In the first of a 2-part video series for History Hub to mark 1000 years since the Battle of Clontarf, historian Dr Elva Johnston (UCD) talks about Brian Boru, the battle in 1014, and how the story of the battle was shaped by Brian's descendants.

The video is funded by UCD School of History and Archives and is a Real Smart Media production for History Hub.

http://historyhub.ie/1014-brian-boru-battle-of-clontarf

Part 2 of the video series - Commemorating Clontarf: 1014 through the Ages - is here http://historyhub.ie/commemorating-clontarf-1014-through-the-ages

The Battle of Llantarf in 1014 is 1 of the most famous events in all of Irish history.

Generations of Irish school children learn that at Llantarf, the aged High King of Ireland, Brían Bóraitha, Brime Boru, defeated the pagan Viking invaders in a bloody day-long battle on the shores of Dublin.

Though victorious, Brian Boru famously lost his life in the hour of his victory.

In the intervening years, Brian has come to be regarded as Ireland's first national hero.

But what actually happened at the Battle of Glantarf?

Brian Brew was the most important king of his day.

He was initially the king of Munster and his own family hadn't been the most important political players on the island.

Brian Brew came from a family known as the Dalgasch.

They were based in in North Munster, particularly in Clare, particularly East Clare and in Limerick.

And over the course of about 3 generations, they went from being sort of important on a local level to being among the most important players in Munster.

And Brian's brother, Mahoon, who Brian follows as King of Munster, really lays the foundations for Brian's successes.

So in the course of several decades he goes from being King of Munster to being recognised as the most important King of Ireland and in fact recognised as the King of Ireland.

And a really sort of I think useful and dramatic example of this being recognised is in the Book of Armagh, a very important 9th century manuscript held by the Church of Armagh.

And in Brian's presence, his secretary signs it as Brian, Emperor of the Irish Imperator, Scotorum.

So this is an amazing contemporary reference to how powerful Brian was on the contemporary political scene.

The main reason that Brian, I suppose, looms so large in history apart from the Battle of Clontarf is that he was the first ruler in several centuries to break the monopoly of the Aeneal on the high kingship of Ireland.

The Aeneal for many centuries had seen the kingship of Tara which they claimed as being synonymous with the kingship of Ireland and they had dominated the Irish political scene from at least the seventh century if not earlier.

So when Brian rises to power he manages to get the Aeneal King of Tara, Mhaol Seachthnal Mac Dónal, to recognise Brian's overlordship.

And this is a remarkable and revolutionary event, and it completely changes the way politics are played out in Ireland after Brian's death.

So after Brian's death, various dynasties fight for the kingship of Ireland in a way that they hadn't before, and that really is probably his most important contribution to Irish history.

course of his long life, Brian Boru fought very many important battles all over the island of Ireland.

These included the Battle of Cachaircún in 977, the Battle of Balachleachta in 978, and the Battle of Glaun Máma in the year 999.

So was his final battle in 1014 seen by contemporaries as being a particularly significant event?

The Battle of Clontarf was certainly seen as a very important battle by contemporaries.

Very many people were killed there, some of them being the most important people in the island, including of course, Brian Brew, the King of Ireland, but also his main opponent, Máel Morda, the King of Leinster, also dies at the battle.

So it was seen as a very important, very bloody battle, a major struggle.

However, as a struggle, it would have been viewed as an internal struggle between different power bases within Ireland.

And if we look at the background to the Battle of Clontarf, we can see that Mhael Morda, the King of Leinster, Citric, the High Berno-Norse King of Dublin, have interests in common.

Neither 1 of them want to accept Brian's overlordship, and so they unite together to oppose him.

Brian, on the other hand, has the support, obviously, of his Munster allies, but also of Mael Sceachtail, the King of Tar, the Aeniel King, who he had forced to accept his overlordship earlier.

Citric brings in allies from the wider Viking world to aid him in the battle and it's worth noting as well that Citric's wife at the time is in fact Brian's daughter, so Citric is his son-in-law.

And the other main person opposed to Brian is Máel Morda, the King of Leinster, who also happens to be Brian Brew's brother-in-law.

So again, rather than it being a battle between the Irish and the foreigners, it's very much a battle between people who are very closely related to each other.

Certainly not 1 which was about the Irish defeating a Scandinavian invasion.

The original accounts of the Battle of Clontarf are in the annals and all they say is that Brian Brew marches towards Dublin, but the tradition that it was fought at Clontarf is quite an early tradition and in all subsequent descriptions of the battle it takes place at Trontarf on the seashore.

And there's no real reason to doubt that it happened here because it has really no other significance at that point other than being the place of the battle.

And in fact in later accounts they make great play of the seashore location.

So for example, the battle goes on longer than they expected because it's such a big battle, such a tightly fought battle.

And the tide comes in and it drowns several of the Vikings, the Irish warriors on both sides and some of the Vikings are unable to get back to their ships because of the incoming tide and they end up getting slaughtered by Brian's allies.

So the location does play a major role in the way the battle is presented in subsequent accounts.

The death of Brian Boru at the battle, as well as the death of his main opponent, the King of Leinster, Máil Morda, left a significant power vacuum in Ireland.

So who were the main beneficiaries from the Battle of Clontarf?

The immediate beneficiary in the short term was Máire Seacnaill, the King of Tarra, who had accepted Brian's overlordship.

Brian's death obviously left a political vacuum.

Máire Seacnaill used the opportunity to reassert his authority as King of Ireland and to reassert the authority of the Aineal.

However, Brian's career ensured that the Aineal were never really in a position to keep the authority as they had previously.

In terms of Dáil Gath, Brian's own family, his own dynasty, this is a difficult time for them because so many of them die in the actual battle.

Brian's son, Dónachai, does manage to unify them.

He becomes king of Munster, but he's really unable to gain the type of authority Brian had previously.

But the Dáil Gáis and Brian's descendants begin to use the story of the battle, the myth of the battle, in order to bolster their claims to the kingship and even go so far as to take Brian's name and they make it into their surname.

So they're no longer called the Dáil Gáis, but we see them being described as the Ifrian or the O'Briens.

The most effective at this is his great-grandson, Mirkatock O'Brien.

Mirkatock uses Brian's name as his surname, he's an O'Brien, and he also very much sees Brian as his model.

Now in many ways, Mirkathwack is a more effective and more modern king than Brian if you look at his ecclesiastical and his political policies, but he very much sets the idea of Brian as this great king.

Mirkathwack is a great church reformer, for example he's very much involved in the reform of the Irish church in the 12th century.

He donates cashel to the church and if you go to Cashel today and you see the buildings on the Rock of Cashel they wouldn't be there except for this act of generosity and politics it must be said by Mirkarth O'Brien.

He also commissions the writing of a great saga which commemorates Brian Brew and the Battle of Clontarf, Cog a Ghaeil o'Gallach, which is probably written around the turn of the 12th century.

And in a sense, it does what many commemorations do, and I suppose it's the danger of commemoration, is it distorts the past in order to support the politics of the present.

And for Murcathoch, King of Ireland, as somebody who's really pressing these claims, the idea that he would have this great heroic ancestor who had saved Ireland from the Vikings is a very powerful political image.

Now the text itself, it's a long rambling text.

It combines analystic accounts, accounts which are near contemporary, with a sort of a vast sort of narrative about how wonderful Brian is.

And it presents Brian as this ideal Christian king, because there is Brian, the holy king, an elderly man at his prayer has been cut down by an apostate, Rosier, who's presented as this, you know, evil figure.

And it almost presents Brian as a Jesus figure who was martyred for Ireland on Good Friday.

I mean incidentally we don't know if the battle was fought on Good Friday or not, the date isn't mentioned in contemporary accounts.

It may well have been but it's certainly used to very good propagandistic effects.

And the battle is very much a battle of good and evil.

On the 1 hand you've got Brian, King of Ireland, and opposed to him are the pagan Vikings who are trying to invade Ireland.

Now we know that in the time of the Battle of Cantarf, the main Viking element, Citrix, army from Dublin, the Hiberno-North are all Christian, and they're all closely related to each other and there isn't that sense like who is the foreigner, like when Brian is fighting who are the foreigners really.

But Cogadh Ghaol Rhaoghlaibh replaces the complexity of the Battle of Clontarf, you know a battle which has so many different nuances and there's so many sort of side elements and politics going on with a very simple good versus evil and it's extremely effective at what it does.

Because of the involvement of the Dublin Norse in the battle along with Citrix Viking allies the story of Clontarf reached far beyond Ireland's shores.

In Niall's Saga, a 13th century Old Norse saga, there's a long and extended description of the Battle of Pontarf at the end of the text.

And it's actually the longest description of the battle apart from the description we find in Cogadh Gaeilgeolg.

Níol Saga is largely in agreement with Cogadh in the way it presents the battle.

Now it's independent of Cogadh, it's not drawing on the Cogadh as a source, but it very much presents Brian as the wonderful Christian king fighting the forces of paganism, and in fact 1 of the Vikings changes sides during the battle because he's impressed by Brian's holiness.

So you know you have Vikings fighting for Brian, Vikings fighting against Brian, but the narrative is really about how wonderful and Christian Brian is.

Now 1 of the interesting things that Ní Alsaige does is the role of Gormla, Brian's wife, and also the mother of Citric, who obviously has an important role in the battle of Llantarfan Ní Alsaige, is greatly expanded.

In Coga she's presented as having quite a negative role.

She incites her brother, the King of Leinster, to fight against Brian.

In the Ál Sága, that role is hugely expanded, and she turns into this sort of evil queen who uses sorcery to inspire her son to fight against Brian.

And she's presented as almost offering herself and the kingship of Ireland at 1 and the same time.

Now, given her age, she certainly, she may have been beautiful in her youth, but she would have been quite elderly by the time the Battle of Clontarf took place.

So I mean, this is just a sort of almost like a fairy tale.

And anybody who's familiar with sort of the story of Snow White will recognize an awful lot of the way Gormla is portrayed.

You know, she's portrayed as sort of the evil stepmother, the evil queen.

In comparison, Citric's wife, Slána, who is Brian's daughter, stays on her father's side and Gormla is her stepmother.

So you're getting that whole sort of almost fairy tale image of her in Níol's saga.

Gormla is sort of a key figure in terms of how we understand the Battle of Cwntarf.

And this is because of all of the people associated with the conflict, she is related by blood or by marriage to all of the main players.

Gorimla is the daughter of the King of Leinster, Murica.

Her brother is Mhaelmorda, who is 1 of Brine's 2 major opponents.

Now, his other major opponent, Citric, is her son by Áilíf, the High Berno Norse king of Dublin.

Now Áilíf is the first of 3 marriages that Gorimla has.

Her second marriage seems to be Mhael Sechnal, the king of Tara, and her third marriage is to Brian.

Now she has a son by Brian as well, Dónacha, and Dónacha is the person who succeeds Brian as king of Munster.

So if you look at the various characters, she's related by blood or she's related by marriage.

She's 2 sons on either side of the conflict and she's a brother on 1 side and a husband on the other.

Now it's unclear whether she's still married to Brian at the time of the Battle of Clontarf and the sources are in disagreement about it.

I think what's significant if you look at Gorhamla is it tells you an awful lot about the role of aristocratic women in Irish society at the time.

This is an aristocratic world in which all of the families are very closely intermarried with each other and it's women who join the different families together.

Women would marry 3, 4 times in the course of their life.

Marriage and divorce is very common in the society of the time.

And many women would have been in the position of Gormla where they would have had close relatives involved on either sides of a conflict.

It's just that she is then given this literary character and is turned into a villain of the piece more than anything else.

1 of the things which I find is a real oddity about the portrayal of Gormla is she's a very prominent character.

She's prominent in Coga, the Irish account.

She's extremely prominent in the Owl saga where she has this role as the sort of, you know, very wicked queen.

It's fascinating though that that role isn't taken up to any great extent in later ideas about the battle.

I mean, why is it that a character who is so important in these original accounts of the battle somehow disappears from the narrative?

The fact that Gormla was so closely related to the main figures on both sides clearly shows that the battle was a confrontation involving rival power bases from within the island of Ireland itself, rather than an Irish effort to repel Viking invaders.

Gormla's role in the story of the Battle of Clontarf is just 1 fascinating element of a complex narrative which, 1000 years after the event, continues to enthrall.


Speaker 0: The Battle of Llantarf in 1014 is 1 of the most famous events in all of Irish history. Generations of Irish school children learn that at Llantarf, the aged High King of Ireland, Brían Bóraitha, Brime Boru, defeated the pagan Viking invaders in a bloody day-long battle on the shores of Dublin. Though victorious, Brian Boru famously lost his life in the hour of his victory. In the intervening years, Brian has come to be regarded as Ireland's first national hero. But what actually happened at the Battle of Glantarf?

What was it all about? And who was Brian Brew?

Speaker 1: Brian Brew was the most important king of his day. He was initially the king of Munster and his own family hadn't been the most important political players on the island. Brian Brew came from a family known as the Dalgasch. They were based in in North Munster, particularly in Clare, particularly East Clare and in Limerick. And over the course of about 3 generations, they went from being sort of important on a local level to being among the most important players in Munster.

And Brian's brother, Mahoon, who Brian follows as King of Munster, really lays the foundations for Brian's successes. So in the course of several decades he goes from being King of Munster to being recognised as the most important King of Ireland and in fact recognised as the King of Ireland. And a really sort of I think useful and dramatic example of this being recognised is in the Book of Armagh, a very important 9th century manuscript held by the Church of Armagh. And in Brian's presence, his secretary signs it as Brian, Emperor of the Irish Imperator, Scotorum. So this is an amazing contemporary reference to how powerful Brian was on the contemporary political scene.

The main reason that Brian, I suppose, looms so large in history apart from the Battle of Clontarf is that he was the first ruler in several centuries to break the monopoly of the Aeneal on the high kingship of Ireland. The Aeneal for many centuries had seen the kingship of Tara which they claimed as being synonymous with the kingship of Ireland and they had dominated the Irish political scene from at least the seventh century if not earlier. So when Brian rises to power he manages to get the Aeneal King of Tara, Mhaol Seachthnal Mac Dónal, to recognise Brian's overlordship. And this is a remarkable and revolutionary event, and it completely changes the way politics are played out in Ireland after Brian's death. So after Brian's death, various dynasties fight for the kingship of Ireland in a way that they hadn't before, and that really is probably his most important contribution to Irish history.

Over the

Speaker 0: course of his long life, Brian Boru fought very many important battles all over the island of Ireland. These included the Battle of Cachaircún in 977, the Battle of Balachleachta in 978, and the Battle of Glaun Máma in the year 999. So was his final battle in 1014 seen by contemporaries as being a particularly significant event?

Speaker 1: The Battle of Clontarf was certainly seen as a very important battle by contemporaries. Very many people were killed there, some of them being the most important people in the island, including of course, Brian Brew, the King of Ireland, but also his main opponent, Máel Morda, the King of Leinster, also dies at the battle. So it was seen as a very important, very bloody battle, a major struggle. However, as a struggle, it would have been viewed as an internal struggle between different power bases within Ireland. And if we look at the background to the Battle of Clontarf, we can see that Mhael Morda, the King of Leinster, Citric, the High Berno-Norse King of Dublin, have interests in common.

Neither 1 of them want to accept Brian's overlordship, and so they unite together to oppose him. Brian, on the other hand, has the support, obviously, of his Munster allies, but also of Mael Sceachtail, the King of Tar, the Aeniel King, who he had forced to accept his overlordship earlier. Citric brings in allies from the wider Viking world to aid him in the battle and it's worth noting as well that Citric's wife at the time is in fact Brian's daughter, so Citric is his son-in-law. And the other main person opposed to Brian is Máel Morda, the King of Leinster, who also happens to be Brian Brew's brother-in-law. So again, rather than it being a battle between the Irish and the foreigners, it's very much a battle between people who are very closely related to each other.

Certainly not 1 which was about the Irish defeating a Scandinavian invasion. The original accounts of the Battle of Clontarf are in the annals and all they say is that Brian Brew marches towards Dublin, but the tradition that it was fought at Clontarf is quite an early tradition and in all subsequent descriptions of the battle it takes place at Trontarf on the seashore. And there's no real reason to doubt that it happened here because it has really no other significance at that point other than being the place of the battle. And in fact in later accounts they make great play of the seashore location. So for example, the battle goes on longer than they expected because it's such a big battle, such a tightly fought battle.

And the tide comes in and it drowns several of the Vikings, the Irish warriors on both sides and some of the Vikings are unable to get back to their ships because of the incoming tide and they end up getting slaughtered by Brian's allies. So the location does play a major role in the way the battle is presented in subsequent accounts.

Speaker 0: The death of Brian Boru at the battle, as well as the death of his main opponent, the King of Leinster, Máil Morda, left a significant power vacuum in Ireland. So who were the main beneficiaries from the Battle of Clontarf?

Speaker 1: The immediate beneficiary in the short term was Máire Seacnaill, the King of Tarra, who had accepted Brian's overlordship. Brian's death obviously left a political vacuum. Máire Seacnaill used the opportunity to reassert his authority as King of Ireland and to reassert the authority of the Aineal. However, Brian's career ensured that the Aineal were never really in a position to keep the authority as they had previously. In terms of Dáil Gath, Brian's own family, his own dynasty, this is a difficult time for them because so many of them die in the actual battle.

Brian's son, Dónachai, does manage to unify them. He becomes king of Munster, but he's really unable to gain the type of authority Brian had previously. But the Dáil Gáis and Brian's descendants begin to use the story of the battle, the myth of the battle, in order to bolster their claims to the kingship and even go so far as to take Brian's name and they make it into their surname. So they're no longer called the Dáil Gáis, but we see them being described as the Ifrian or the O'Briens. The most effective at this is his great-grandson, Mirkatock O'Brien.

Mirkatock uses Brian's name as his surname, he's an O'Brien, and he also very much sees Brian as his model. Now in many ways, Mirkathwack is a more effective and more modern king than Brian if you look at his ecclesiastical and his political policies, but he very much sets the idea of Brian as this great king. Mirkathwack is a great church reformer, for example he's very much involved in the reform of the Irish church in the 12th century. He donates cashel to the church and if you go to Cashel today and you see the buildings on the Rock of Cashel they wouldn't be there except for this act of generosity and politics it must be said by Mirkarth O'Brien. He also commissions the writing of a great saga which commemorates Brian Brew and the Battle of Clontarf, Cog a Ghaeil o'Gallach, which is probably written around the turn of the 12th century.

And in a sense, it does what many commemorations do, and I suppose it's the danger of commemoration, is it distorts the past in order to support the politics of the present. And for Murcathoch, King of Ireland, as somebody who's really pressing these claims, the idea that he would have this great heroic ancestor who had saved Ireland from the Vikings is a very powerful political image. Now the text itself, it's a long rambling text. It combines analystic accounts, accounts which are near contemporary, with a sort of a vast sort of narrative about how wonderful Brian is. And it presents Brian as this ideal Christian king, because there is Brian, the holy king, an elderly man at his prayer has been cut down by an apostate, Rosier, who's presented as this, you know, evil figure.

And it almost presents Brian as a Jesus figure who was martyred for Ireland on Good Friday. I mean incidentally we don't know if the battle was fought on Good Friday or not, the date isn't mentioned in contemporary accounts. It may well have been but it's certainly used to very good propagandistic effects. And the battle is very much a battle of good and evil. On the 1 hand you've got Brian, King of Ireland, and opposed to him are the pagan Vikings who are trying to invade Ireland.

Now we know that in the time of the Battle of Cantarf, the main Viking element, Citrix, army from Dublin, the Hiberno-North are all Christian, and they're all closely related to each other and there isn't that sense like who is the foreigner, like when Brian is fighting who are the foreigners really. But Cogadh Ghaol Rhaoghlaibh replaces the complexity of the Battle of Clontarf, you know a battle which has so many different nuances and there's so many sort of side elements and politics going on with a very simple good versus evil and it's extremely effective at what it does.

Speaker 0: Because of the involvement of the Dublin Norse in the battle along with Citrix Viking allies the story of Clontarf reached far beyond Ireland's shores.

Speaker 1: In Niall's Saga, a 13th century Old Norse saga, there's a long and extended description of the Battle of Pontarf at the end of the text. And it's actually the longest description of the battle apart from the description we find in Cogadh Gaeilgeolg. Níol Saga is largely in agreement with Cogadh in the way it presents the battle. Now it's independent of Cogadh, it's not drawing on the Cogadh as a source, but it very much presents Brian as the wonderful Christian king fighting the forces of paganism, and in fact 1 of the Vikings changes sides during the battle because he's impressed by Brian's holiness. So you know you have Vikings fighting for Brian, Vikings fighting against Brian, but the narrative is really about how wonderful and Christian Brian is.

Now 1 of the interesting things that Ní Alsaige does is the role of Gormla, Brian's wife, and also the mother of Citric, who obviously has an important role in the battle of Llantarfan Ní Alsaige, is greatly expanded. In Coga she's presented as having quite a negative role. She incites her brother, the King of Leinster, to fight against Brian. In the Ál Sága, that role is hugely expanded, and she turns into this sort of evil queen who uses sorcery to inspire her son to fight against Brian. And she's presented as almost offering herself and the kingship of Ireland at 1 and the same time.

So she's sort of beautiful but evil. Now, given her age, she certainly, she may have been beautiful in her youth, but she would have been quite elderly by the time the Battle of Clontarf took place. So I mean, this is just a sort of almost like a fairy tale. And anybody who's familiar with sort of the story of Snow White will recognize an awful lot of the way Gormla is portrayed. You know, she's portrayed as sort of the evil stepmother, the evil queen.

In comparison, Citric's wife, Slána, who is Brian's daughter, stays on her father's side and Gormla is her stepmother. So you're getting that whole sort of almost fairy tale image of her in Níol's saga. Gormla is sort of a key figure in terms of how we understand the Battle of Cwntarf. And this is because of all of the people associated with the conflict, she is related by blood or by marriage to all of the main players. Gorimla is the daughter of the King of Leinster, Murica.

Her brother is Mhaelmorda, who is 1 of Brine's 2 major opponents. Now, his other major opponent, Citric, is her son by Áilíf, the High Berno Norse king of Dublin. Now Áilíf is the first of 3 marriages that Gorimla has. Her second marriage seems to be Mhael Sechnal, the king of Tara, and her third marriage is to Brian. Now she has a son by Brian as well, Dónacha, and Dónacha is the person who succeeds Brian as king of Munster.

So if you look at the various characters, she's related by blood or she's related by marriage. She's 2 sons on either side of the conflict and she's a brother on 1 side and a husband on the other. Now it's unclear whether she's still married to Brian at the time of the Battle of Clontarf and the sources are in disagreement about it. But in a way that doesn't matter. I think what's significant if you look at Gorhamla is it tells you an awful lot about the role of aristocratic women in Irish society at the time.

This is an aristocratic world in which all of the families are very closely intermarried with each other and it's women who join the different families together. Women would marry 3, 4 times in the course of their life. Marriage and divorce is very common in the society of the time. And many women would have been in the position of Gormla where they would have had close relatives involved on either sides of a conflict. So she's not unusual in that sense.

It's just that she is then given this literary character and is turned into a villain of the piece more than anything else. 1 of the things which I find is a real oddity about the portrayal of Gormla is she's a very prominent character. She's prominent in Coga, the Irish account. She's extremely prominent in the Owl saga where she has this role as the sort of, you know, very wicked queen. It's fascinating though that that role isn't taken up to any great extent in later ideas about the battle.

I mean, why is it that a character who is so important in these original accounts of the battle somehow disappears from the narrative?

Speaker 0: The fact that Gormla was so closely related to the main figures on both sides clearly shows that the battle was a confrontation involving rival power bases from within the island of Ireland itself, rather than an Irish effort to repel Viking invaders. Gormla's role in the story of the Battle of Clontarf is just 1 fascinating element of a complex narrative which, 1000 years after the event, continues to enthrall.

Speaker 1: You

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1014: Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf