A History of Ireland in 100 Objects

by Fintan O'Toole

  Saints’ belts even acquired a frankly magical aura. In a Scots Gaelic legend, the hero MacUalraig uses the ‘magic belt of Saint Fillan’ to capture a water nymph. The Moylough belt shrine was probably placed around the bodies of supplicants who came with all sorts of illnesses, wounds and deformities. There is a particularly strong early-mediaeval tradition in Western Europe of the belts or girdles of saints being placed around the waist of a woman undergoing a difficult childbirth. There are later records of the purported girdles of Ss Joseph, Margaret of Antioch, Brigid and many others being used in this way.

  The elaborate nature of the Moylough shrine makes it highly unlikely that it was actually used for women in labour, but it may have been placed on pregnant women as a blessing to ensure safe childbirth. It reminds us that, for all the sophistication of early Irish Christianity, for most people religion still functioned as it always had, as a way of trying to control an unpredictable and often frightening world.

  33. Rinnagan crucifixion plaque, eighth/ninth century

  At first glance, this plaque, made from a thin sheet of copper-alloy and originally attached to some kind of wooden or metal backing, could be from anywhere in early mediaeval Europe. It is Christ on the cross. An angel hovers on each side of his head; on the left side is the Roman soldier who offered Jesus a sponge soaked in vinegar; on the right is the soldier who stabbed his side with a lance. This iconography had been used in Europe for about 200 years before this piece was made in Ireland.

  The plaque, found in St John’s churchyard on the shores of Lough Ree, in Rinnagan, Co. Roscommon, and originally a much shinier, more gilded object than it is now, is intriguing in two ways. First, what looks to us like a standard image is actually very rare in the Ireland of this time. The most striking aspect of Irish art of this period is that it displays relatively little interest in showing the human form or using images to tell stories. It is not that Irish artists could not deal with human figures—they did so on high crosses—they simply chose not to do it very often. They, and presumably their patrons, were more interested in the fantastical filigrees and mind-bending patterns at which they excelled to a degree unsurpassed in Europe.

  The Rinnagan Crucifixion is thus, says Raghnall Ó Floinn of the National Museum, ‘the only narrative scene of such an early date that we have. There are fragments of other objects that may have been similar, but they are very much in the minority’. Apart from its rarity, the other startling thing about this Crucifixion is how utterly Irish it is. The basic image may be standard across Christendom, but the way it is treated is distinctive. If you look at it at all closely, what emerges is not just an object of Christian worship, but an eloquent statement of the way the Irish made their own synthesis of Christianity and an older culture. Christ’s mask-like face is full-frontal, with an implacable stare that is oddly familiar from the pre-Christian Corleck Head, perhaps 600 years earlier. Jesus is not dead here: his eyes are open, and the image is meant to be triumphant. Even more fascinating is the pattern on Christ’s chest. It looks nothing like the standard image of the Crucifixion. Rather, it is made to look like a breastplate, with three back-to-back C-shaped scrolls. There are similar patterns of triple spirals above the head of Christ and on the wings of the angels—a triple triad. This is typical Irish imagery, again going back to the Iron Age, and beyond. Even Jesus, it seems, is more than a little bit Irish.

  34. Tall cross, Monasterboice, late-ninth century

  When hurlers and Gaelic footballers describe their ultimate ambition, they often use a simple shorthand: “A Celtic cross”. Since the late 19th century, the Gaelic Athletic Association has used a high cross for its logo and for All-Ireland medals. The modern use of the cross as a symbol of Irish achievement goes back at least to the 1853 Irish Industrial Exhibition, in Dublin, which displayed them as “fine monuments of the artistic skill and devoted piety of our Celtic ancestors”.

  The crosses are so deeply embedded in the Irish imagination that it seems almost sacrilegious to ask why they were made in the first place. There was no native tradition of building in cut stone, so the appearance of high crosses in the eighth century was a major cultural innovation. So, as we have seen, was the idea of depicting, in a relatively realistic way, human subjects and stories.

  The crosses are, indeed, unique to Ireland and Irish-influenced Scotland. They required a huge investment of skill and resources and, as Roger Stalley has put it, “It is hard to believe they were undertaken for purely altruistic or religious motives.” And yet they were erected on a very large scale: about 300 of them survive, of which 100 are decorated with carved images.

  The crosses were undoubtedly used as gathering places for prayers by monks and pilgrims, but their scale and complexity far exceed this basic function. This cross, from Monasterboice in Co Louth, is almost seven metres tall, and every available face is covered with elaborate carvings of a dazzling variety of scenes. The east face alone has Christ walking on the water, King David, St Anthony tempted by demons, St Paul and St Anthony killing a devil, an angel shielding three children in the fiery furnace, and images of Elijah, Moses, Abraham and Isaac, David and Goliath, and David (again) killing a lion.

  Some crosses are inscribed with the names of kings or abbots, suggesting that they functioned as potent symbols of the power and status of these dignitaries. Like so many objects from pre-

  Christian Ireland, part of their function is to claim territory and mark boundaries. It is striking in this regard that the crosses are highly individual, with distinctive styles associated with different regions. The basic form is common to all of them: a pyramidal base, a rectangular shaft culminating in a capstone, and a large circle enclosing the arms of the cross. This circle may be intended to represent a halo around the figure of Christ, but it can also be seen as a continuation of a much older Irish tradition of representations of the sun.

  One way of looking at the cross, though, is that they represent a new assertion of biblical Christianity in the face of a new pagan threat. By the time the cross-builders were at their most active, that threat was all too real.

  35. Oseberg Ship, c.815

  Very few objects ever did so much to change the course of Irish history as the fearsome and beautiful Viking longship. In the later-eighth century, Danish and Norwegian shipbuilders developed existing techniques to create vessels that could both traverse the high seas and navigate the great rivers of Europe. The longship was the spacecraft of its day, propelling adventurers across vast and hitherto unimaginable distances. In one raid in 858, a group sailed from Scandinavia to the coast of Spain, into the Mediterranean, on to Italy, up the River Rhône, raiding all the way; and they then sailed home.

  The Vikings did not invent the techniques that made possible these light, fast ships, but they did perfect them. The method involved splitting oak trunks with axes, chisels and wedges into long, thin and remarkably flexible planks. These were fixed with iron nails to a single sturdy keel and then to each other, with one plank overlapping the next to create the distinctive clinker effect. The low, sleek shape made the ships highly manoeuvrable when steered with a single rudder mounted on the right-hand side of the stern. (This is why the right-hand side of a ship, and now also of an aeroplane, is known as the starboard—i.e. steer-board—side.) The ship’s shallow draught meant that it could be rowed far upriver into the heart of Europe—or, in the case of Ireland, of the island.

  Built c.815, shortly after the Viking raids on Ireland began, the Oseberg ship is more than 22m long and 5m wide. Unlike earlier vessels, which had rowlocks on the gunwale, it has fifteen pairs of oar ports, placed low down so that the oars could strike the water at an efficient angle. Either rowed or sailed (the sail would have covered 90 sq m), it could reach a speed of 10 knots. It is preserved because it was used in 834 to inter a high-status woman in the Oseberg burial mound near the ancient town of Tønsberg in Norway. (Some objects of Irish decorated enamel were found with the burial, perhaps suggesting that the ship’s owne
rs were involved in raids on Ireland.) The prow and the stern, which rise in beautiful curves 5m above the waterline, have carvings of intertwined beasts, whose quality suggest this may have been a royal vessel. The image on the prow is not the dragon so beloved by film-makers, but a serpent, whose tail is represented in the stern.

  It is unlikely that the ships that first raided Irish coasts were anything as fine as the Oseberg vessel, which in any case would not have been rugged enough for the high seas. The general design, however, would have been the same—and that design took Scandinavian raiders and traders as far west as North America and farther east than Kiev. Yet, even with these masterpieces of functional beauty at their command, the Vikings still had to face into the unknown. Even 600 years after the Oseberg ship was built, an Icelandic navigational manual gives directions to Greenland: ‘Turn left at the middle of Norway, keep so far north of Shetland that you can only see it if the visibility is very good, and far enough south of the Faroes that the sea appears halfway up the mountain slopes’. These voyages demanded not just great ships, but intrepid sailors.

  36. Ballinderry sword, mid-ninth century

  This is one of the finest surviving examples of a technology that helped to transform Ireland in the ninth and tenth centuries: a Viking sword. With its cutting edge almost perfectly preserved in some places, it retains the ferocity that helped to make the Scandinavian warrior such a formidable force. Swords like this did not just allow the Vikings to ravage parts of Ireland; they forced indigenous Irish rulers to adapt to the demands of new warfare.

  The Vikings typically imported their blades from high-quality workshops in the territory of the Frankish empire (today’s Germany). The blade of the Ballinderry sword has a maker’s name inlaid on it: Ulfberht. This identifies it as the work of a master, probably based in the Rhineland, whose blades have been found as far away as Russia. Over 150 of these blades have been discovered, suggesting that this was the early equivalent of a brand name, with an international cachet. There is even evidence of a division between genuine Ulfberht blades and cheaper forgeries; an early mediaeval case of brand piracy.

  While the blade may have been imported, the hilt and pommel were made in Scandinavia. This one is particularly fine, decorated with hammered silver and carefully inscribed with lettering and abstract patterns. The upper side bears the name Hiltipreht, which may connect it to a Norwegian craftsman of that name. There is little doubt that this is a very high-status object that came to Ireland with the Vikings.

  What is fascinating is where the sword was found in 1928: on the site of a crannóg, or lake dwelling, at Ballinderry, near Moate, Co. Westmeath. It was found with other Viking objects—a longbow, two spearheads, an axehead and a gaming board—but a crannóg is a distinctively Irish form of dwelling. ‘Crannógs are such an Irish type’, says Andy Halpin of the National Museum, ‘that it is very hard to believe this was a Viking site. So the best interpretation is that you are looking at an Irish chieftain or petty king who is wealthy enough to equip himself with the best of weaponry’.

  He is obviously in contact with Viking Dublin, or Limerick, which is not surprising because we know that, for this east midlands area, there was huge trade going back and forth. This sword symbolises, in a way, the long-term impact of the Vikings. If you are an Irish king and you have the Vikings on your doorstep, you need to get your act together. You need to have this sort of weaponry, but in order to have it, you need to be able to buy it, which means changing to an economic system that generates cash.

  This arms race did not just affect the relationship between the Irish kings and the Scandinavian newcomers. It also set off a Darwinian struggle among the Irish themselves. The kings who could adapt to the Viking threat by acquiring the new technology could also compete more successfully against local rivals. Even more than their direct impact, which was shocking but relatively limited, it was these indirect effects that made the Vikings a catalyst for the transformation of Ireland.

  37. Decorated lead weights, c.900

  These weights were discovered in 1866 in a Viking grave at Islandbridge, just west of the centre of Dublin, and were first described by Oscar Wilde’s father, Sir William Wilde. They are pretty objects. Some are topped with gilt-bronze discs that were reused from stolen ecclesiastical metalwork, and others are trimmed with blue glass. The most impressive is in the form of a gilt-bronze animal head, with intricate decoration. The point of the objects, however, is practical, not decorative. They are multiples of the same weight unit (26.6g), which, as Dr Pat Wallace, former director of the National Museum, figured out, was the standard unit used in Viking Dublin. (That unit was slightly different from those used elsewhere in the Scandinavian world.)

  What we see in these little objects is what can reasonably be called the beginning of capitalism in Ireland. ‘It’s all about weighing silver’, says Wallace. ‘It is from this process that we eventually get our first coinage in Ireland, in 997. This is the beginning of that: you are a merchant, I am a merchant, we are doing a deal. We both have a weighing scales. We do the deal in silver, and we have a lead weight to make sure we are not cheating each other’. The Vikings used ‘hack silver’— cut-off bits of silver objects—as a kind of small change. They used the metal for arm and neck rings that functioned both as practical, portable wealth and as status symbols: literally, flashing the cash.

  It is unclear whether weights were used in Ireland before the Vikings: none has been found, but linguistic evidence suggests that they were known. What is certain, though, is that the Vikings brought with them the idea of an internationally tradable currency. In the ninth and tenth centuries they flooded Ireland with huge quantities of silver, which was the basis for their whole monetary system. Some of it originated in raiding (the known haul of silver from Viking raids on Frankish territory in the ninth century alone is 20 tonnes). Much of it came from trading with the Islamic world. It originated in central Asia, was brought to the great Arab cities where it was minted and thence sent, as payment for trade goods, up the Russian rivers and on to Sweden. This shiny metal is thus a tangible form of a wave of economic globalisation breaking over North-west Europe, including Ireland.

  A system of standard weights implies a lot more than increased trade. Someone has to set the standards and to police them. Tighter political control of this kind is possible in towns, and Dublin became the largest urban centre in Viking Ireland. It was founded first in the 840s as a longphort, a base for ships and raiding parties; and then, more permanently, as a defended town or dún around 917.

  It is possible that the original longphort was at Islandbridge, although more recent evidence suggests it may have been at what is now South Great George’s Street, and while it seems probable that the longphort and Viking town were co-extensive, what is clear from the weights is that Viking merchants had a presence in the Dublin area even before it emerged as a fully fledged town. They were pioneers of the Irish market economy.

  38. Roscrea brooch, late-ninth century

  It may not be as spectacular as some of the great brooches from eighth-century Ireland, but there are two important things about this beautiful piece of metalwork found near Roscrea, Co. Tipperary. It is distinctively Irish; and it could not have been made without the Vikings.

  About a century after the Scandinavian raiders began to appear as terrifying intruders, we have an object that tells a story of cultural integration. The Viking presence in Ireland was not an easy one, but Irish culture was good at absorbing influences and remaking them, even when they came in the form of an initial violent shock. The imprint of the invaders on Irish metalwork is obvious. First, there is the basic material: high-quality silver. Good silver had been rare in Ireland, where it was used sparingly and for highly prized objects. The Vikings had access to vast quantities of the metal. Through trading, Irish craftsmen got access to lots of silver. There is another imported material that is obvious in the Roscrea brooch: the settings are made of amber from the shores of the Baltic Sea.
Previously, these features on an Irish brooch would have been made of coloured glass or enamel.

  Yet, for all the silver and amber, no one would have had any difficulty identifying this as an Irish object. The gold filigree work on the brooch, albeit cruder than appears on its predecessors, is clearly mimicking older, more sophisticated Irish work. The abstract patterns and elongated animals are typical of the basic forms of Irish visual art. There is as much continuity here as there is innovation.

  The fact that Irish craftsmen are using Viking materials and influences (and, more importantly, that their Irish patrons are comfortable with them doing so) tells us that the Viking invasions were traumatic but not catastrophic. They did not destroy native Irish power. They did not trigger a ‘nationalist’ response in which the Irish banded together to drive out the foreigner. They did not produce a cultural reaction of seeking to emphasise the purity of indigenous traditions in the face of new challenges. Instead, Irish rulers competed with the Scandinavians when they could, attacked them when they were vulnerable, traded with them when it was profitable to do so and extorted money from them when the opportunity arose. They also used them as military allies in their continuing conflicts with rival Irish dynasties. As early as 850, the king of North Brega, Cináed Mac Conaing, attacked the Uí Néill and ravaged their lands in conjunction with the Norse. As a reminder that the Vikings did not invent violent raiding, Cináed burned a church with 260 refugees inside. The Roscrea brooch tells us that there were more creative cross-fertilisations of the cultures as well.