The simple fact is that there are two major ethnic identities in Ireland now, with a couple of smaller ones. We know what they are. You're simply obfuscating the real issue, which is that a large majority of the Island as a whole shares a single ethic identity (with a few regional differences) and they mostly dream of sharing a polity. The significant minority, British, identity is concentrated mostly in NI, and they are violently opposed to sharing a polity with the other ethnicity.
What's so hard about all of that? Why on earth are you talking about Vikings?
You have missed my point.
Yes, it does have relevance, as such history should always be a guard against the calcification of national and cultural identity into rigid identities, identities which seek a religious, cultural or nationalistic purity. Think I am exaggerating?. Remember that modern Catholic Irish identity comes a great deal from narrowminded men like O’ Donnell, who saw Irishness and Irish identity PURELY in terms of Catholicism. That leads to the idea that the Protestants in Ireland cannot ever ‘really’ be Irish, even after 405 years.....
It is a noxious idea at best and a dangerous one at worst.
My point was that the ‘native’ Irish are the descendants of men and women who oppressed, subjugated and conquered. When talk in our times of oppression leads to the car bomb, the Armalite and decades of terrorism, decades of killing, suffering and heartache, then its is recumbant upon us to use that history to topple those who would sit on their ivory nationalistic tower and press buttons to set off car bombs from it.