt to seize it, but in

Speaker 0: the end it was Mael Shacknall who against all the odds managed to wrest back his old title. He stayed on the throne until his death in 1022,

Speaker 1: no doubt blessing his good fortune, although he never managed to exert the same amount of control on the island that Brian had once done. It is generally agreed that the greatest legacy of High King Brian was the shattering of Norse power in Ireland. Modern historians however attach a number of caveats to this idea. As I mentioned, it was at 1 point the prevailing view that Brian's main goal was to eject the Norse from Ireland, which comes with all sorts of proto-nationalist connotations. While Brian was by no means a friend of Ireland's Norse inhabitants, the lead-up to Clontarf and the battle itself were not some great battle of races.

The modern opinion is that the Leinster Revolt was a reaction to the centralisation of power under Brian, to the great diminishment of his subject kings. That there were many Norse present at the battle is simply an indication that they too were threatened by Brian's all-encompassing kingdom. In the interest of giving credit where credit is due, it cannot be denied that Ireland's Norse enclaves never again attained the same degree of power and influence following the resounding defeat of the Leinster-Norse coalition at Clontarf. Brian can be pointed to as the final nail in the coffin, if not the sole reason, for the decline of Norse power in Ireland.

Speaker 0: That brings us to the end of the fantastic story of High King Brian, a

Speaker 1: man whose feats would never again be replicated, unless of course you count the English conquest, but we'll leave that be for now. I hope you've enjoyed listening to this story as much as I've enjoyed researching and writing it. Brian was a fascinating character and I thought that I knew more or less everything about him, and I was in corpse entirely wrong. The story of Brian's life is full of detail, and would be even more so if more sources had survived to us. If you have any questions about this episode, or have any corrections to point out about anything I touched on during this video, please feel free to leave me a comment or email me at kianrowenytyoutube at gmail dot com.

That's all from me for now, I'll be returning to the early modern period for my next video. Thank you

See all Historical Delving transcripts on Youtube

Brian Boru - The Man Who Would Be King: Part 2