Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf
J. Anthony Gaughan
The prospect of the millennial anniversary of the battle of Clontarf has already prompted a number of publications. Among these are Brian Boru: Ireland’s greatest king? by Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Brian Boru: king of Ireland by Roger Chatterton Newman and The battle of Clontarf, Good Friday 1014 by Darren McGettigan. This volume by Seán Duffy, professor of medieval history at TCD, is the most comprehensive treatment to date of that historic event and its chief protagonist, Brian Boru (c. 941-1014).
At the outset Duffy sets the scene. He describes Irish society as it was shaped by the ordinances of the Brehon laws. Of particular interest is the title of kingship which was enjoyed by the heads of numerous dynastic families and he traces the roots of the principal ones who exercised authority in medieval Ireland. He shows that the high-kingship of Tara was never more than a grand title, whose glory days lay in pre-history. Then he turns to the Viking raids from 795 onwards and adduces evidence that as a result of these the Irish developed a sense of themselves as a single people, in other words, a national self-consciousness.
The author next describes Brian Boru’s inexorable rise to pre-eminence. On the death of his older brother in 976 Brian assumed leadership of the Dal Cais, who had become a dominant political force in Thomond (North Munster). After a series of military campaigns he became king of the province and eventually high-king of Ireland, when three-quarters of Ireland paid him homage. An able administrator and a patron of the Church and of learning, he was accorded the title ‘Emperor of the Irish’ by his secretary and this was duly recorded in the Book of Armagh.
Some of the Irish Annals claim that Brian presided over a uniquely peaceful period of Irish history. However it did not last very long. Some of Brian’s vassals were not content with that role and none more so than the king of Leinster and the Norse in Dublin. He mustered an army of his Dal Cais followers with levies from South Munster and South Connacht and marched against them. The campaign concluded with the battle of Clontarf. Brian’s forces triumphed, but he was killed as the battle ended.
In his treatment Duffy does not stray far from the primary sources, not least the Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh (The War of the Irish and the Vikings), a near contemporary romantic biography of Brian Boru. The importance of Duffy’s study lies in his conflation of the references to Brian Boru and the battle at Clontarf as they occur in the Irish Annals, Icelandic sagas and other, mainly poetic, sources.
He highlights the emphasis in many of the references to the participation of ‘foreigners’ in the battle of Clontarf and concludes that it was much more than just the culmination of a rebellion against Brian by the subordinate king of Leinster and his Dublin Norse allies. Thus he opts for the traditional rather than the revisionist view of the battle of Clontarf, which regarded it as having little if any supranational-Irish against the Norse-significance.
This fine study will be of interest to historian and general reader alike. Apart from his discussion on the battle of Clontarf, Duffy provides a splendid overview of medieval Ireland. Of particular note is his illustration of how legend and history are intertwined in sources so that a full understanding of the period remains very much a work in progress.