Viking warriors and treasures are buried beneath Dublin

IrishCentral ^ | July 27,2014 | Staff Writers

[SunkenCiv]

A massive research project, 15 years in the making, has revealed that beneath Dublin’s modern streets lies a trove of buried Viking warriors and artifacts.

Archaeologists say the number of Viking warrior burials in Dublin is astounding. A project cataloguing these burials was began in 1999. Now nearing its conclusion, the project will result in the publication of an 800-page tome titled ‘Viking Graves and Grave Goods in Ireland.’

...the National Museum of Ireland... houses a Viking exhibition, which includes a ninth century Viking skeleton with sword and spearhead, found in the War Memorial Park, Islandbridge in 1934.

Between the late 18th century and 1934, at least 59 graves were discovered in the Kilmainham-Islandbridge area. Some are still turning up.

The vast quantities of artifacts, dating from between AD 841 and AD 902, found indicate the importance and wealth of Dublin at the time.

Says Harrison: “Not every Viking was buried with artefacts. These are aristocratic burials.”

“There is something phenomenal happening in Dublin,” archaeologist Linzi Simpson told the Irish Times. “The annals record these vast numbers of warriors coming to Dublin, and recent work is now matching that with the archaeology. We used to think the annals were prone to exaggeration, and maybe the Vikings weren’t so bad. But now there is a swing towards, ‘Jeepers, they were fairly catastrophic.’”

The bodies were buried on both sides of the Liffey and along the Poddle. In 2003, Simpson excavated four Viking warriors in South Great George’s Street, with three believed to have been buried from about AD 670-AD 882 and the other sometime later.

Vikings were first spotted off the coast of Ireland in AD 792.

[SunkenCiv]

Ireland’s monasteries were tremendously rich pickings for the Vikings. I’d be surprised if they wanted to expend the effort to occupy anything past the coasts and estuaries. In Britain their cousins the Jutes had made major settlements over the post-Roman centuries, as had their more distant cousins the Angles and Saxons. That hadn’t happened in Ireland. The area of East Anglia was quite low down, and the river estuaries were broader and reached further inland during the medieval warming period. Geographically they were of course closer. Another thing that went on in Ireland, which I don’t recall from British middle ages, was seagoing warfare between Viking chieftains. The intermarriage was pretty extensive, based on the first names and surnames, and marital alliances between petty Viking kings and petty Irish kings were commonplace. It’s not necessarily something the Irish crow about though. :’)

[colorado tanker]

IIRC, there is a lot of Irish blood in Iceland. Apparently Ireland was a popular place for Vikings to “find” brides.