Thanks for the ping.
I don't understand what they mean by 'first town'. Where did the Irish live, besides monasteries, before the Vikings arrived?
Or don't the Celts count? The Vikings "invented" towns in Ireland?
http://www.knowth.com/newgrange.htm
some people here are listening to too many hollywood films i think!
this was built before the pyramids, 3200 BC...and to be honest is nothing short of stunning and thats from someone who doesnt visit these things...
The major cities of modern Ireland have Viking foundations. But there is also a Roman-era settlement in NE Ireland which predates the Vikings by 800 years. And there are megalithic sites whicy go back a more than thousand years before the Romans. And at, under, or near any medieval sites, there could easily be identifiable traces of an earlier settlement which was burned and appropriated by the Vikings.
OTOH, the Vikings did prefer to build on virgin sites, and tended to pick their sites based on the harbor or estuary that looked best to them.
Limerick's an historic city
Eleven hundred years old -- what a pity
That this Georgian delight of industrial might
Is best known for verses half-witty.
(a lousy but easy to remember limerick about Limerick, found on an old Nat Geog map of Ireland)