Religious and Cultural Boundaries between Vikings and Irish: The Evidence of

Conversion

Clare Downham1

The Scandinavian migrations of the early Viking Age imprinted in European minds an
enduring image of vikings as marauding heathens. As descendants of these ‘salt water
bandits’ settled into their new homes, they adopted traits from their host cultures.2 One
such trait was the adoption of Christianity. This was perhaps the biggest change which
affected vikings in a colonial situation as it entailed a new system of belief and way of
understanding the world. Vikings in Ireland have often portrayed as late converts, with
christian ideas only taking hold over a century after vikings settled in the island.
Nevertheless in this paper I seek to argue that vikings of Dublin began to adopt
christianity at an early stage, although the process of conversion was protracted and
possibly uneven across social ranks. The stereotype of Hiberno-Scandinavians as
staunch heathens may need revision.
Ninth-century literature from Ireland expresses fear of vikings as slave-raiders
and heathens.3 It was not however until the eleventh century that vikings ‘burst onto
the Irish literary stage’ by which time (as Máire Ní Mhaonaigh has demonstrated) a
stereotype of heathen, plundering vikings had evolved which did not always reflect
contemporary realities.4 It is in accounts from the eleventh century and later that we
get colourful descriptions of heathen activity linked with ninth-century vikings, for
example the satirical account of the ‘druid’ Ormr who is hit by a stone and foretells
his imminent death, or Auða, the wife of the viking leader Þórgísl, who was said to
issue prophecies while seated on the altar at Clonmacnoise.5 These accounts were on
the one hand meant to be entertaining, but on the other they were intended as negative
publicity for contemporary viking groups which helped to justify their subjection to
Irish kings.6
If we compare sources from England, the horror with which viking attacks
were viewed is immediately apparent. The heathenism of vikings is stressed as one of
their dire attributes in Alcuin’s famous response to news of the attack on Lindisfarne
in 793.7 Literary accounts of vikings also became more lengthy and imaginative over
1
I would like to thank David Dumville for his bibliographic advice, Finn Rindahl for comments. I have
adopted Old English forms for medieval English names, Middle Irish forms for medieval Gaelic names,
and Old Norse forms for medieval Scandinavian names. The term Gael refers to the Gaelic-speaking
inhabitants of Ireland and North Britain.
2
Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples, 2 vols (London: Cassell, 1956), I,
74.
3
Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘Friend and Foe: Vikings in Ninth- and Tenth-Century Irish Literature’, in
Ireland and Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age, edited by Howard B. Clarke et al. (Dublin: Four
Courts, 1998), pp. 381-402: 383-91.
4
Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘Friend and Foe’, pp. 382, 397.
5
Fragmentary Annals of Ireland, ed. and trans. Joan Newlon Radner (Dublin: Dublin Institute for
Advanced Studies, 1978), pp. 108-11 (§278); Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh: The War of the Gaedhil
with the Gaill, ed. and trans. James Henthorn Todd (London: Rolls Series, 1867) pp. 12-13 (§11). The
Middle Irish forms of these names are ‘Ota’ and ‘Turges’.
6
Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ‘Nationality and Kingship in Pre-Norman Ireland’, Historical Studies, Irish
Conference of Historians, 11 (1975), 1-35: 31-32; Clare Downham, ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly:
Portrayals of Vikings in “The Fragmentary Annals of Ireland”’, Medieval Chronicle, 3 (2004), 28-40:
30-33.
7
'Alkuini Epistolae', ed. Ernst Dümmler, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae Karolini Aevi,
IV (Berlin: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1895) 1-493: Ep. 124; English Historical
Documents, c. 500-1042, trans. Dorothy Whitelock, second edition (London: Eyre Methuen, 1979), pp.
time.8 In Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, a text of disputed date (but recently attributed
to the eleventh century) interesting reference is made to the different religious
affiliations of vikings.9 According to this account the Scandinavian army in late ninth-
century Northumbria willingly obeyed Abbot Eadred of Carlisle to appoint Guðrøðr
(Old English Guthred) as their king, and the new king swore an oath of fidelity over
the body of St Cuthbert.10 Good relations with the Church were nonetheless deemed to
be sundered in the early tenth century when Northumbria was seized by the ‘pagan
king’ (paganus rex) Rögnvaldr from Ireland.11 Historia de Sancto Cuthberto gives a
vivid account of the divine retribution meted out to one of Rögnvaldr’s followers,
Óláfr, who swore by Oðin and Þórr to oppose the followers of St Cuthbert.12 The
Historia was composed to bolster the Cuthbertine community’s claims to property,
and it is rich in memorable and hagiographic episodes. Its author may have adopted
that moralising tactic often used in histories of contrasting ‘good’ kings and ‘bad’
kings, with its contrasting presentation of Guðrøðr and Rögnvaldr.13 Later medieval
English accounts of viking heathenism contain more exaggeration. Dawn Hadley has
cautioned that vivid stories written in retrospect may have influenced historians’
perceptions of vikings’ attitudes towards Christianity.14
Despite some of the problems inherent in interpreting the written evidence;
scholars have expressed firm views about the speed with which Christianity was
adopted by vikings in England and the tardiness of its impact on vikings in Ireland. In
these narratives, religious differences are often seen to fall along ethnic lines. The so-
called ‘Hiberno-Norse’ are seen to retain their heathenism while the so-called ‘Anglo-
Danes’ are held to adapt quickly to the new faith.15 A moderate expression of this view
can be found in Simon Keynes’s analysis of the ‘racial address’ in the charters of the
English king Eadred (r. 946-55): 16
‘the “Anglo-Saxons” (a term now referring loosely, it seems, to all those living
south of the Humber), the “Northumbrians” (presumably the English in the far
north, and the Anglo-Danish inhabitants of Yorkshire), the “pagans” (the

844-46 (§194).
8
R.I. Page, ‘A Most Vile People’: Early English Historians on the Vikings, The Dorothea Coke
Memorial Lecture, 1986 (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1987).
9
Ted Johnson South, ed. and trans., Historia de Sancto Cuthberto. A History of Saint Cuthbert and a
Record of his Patrimony (Cambridge: Brewer, 2002), pp. 25-26, 34-35.
10
Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, ed. and trans. Johnson South, pp. 52-53 (§13); The record of
Guðrøðr’s Christian burial in 895 is given in Chronicon Æthelweardi: The Chronicle of Æthelweard,
ed. and trans. Alistair Campbell (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1962), p. 51 (IV.3).
11
Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, ed. and trans. Johnson South, pp. 60-61 (§22).
12
Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, ed. and trans. Johnson South, pp. 60-63 (§23).
13
Alfred P. Smyth, Scandinavian York and Dublin: The History and Archaeology of Two Related
Viking Kingdoms, 2 vols (Dublin, 1975-79), I, 100; Johnson-South, ed. and trans., Historia de Sancto
Cuthberto, pp. 4-8.
14
D. M. Hadley, The Vikings in England: Settlement, Society and Culture (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2006), pp. 193-94.
15
For example A.L. Binns, The Viking Century in East Yorkshire (Hull: East Yorkshire Local History
Society, 1963), pp. 27-30; Angelo Forte et al., Viking Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), p. 78; F. Donald Logan, The Vikings in History, second edition (London: Routledge,
1991), pp. 170-72; Dorothy Whitelock, ‘The Dealings of Kings of England with Northumbria in the
Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, in The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of their History and
Culture, presented to Bruce Dickins, ed. Peter Clemoes (London: Barnes and Bowes, 1959), pp. 70-88:
72.
16
Simon Keynes, ‘The Vikings in England, c. 760-1016’, in The Oxford Illustrated History of the
Vikings, ed. Peter Sawyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 48-82: 70.
 Hiberno-Norse element in York), and the “Britons” (presumably the British of
the kingdom of Strathclyde).’
In this analysis Keynes has regarded the vikings of Yorkshire as being distinct from
the vikings from Ireland dwelling in Yorkshire, but nonetheless sharing a common
identity with the English of Northern Northumbria (who were ruled by a separate line
of kings). I venture a different interpretation. Not long after in 962/3, the laws of
Edgar refer ‘to the whole nation, to the English, Danes and Britons in every part of
my dominion’.17 This leads me to suppose that in the terminology of English
government the ‘English’ were regarded as distinct from people of viking culture
(‘Danes’ being used here as a term for people of viking identity). When comparing the
two texts, one possible interpretation is that the term ‘pagans’ was interchangeable
with ‘Danes’ in the vocabulary of the English court.18 In other words, these terms may
not have been intended to distinguish between different religious or ethnic viking
subgroups.
Among historians the theory of ethnic and religious segregation between
‘Anglo-Danes’ and ‘Hiberno-Norwegians’ in England may be traced back to the early
nineteenth century.19 From a range of medieval accounts it was concluded that
Norwegian colonists were more staunchly heathen, more adventurous, violent, and
disorganised. 20 This rhetoric, which sometimes distinguishes relatively domesticated
‘Anglo-Danes’ from their wilder ‘Hiberno-Norwegian’ rivals, calls to mind standard
stereotypes used to contrast peoples deemed to be at the core and the margins.21
Perhaps in a subtle and pervasive way, long-held views about the contrasting character
of ‘Danes’ in England and ‘Norwegians’ in Ireland have coloured perceptions of
conversion. The remainder of this paper will explore ninth and tenth century evidence.
The terminology of contemporary sources can be fraught with difficulties, in
that the categories of the past do not always fit with modern ones. Terms such as
‘pagans’ (Latin pagani, gentiles; Old English hæþene; Old Irish geinti etc.) are often
used in a pejorative way whether as a slur or as a definition of ‘otherness’ rather than
being an accurate description of someone’s beliefs. An example highlighted by Janet
Nelson is Asser’s use of paganus to describe the identity of converted vikings.22
17
‘eallum leodscype, ægðer ge Englum ge Denum ge Bryttum, on ælcum ende mines anwealdes’: The
Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I, ed. and trans. A.J. Robertson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1925), pp. 32-33 (IV Edgar 2a §2).
18
Cf. Nelson, ‘England and the Contintent’, p. 6.
19
Alexander Bugge complained in 1900 that English historians ‘confound Norwegians and Danes,
without distinguishing between the two nations’, Contributions to the History of the Norsemen in
Ireland, Videnskabsselskabets Skrifter, II, Historisk-filosofisk Klasse, nos 4-5, 3 parts (Oslo: Dybwad,
1900), I, p.1.
20
For example Eleanor Hull, A History of Ireland and her People, 2 vols (London: Harrap, 1931) I, §3
‘The Norse were hardy seafarers, who pushed out north-west to the shores of Greenland, Iceland, and
North Britain, … the Danes, who were not naturally a sea-loving nation, were inclined to hug the
shores’ accessed online at http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800111h.html#ch1-3 (15 February 2008);
Forte et al., Viking Empires, p. 103; F.T. Wainwright, Scandinavian England: Collected Papers
(Chichester: Phillimore, 1975), pp. 256, 334. For fuller discussion see Clare Downham, ‘Hiberno-
Norwegians’.
21
Edward D. Snyder, ‘The Wild Irish: A Study of Some English Satires against the Irish, Scots, and
Welsh’, Modern Philology, 17 (1920), 687-725.
22
Janet L. Nelson, ‘England and the Continent in the Ninth Century: II, The Vikings and Others’,
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 13 (2003), 1-28: 6; Asser’s Life of King Alfred,
together with The Annals of Saint Neots erroneously ascribed to Asser, ed. William Henry Stevenson
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904), pp. 59-62, 81 (§§76, 94); Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King
Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources, trans. Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1983), pp. 91-92, 103. Asser’s ‘Life of King Alfred’ is usually dated to the 890s.
Lesley Abrams has also shown the lack of consistency with which the Gaelic term
geinti is used to describe vikings in Irish chronicles (although the decline in that
term’s usage from the 940s could suggest that it was no longer seen as appropriate).23
It can be argued that vikings continued to be associated with heathenism even after
many had converted to Christianity, since they remained culturally distinct and
therefore ‘alien’. A parallel to this may be Bernard of Clairvaux’s assessment of the
Irish as ‘Christians in name yet heathens at heart’ seven centuries after the Church
came to Ireland, because features of Irish society did not conform with expected
patterns of behaviour.24
The firmest evidence of vikings’ involvement in Christianity in Britain and
Ireland is provided by the records of sponsored baptisms conducted under the aegis of
English kings. The list begins with Guðormr of East Anglia in 878, followed by the
two sons of a viking leader Hásteinn about 893. Both events are recorded in ‘The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’. Other records of vikings’ baptisms relate to adult members
of the royal dynasty of Dublin. King Æthelstan is said to have sponsored the baptism
of Sigtryggr grandson of Ívarr in 926. This is not recorded in ‘The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle’ which merely reports that Æthelstan gave his sister to the viking leader
during at a meeting at Tamworth.25 The story of Sigtryggr renouncing heathenism as
an act of love and then casting off his bride to resume the worship of idols is
described in an interpolation in the Chronicle of John of Worcester.26 This addition
was made at Bury St Edmunds and can be dated to the 1140s.27 A closely related
account was included in the chronicle of Roger of Wendover, written in the early
thirteenth century.28 The interpolator of the Chronicle of John of Worcester and Roger
of Wendover cannot be regarded as reliable witnesses.29 It is clear that Sigtryggr had
to be a Christian before he could marry an Anglo-Saxon princess. However these
authors assumed that Sigtryggr was a heathen before 926 and developed a moral tale
about the superficial baptism and irredeemably pagan nature of the Hiberno-
Scandinavian king.
One must view the account of Sigtryggr’s apostacy with some reservation. The
coins which were issued under his authority included Christian symbols. This may
indicate that his religious affiliations and those of his followers were complex,
incorporating Christian and heathen elements.30 ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ does
23
Lesley Abrams, ‘The Conversion of the Scandinavians of Dublin’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 20 (1997),
1-29: 9-13, 25.
24
R. T. Meyer, trans., Bernard of Clairvaux, The Life and Death of Saint Malachy the Irishman
(Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1978), p. 33 (VIII.16). Bernard of Clairvaux died in 1153.
25
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, Volume 6, MS D, ed. G.P. Cubbin (Cambridge:
Brewer, 1996), p. 41 (s.a. 925 [=926]).
26
The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. and trans. R.R. Darlington et al., 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1995-), II, 635 (s.a. 925 [=926]).
27
Darlington et al., The Chronicle of John of Worcester, II, xlvi; David N. Dumville and M. Lapidge,
ed., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, Volume 17, The Annals of St Neots with Vita
Primi Sancti Neoti (Cambridge: Brewer, 1985), lx.
28
Rogeri de Wendover Chronica, sive Flores Historiarum, ed. Henry O. Coxe, 5 vols (London: English
Historical Society, 1841-44), I, 385 (s.a. 925 [=926]); Roger of Wendover’s Flowers of History,
comprising the History of England from the Descent of the Saxons to A.D. 1235, trans. J.A. Giles, 2
vols (London: Bohn, 1849 [facsimile reprint Felinfach, 1993]), I, 245 (s.a. 925 [=926]).
29
According to these sources Sigtryggr’s wife Eadgyth was later venerated as a saint. If there is any
factual basis to her cult, this princess may have entered the religious life after her husband’s death in
927.
30
The symbol of the cross is uniformly stamped on these coins. Sometimes images of Thor’s hammers
are included, although this may be interpreted as a political or dynastic symbol rather than an anti-
record the later baptism of a Dublin king, Óláfr Sigtryggsson (also know as Óláfr
Cuarán), in 943. In the same year his cousin Rögnvaldr Guðrøðsson was confirmed.
Both ceremonies took place under the patronage of the English king Edmund I.31
Clearly, given his confirmation, Rögnvaldr had been baptised before 943. Scholars
have however assumed that Óláfr was a devotee of traditional Scandinavian religion
before his treaty with Edmund.
If we turn to Irish chronicles there are no sponsored baptisms of viking leaders
on record. However, in contrast to Anglo-Saxon and Frankish records baptism is in
general little mentioned in these sources. This may be because spiritual kinship had a
lesser role in Ireland than it did in Anglo-Saxon England.32 Fosterage was the
dominant form of artificial kinship in Ireland and this was well established and
protected by law from an early date.33 Fosterage might also include spiritual duties,
for it served to define educational relationships in a monastic context.34 It is probable
given the importance of fosterage in Irish and Scandinavian society that some children
of vikings were fostered by Irish families once vikings became established on the Irish
political scene and this could have helped to promote religious conversion.
To probe the idea that Óláfr Sigtryggsson was a heathen prior to his baptism,
one could ask whether Christianity had made some headway in Dublin before the mid
tenth century. Cultural assimilation, trade, intermarriage and fictive kinship could
have offered channels through which religious ideas were communicated.35 Is it
conceivable that Óláfr Sigtryggson had Christian sympathies prior to 943? Is the
record of his baptism a reliable indicator that Christianity had not been accepted
within the viking colonies of Ireland?36
One matter to consider is whether adult baptism was practised in the viking
colonies in Ireland. In other words, could Óláfr have believed in the Christian God
before he was baptised? There is clear evidence that the Church in Ireland followed
the views of St Augustine of Hippo in believing that the unbaptised went to hell. The
seventh-century Hiberno-Latin Penitential of Cummean expresses a strong desire for
infant baptism to avoid such calamities.37 Similarly, in the ninth-century vernacular
‘Rule of Patrick’ the punishments which may be unleashed on a society where all are
not baptised and confirmed are listed.38 The emphasis placed on the necessity of
Christian motif: Mark Blackburn, ‘The Coinage of Scandinavian York’, in Aspects of Anglo-
Scandinavian York, ed. R. A. Hall et al. (York: York Archaeological Trust, 2004), pp. 325-49;
Downham, Viking Kings, p. 8.
31
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, Volume 6, MS D, ed. G.P. Cubbin (Cambridge:
Brewer, 1996), pp. 43-44 (s.a. 943).
32
T. M. Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 78-79;
Joseph H. Lynch, Christianizing Kinship: Ritual Sponsorship in Anglo-Saxon England (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1998).
33
Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988), pp.
86-91.
34
Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship, pp. 79-80.
35
For the distinction between Christianisation and conversion, see Lesley Abrams, ‘Conversion and
Assimilation’, in Cultures in Contact: Scandinavian Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth
Centuries, ed. Dawn M. Hadley and Julian D. Richards (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 135-53: 136;
Nelson, ‘England and the Continent’, p. 13; Fiona Louise Edmonds, ‘Hiberno-Saxon and Hiberno-
Scandinavian Contact in the West of the Northumbrian Kingdom: A Focus on the Church’, 2 vols
(unpublished D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 2005), I, 206.
36
Abrams, ‘Conversion of the Scandinavians of Dublin’, pp. 26, 28-29.
37
Penitential of Cummean, §§2, 32, 33 (The Irish Penitentials, ed. and trans. Bieler, pp. 108-09, 116-
17). Cf. Penitential of Finnian, §§48, 49 (ibid., pp. 92-93).
38
Corpus Iuris Hibernici, ed. D.A. Binchy, 6 vols (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies,
1978), 2129.21-4.
baptism indicates at least a fear that the ideals were not always observed. This concern
persisted until the twelfth century. Access to pastoral care in Ireland was not equal for
all, as Colmán Etchingham has argued in his weighty study of early Church
organisation.39 Those classified as manaig (Latin monachi) in Irish ecclesiastical and
legal texts clearly had a contractual right to a range of pastoral services, including
baptism and communion and the singing of prayers for the dead, in return for which
they paid a range of ecclesiastical dues.40 Who these manaig were has been a matter of
debate. Etchingham has identified them as ‘direct legal and socio-economic
dependants’ of a church, and they are distinguished in law-texts from other groups in
society, notably laici (laymen).41 The law-tract Córus Béscnai (which may be dated to
the eighth century) describes this contractual relationship between a church and its
manaig. It further enjoins secular lords to ensure that their dependants also pay
ecclesiastical taxes, which would presumably secure their right to pastoral service.42
As Thomas Charles-Edwards has pointed out, this demonstrated the ‘hope’ that
ecclesiastical taxation (and therefore regular pastoral care) would apply to all people,
but a gap between aspiration and reality is implied.43 Christians outside this contract
seem to have acquired baptism through payment of a fee, and baptism in adulthood is
not unheard of.44 Delayed baptism is discussed in the so-called ‘Second Synod of
Saint Patrick’ (a text of the late sixth or early seventh century).45 Another example is
given in the Middle Irish ‘Life of St Naile’.46 In this story the sixth-century saint
performs baptism on a band of noble youths. In return, their leader Luan son of
Írgalach vows that his people will henceforth pay ecclesiastical taxes.47
In eighth-century Ireland, unlike Anglo-Saxon England, there does not seem to
have been a uniform compulsion for all laypeople to pay ecclesiastical taxes rather,
churches obtained this right through arrangements with secular lords.48 Presumably,
39
Colmán Etchingham, Church Organisation in Ireland – AD 650 to 1000 (Maynooth: Laigin
Publications, 2000), pp. 239-89.
40
Corpus, ed. Binchy, 2129.32-7.
41
Etchingham, Church Organisation, pp. 256, 289, 306.
42
Corpus, ed. Binchy, 526.20-1.
43
T. M. Charles Edwards, ‘The Church in the Early Irish Laws’ in Pastoral Care Before the Parish, ed.
John Blair and Richard Sharpe (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992), pp. 63-80: 70-71.
44
The risk that some of members of society received baptism late or not at all also existed in Anglo-
Saxon England, for efforts were made to remedy this situation: Alan Thacker, ‘Monks, Preaching and
Pastoral Care in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, in Pastoral Care Before the Parish, ed. Blair and
Sharpe, pp. 137-70: 154; Sarah Foot, ‘“By Water in the Spirit”: The Administration of Baptism in Early
Anglo-Saxon England’ in Pastoral Care Before the Parish, ed. Blair and Sharpe, pp. 171-92.
45
Second Synod of St Patrick, §31 (The Irish Penitentials, ed. and trans. Bieler, pp. 196-97);
Etchingham, Church Organisation, pp. 59-61.
46
Middle Irish is the language of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries.
47
Betha Naile, §§13-15 (ed. and trans. Charles Plummer, Miscellanea Hagiographica Hibernica: vitae
adhuc ineditae sanctorum Mac Creiche, Naile, Cranat, Subsidia Hagiographica 15, Brussels: Société
des Bollandistes, 1925, pp. 97-155: 110-114, 136-40). For adult baptism in Ireland see Peter Parkes,
‘Celtic Fosterage: Adoptive Kinship and Clientage in Northwest Europe’, Comparative Studies in
Society and History, 48 (2006), 359-95: 374, n. 32, and Eoin de Bhaldraithe, ‘Adult Baptism in the
Early Church’, Anabaptism Today, 15 (June, 1997), 10-15 (although on specific points their case is not
convincing). The harsh penitential system in Ireland may have encouraged late baptism. Certainly
stories of first-generation converts being immediately baptised prior to their death (thereby ensuring the
high road to heaven) seem to have been fairly popular (e.g., ‘Aided Conchobuir’: Kuno Meyer, ed. and
trans. The Death-Tales of the Ulster Heroes, Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1906, p. 16).
48
Epistola ad Ecgberhtum, §7 (ed. Charles Plummer, Baedae Opera Historica, 2 vols, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1896, I, 408; trans. Whitelock, English Historical Documents, pp. 799-810 [no. 170]).
In this respect the Church in Ireland seems to have had less power to effect social change. Comparison
may be drawn with marriage laws in Ireland and England. In Ireland polygamous unions and serial
over time, ecclesiastical taxes came to be applied in a more comprehensive way.49
Nevertheless, self-governing viking communities in Ireland remained independent of
ecclesiastical taxation for a number of years and baptism may have proceeded among
viking converts on an ad hoc basis. Under these circumstances the act of baptism need
not signify a moment of religious conversion (either in a fundamental or in a
superficial way), as it is often seen to be; it might rather reflect irregular mechanisms
for pastoral care.
Communities in transition between two systems of faith may have had rather
unorthodox ways of demonstrating their beliefs.50 Rimbert reported in Vita Sancti
Anskarii that people in ninth-century Schleswig were willingly marked with the cross
by a cleric in order to become catechumens, ‘but they deferred the reception of
baptism, as they judged that it was to their advantage to be baptised at the end of their
life, so that, having been cleansed by water unto salvation, they might without any
delay enter the gates of eternal life’.51 Reference to prime-signing as a preliminary
mark of entry into the Christian faith is also mentioned in Icelandic law, with the
implication that some individuals had a prolonged time as catechumens.52 In the early
tenth century, Hervé, archbishop of Rheims complained to Pope John X that viking
converts within his diocese continued to act in despicable ways and violated Christian
sacraments by repeated baptisms.53 That viking converts could be baptised more that
once is topic of satire in Notker’s Life of Charlemagne dated to the late ninth
century.54
Even within well established Christian communities, rules were not always
observed. Irish penitentials prescribe punishment for manaig performing baptism, or a
blessing being performed in place of baptism.55 This implies that illegal forms of
baptism could have been taking place, either without water or without a priest.
Evidence from Anglo-Saxon England demonstrates that a second baptism was
permissible if the first was performed in an irregular way, or because the officiating

marriages continued centuries after that island’s conversion to Christianity. In England, however,
concubinage was condemned in law with the result that there was a change in custom relating to
legality of different types of sexual relationships. That did not mean that standards of morality or faith
were less in Ireland, but the Church seems to have been less able to enforce Church taxes or determine
legitimacy concerning inheritance rights. This can be attributed to the different relationship between
kings and the law in both countries. See Margaret Clunies Ross, ‘Concubinage in Anglo-Saxon
England’, Past and Present, 108 (1985), 3-34.
49
Tomás Ó Carragáin, ‘A Landscape Converted: Archaeology and Early Church Organisation on
Iveragh and Dingle, Ireland’, in The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe,
AD 300-1300, ed. Martin Carver (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), pp. 127-52: 147.
50
Abrams, ‘Conversion and Assimilation’, p. 144.
51
Vita Sancti Anskarii, §24 (ed. Georg Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum
Germanicarum, Hanover: Hahn, 1884, pp. 1-78: 53); Lynch, Christianising Kinship, p. 75. See n. 51,
above.
52
Grágás, §1 (trans. Andrew Dennis et al., Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás with Material from Other
Manuscripts, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1980, p. 26); Lynch, Christianising Kinship, p.
75.
53
Papsturkunden, 896-1046, ed. H. Zimmerman, 3 vols (Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 1984-89), I, 65-67 (no. 38); Abrams, ‘Conversion and Assimilation’, p. 143, n. 9 and
p. 145.
54
Notker, Vita Karoli Magni, II, 19 (ed. H.H. Haefele, Monmumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores
rerum Germanicarum, Nova Series 12, Berlin: Weidmann, 1959; trans. Thomas F.X. Noble,
Charlemagne and Louis the Pious: Lives by Einhard, Notker, Ernoldus, Thegan, and the Astronomer,
University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 2009, p. 116).
55
Penitential of Cummean, §19 (ed. and trans. Bieler, The Irish Penitentials, pp. 128-29); Penitential of
Finnian, §50 (ed. and trans. Bieler, The Irish Penitentials, pp. 92-93).
priest was regarded as incompetent.56 943 is the year that Óláfr’s entry into the Church
is recorded, but it need not be assumed that he was an enemy of the faith before. The
evidence is open to different interpretations.
Prior members of Óláfr’s family had been baptised. English sources identify
his cousin Rögnvaldr and his father Sigtryggr as such. David Dumville has made the
case that Guðrøðr, the king whose Christianity is praised in Historia de Sancto
Cuthberto, belonged to the royal dynasty of Dublin.57 Christianity was probably not
accepted in a uniform way by members of the Dublin dynasty, but its influence was
established before 943. XXX Not all of this influence seems to have come from an
English direction.
Negotiations between vikings and Irish are recorded from the 790s although these
could often be of a hostile nature.58 Contact across cultural boundaries became more
sustained from the 830s when vikings were using the main Irish river-systems to
navigate far inland and camps were established at a variety of locations.59 From the
840s chronicles report instances of the vikings and Irish fighting side by side.60 In the
mid-ninth century a group called Gall-Goídil (Foreigner-Gaels) emerge in the
historical record, leading campaigns in different areas of Ireland. These groups are
identified as being of mixed culture and they may therefore be the product of unions
between vikings and Gaels.61 Two viking leaders active in 857 bore Gaelic names or
nicknames (Finn and Búitíne).62 It is interesting that the Gall-Goídil cease to be
recorded as a distinct group in Ireland after the 850s, perhaps because the
intermingling of vikings and Irish was no longer remarkable.
High status marriages between Gaelic princesses and viking rulers are mentioned
in Irish chronicles and in the Banshenchas (a twelfth-century list of famous historical
women and their marriages). An early example is hinted at in Chronicum Scotorum
for the year 883, in as much as Muirgel daughter of Mael Sechnaill, the overking of
the Southern Uí Néill conspired with Óttar son of Iarnkné to cause the death of a rival
viking leader.63 The eleventh century saga in the ‘Fragmentary Annals of Ireland’
credits the viking king Óláfr, who was active in the 860s, with two Gaelic wives. One
was the daughter of Cinaed (the precise identity of this father-in-law is not revealed)
and the other was a daughter of the prominent overking of the Northern Uí Néill, Aed
Finnliath.64
In other areas of Scandinavian settlement, marriage alliances between vikings and
Christian royalty have been regarded as evidence of conversion. The suggestion has
56
Foot, ‘By Water’, p. 189.
57
Dumville, ‘Old Dubliners’, p. 88; Downham, Viking Kings, pp. 75-79.
58
In 798 a tribute of cattle was exacted by raiders at Holmpatrick: The Annals of Clonmacnoise, being
Annals of Ireland from the Earliest Times to A.D. 1408, ed. Denis Murphy (Dublin: Royal Society of
Antiquaries of Ireland, 1896; facsimile reprint Felinfach: Llanerch, 1993), p. 128 (s.a. 795 [=798]).
59
Clare Downham, ‘Non-Urban Settlements of Vikings in Ireland before1014’, in Proceedings of the
Conference on Irish-Norse Relations 800-1200, held in Oslo on 5 November 2005, ed. Timothy Bolton
(Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
60
The Annals of Ulster (to A.D. 1131), ed. and trans. Seán Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill (Dublin:
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1983), pp. 300-01, 308-09, 314-25 (s.aa. 842.10, 850.3, 856.3).
61
David N. Dumville, The Churches of North Britain in the First Viking Age, Whithorn Lecture 5
(Whithorn: Friends of the Whithorn Trust, 1997), pp. 27-29.
62
Seán Mac Airt ed. and trans., The Annals of Inisfallen (MS. Rawlinson B 503) (Dublin: Dublin
Institute for Advanced Studies, 1951), pp. 132-33 (s.a. 857); Annals of Ulster, ed. and trans. Mac Airt
and Mac Niocaill, pp. 314-15 (s.a. 857.1).
63
Annals of Ulster, ed. and trans. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, pp. 338-39 (s.a. 883.4); Chronicum
Scotorum, ed. and trans. Hennessy, pp. 168-69 (s.a. 883).
64
Fragmentary Annals of Ireland, ed. and trans. Radner, pp. 112-13, 126-27 (§§292, 347).
been made that in Ireland ‘relationships need not have been long-lasting’ because
‘serial marriages were common at the royal level’ and so marriage may not have
impacted on religion.65 An objection to this argument is that the religion of the
children who resulted from royal marriages might be an issue of long-term concern.
Apart from this, one can trace in the chronicles examples of marriage alliances
between important dynasties in successive generations. In this respect the vikings of
Dublin held long-term common interests with overkings of the Northern Uí Néill. The
Northern and Southern Uí Néill were the dominant royal dynasties in Ireland when the
vikings arrived. They were also prominent patrons of the Church, with the Northern
Uí Néill in particular supporting the claims of Armagh to be the pre-eminent church in
Ireland. Marriage alliances between the Northern Uí Néill and vikings based at Dublin
can be traced across three generations (at least). In these circumstances of sustained
interaction between a powerful dynasty of Christian kings and the vikings of Dublin it
is hard to credit that there would not have been pressure for religious conversion.
The assertion that King Óláfr (ob. 874) was married to a daughter of Aed Finnliath
has already been mentioned.66 The eleventh-century saga embedded in the
‘Fragmentary Annals of Ireland’ states that a son of King Ívarr (a close ally of Óláfr)
called Barðr fostered a son of Aed Finnliath.67 These assertions are very interesting,
but their historical accuracy is uncertain. Nevertheless, we do know on more certain
grounds that Barðr’s son, who bore the Irish name Uathmarán, married a
granddaughter of Aed Finnliath, and their son Sigfrøðr made common cause with his
maternal uncle, Fergal son of Domnall, in an internecine struggle against the overking
of the Northern Uí Néill, Muirchertach son of Niall, in 933.68 Muirchertach’s father
also seems to have been related to the viking royal family of Dublin for the ‘E’-text of
‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ refers to Sigtryggr grandson of Ívarr as his ‘brother’ in
919.69 In addition, Dúnlaith, a daughter of Muirchertach son of Niall, was married to
Óláfr Sigtryggsson (alias Cuarán).70 These links are included in the family-tree below
(Fig. 1). It is perhaps not surprising, given these long-term connections between the
descendants of Aed Finnliath and the royal vikings of Dublin, that Aed’s male
descendants in the early eleventh century bore names such as Lochlann (Ir.
‘Norwegian’) and Dubgall (Ir. ‘Dark Foreigner).71

65
Abrams, ‘Conversion of the Scandinavians of Dublin’, p. 20.
66
Fragmentary Annals of Ireland, ed. and trans. Radner, pp. 112-13 (§292).
67
Fragmentary Annals of Ireland, ed. and trans. Radner, pp. 146-47 (§408).
68
Annals of Ulster, ed. and trans. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, s.a. 933.1; Chronicum Scotorum, ed. and
trans. Hennessy, pp. 198-99 (s.a. 932 [=933]).
69
Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, with Supplementary Extracts from the Others, ed. Charles
Plummer, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1892-99), I, 103. According to the Banshenchas Niall’s mother
was Mael Muire daughter of Cinaed mac Ailpín. She was also married to Flann son of Mael Sechlainn
of the Southern Uí Néill: ‘The Ban-Shenchus’, ed. Margaret E. Dobbs, Revue celtique, 48 (1931), 163-
234: 186, 188. If they were not brothers by blood, they might be related through marriage or fosterage.
70
‘The Ban-Shenchus’, ed. Margaret E. Dobbs, Revue celtique, 47 (1930), 283-339: 314, 337-38. For
Óláfr’s epithet see Charles Doherty, ‘The Vikings in Ireland: A Review’, in Ireland and Scandinavia in
the Early Viking Age, ed. Howard B. Clarke et al. (Dublin: Four Courts, 1998), pp. 288-330: 296-97.
71
Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae, ed. M.A. O'Brien (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
1962), 140 a 33; T. W. Moody et al., ed., A New History of Ireland, IX, Maps, Genealogies, Lists
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 128.
 Aed Finnliath
? his son fostered by Barðr son of Ívarr (d. 881)
_________________________│___________________________
│ │ │
Domnall Niall ? Óláfr (d. 874) = ♀
│ ‘brother’ of Sigtryggr gs. Ívarr (d. 927)
│ │
Uathmarán = ♀ Muirchertach
son of Barðr │
│ │
Sigfrøðr (fl. 933) Dúnliath = Óláfr son of Sigtryggr
(alias Cuarán) (d. 980)

Fig. 1. The Northern Uí Néill and the vikings of Dublin: royal interactions

The adoption of overtly Christian names among the viking elite in Ireland may be
traced to the tenth century. These names have ‘Mael’ or ‘Gille’ as the first element,
meaning ‘servant’ or ‘devotee’, and the second element is usually a saint’s name in the
genitive case. Examples from Irish chronicles include: Gille Pátraic (d. 983), the son
of Gille Muire (d. 1013), Gille Ciaráin (d. 1014), and Mael Muire (d. 1021).72 Apart
from expressions of devotion to Mary or Christ, the names refer to Gaelic saints.
These names therefore suggest the adoption of cults of Irish saints by the royal
dynasty of Dublin-in the early to mid tenth century.
Christian influence on vikings in Ireland may also be deduced from the activities
of some leaders. It is to be kept in mind that church-settlements remained the target of
hostile attacks throughout the Viking Age in Ireland. These settlements were also
important political centres which were often embroiled in the theatre of war, being
attacked as frequently by the Irish as by vikings.73 Indeed what seems have shocked
Irish commentators when the vikings arrived on Irish shores was not merely the fact
that vikings attacked churches, but their attacks seemed random or unjustified (for
initially they were not part of a wider political strategy as they might have been in
Irish warfare). They may have been more brutally efficient, and no respect was shown
towards the holiest of relics.74 It is therefore interesting that Guðrøðr grandson of Ívarr
seems to have imposed some restraint on his troops during an attack on Armagh in
921. According to ‘The Annals of Ulster’ ‘he spared the prayer-houses with their
occupant Culdees and the sick and the church besides’ (na taigi aernaighi do anacal
lais cona lucht de chéilibh Dé ocus di lobraibh, ocus in ceall olcheana). That this was
an act of piety or sympathy is suggested by use of the verbal noun anacul (‘sparing’),
which is employed in other contexts to refer to religious salvation or divine

72
In The Annals of Clonmacnoise, ed. Murphy, pp. 150-51 (s.a. 931 [=937]), warriors named Mael
Muire and Mael Ísu are reported fighting alongside the vikings of Dublin at Brunanburh; however the
origin of this list is uncertain. A man named Conamal son of Gille Airre fell among the vikings of
Dublin at the battle of Tara in 980, but ‘The Annals of Ulster’ give a different reading from other
records of this event, making it less certain that Gille Airre is a religious name: Downham, Viking
Kings, p. 250.
73
A. T. Lucas, ‘The Plundering and Burning of Churches in Ireland: 7th to 16th Century’ in North
Munster Studies: Essays in Commemoration of Monsignor Michael Moloney, ed. Etienne Rynne
(Limerick: Thomond Archaeological Society, 1967), pp. 172-229.
74
For example, Annals of Ulster, ed. and trans. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, pp. 252-53, 263-63, 276-77,
280-81 (s.aa. 798.2, 806.8, 821.3, 824.2).
protection.75 It may be that Guðrøðr did not want to alienate Christian supporters, or
he may have been afraid of stirring up the wrath of God against himself.
Christian influence can be seen in the reign of the Óláfr Sigtryggsson (alias
Cuarán). Óláfr’s close contact with Christianity from an early stage in his career is
illustrated by his alliance with the archbishop of York, Wulfstan I. The two men were
besieged at Leicester by the English king Edmund and they fled together under cover
of darkness. These events preceded Óláfr’s official baptism in 943.76 In 970 his troops
were stationed at the churches of Dromiskin, Monasterboice and Dunleer (Co. Louth)
in order to protect them against attack by the Northern Uí Néill.77 That vikings were
now being called in to protect churches suggests that they were not seen as dangerous
heathens. Óláfr’s connection with (and possible patronage of) the Columban church of
Skreen (Co. Meath) has been discussed by Charles Doherty and Edel Bhreathnach.78
This evidence calls into question Alfred Smyth’s view that it was the ‘final conversion
of Óláfr Cuarán which resulted in his retirement to Iona in 980’.79 Óláfr’s open
support for Christian leaders and churches implies that his immediate followers
tolerated his attitudes – it was not a policy that alienated the majority of his subjects.80

Archaeological evidence has a significant part to play in debates over

conversion. The large corpus of furnished Viking Age burials in the Dublin region has
been subject to detailed analysis in recent years. It seems evident that early Viking
Dublin had an extensive ritual landscape defined by the location of high-status burials.
Traditional Scandinavian religion therefore played an important role in the early
settlement. We cannot be certain about the link between the abandonment of furnished
burial rights and the adoption of Christianity. However, the practice of furnished
burial in Viking Ireland appears to have ceased before the mid-tenth century. One of
the latest examples may be a woman’s grave near Arklow, Co. Wicklow, which
contained a pair of oval brooches that are probably of early tenth century date. In
addition, three male graves have yielded Petersen Type X swords which may date to
the early tenth century, one from Larne (Co. Antrim) one from Islandbridge-
Kilmainham (Co. Dublin) and the other from Bride St, Dublin. 81 It is noteworthy that
the abandonment of overtly heathen burial rites among Dublin’s elite coincides with
the decline of geinti (‘heathen’) as a term to describe vikings in Irish chronicles. This
evidence could indicate that the elite of Dublin were effectively Christianized by the
mid-tenth century.
Archaeological finds indicate that Christian imagery was sometimes placed on
display in tenth and eleventh century Dublin. Nevertheless, some objects associated
with heathenism have also been recovered from tenth-century levels. These include a
75
E.G. Quin ed., Dictionary of the Irish Language based mainly on Old and Middle Irish Materials:
Compact Edition (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1983), p. 40, col. 317, lines 5-54 (s.v. anacul) and p.
19, col. 148, line 48 - col. 149, line 28 (s.v. aingid).
76
Downham, Viking Kings, p. 110.
77
Clare Downham, ‘The Vikings in Southern Uí Néill to 1014’, Peritia, 17 (2003-2004), 233-55: 240.
78
Doherty, ‘The Vikings in Ireland’, pp. 297-99; Edel Bhreathnach, ‘Columban Churches in Brega and
Leinster: Relations with the Norse and the Anglo-Normans’, Journal of the Royal Society of
Antiquaries of Ireland, 129 (1999), 5-18: 8-9; Edel Bhreathnach, ‘The Documentary Evidence for Pre-
Norman Skreen, County Midhe’, Ríocht na Midhe, 9, no. 2 (1996), 37-45. This may be compared with
the association which developed between the viking royal dynasty of Limerick and the church of St
Senán on Scattery Island: Downham, Viking Kings, pp. 54-55, 190.
79
Smyth, Scandinavian York, II, 164.
80
Abrams, ‘Conversion and Assimilation’, pp. 144-45.
81
See R. Ó Floinn, ‘Two Viking graves from Co. Wicklow’, Wicklow Archaeology and History 1
(1998), 29-35; Stephen Harrison, ‘Bride Street Revisited’, Medieval Dublin, 10 (2010) forthcoming.
Thor’s hammer pendant, a soapstone mould for making Thor’s hammer pendants and
a whalebone statuette of a male figure, which may represent the god Thor or Frey.82
Clearly some of Dublin’s inhabitants were suspicious of Christianity and adhered to
the gods of their ancestors.83 Objects of a Christian nature which have been recovered
from tenth century levels include a small bone cross, an amber cross amulet, a copper
alloy cross fragment and a cruciform bronze brooch.84 Cross inscribed ornaments from
tenth-century contexts in Dublin include two ringed-pins (both of which were
deposited in the second quarter of the tenth century).85 Two cross emblems are incised
on a wooden box which was recovered from Fishamble Street.86 Another find from
Fishamble Street dating to the late tenth century is a wooden boss which has been
identified as part of a ‘high-cross’.87 It is possible that the object was brought into
Dublin in its current incomplete form. However it is interesting that a wooden cross-
arm was found in an eleventh-century pit at Christchurch Place, so there may have
been wooden crosses erected in Viking-Age Dublin.88
To the south of Dublin, over thirty stone monuments have been identified as
belonging to a type labelled ‘Rathdown slabs’. These seem to be Christian memorials
set up under viking influence.89 They cannot be dated securely on art historical
grounds, and their dating has tended to rely on perceptions as to when the vikings of
Dublin converted. It could be argued that some of these monuments were erected as
early as the tenth century. In sum, the religious affiliations of Dubliners in the tenth
century were diverse and not entirely resistant to Christianity. The number of
cruciform or cross inscribed objects indicates a Christian presence. Furthermore the
settlement’s elite seem to have relinquished heathenism by the mid-tenth century.
The decline of traditional Scandinavian religion in Dublin may be linked to the
rise of the port as an urban centre. Christianity was in the ninth century the religion of
European towns as well as the Irish interior. The rituals of traditional Scandinavian
religion were embedded in the routines and concerns of a non-urban society. This may
have meant that some practices became less relevant away from Scandinavia in the
increasingly urban environment of Viking Dublin. Heathenism may have also become
increasingly seen as a barrier to developing successful trade relations with Irish
neighbours or Christian partners overseas. The inclusive nature of polytheism may
have Christ to be initially adopted alongside other Gods to facilitate cross-cultural
links. Over time the pressure for increasing conformity to Christian values from

82
Ruth Johnson, Viking Age Dublin (Dublin: Townhouse, 2004) pp. 88-89; National Museum of
Ireland, Viking and Medieval Dublin, National Museum Excavations, 1962-73: Catalogue of the
Exhibition (Dublin: National Museum of Ireland, 1973), p. 30 (No. 51a); Ruth Johnson, ‘An
Archaeological and Art Historical Investigation into the supposed Hiatus in Irish Art during the Tenth
Century AD, with particular reference to Excavations carried out in Dublin City (1962-81) and
Ballinderry Crannog No. 1 (1936)’, 5 vols (unpublished PhD. Dissertation, Trinity College Dublin,
1997) I, 74 (Catalogue nos 1, 445).
83
Others may have combined worship of Christ with veneration of idols: Abrams, ‘Conversion and
Assimilation’, p. 144-45.
84
National Museum of Ireland, Viking and Medieval Dublin, p. 24 (No. 9); Ruth Johnson, ‘An
Archaeological and Art Historical Investigation’, I, 73-74 (Catalogue nos. 45, 106).
85
Thomas Fanning, Viking Age Ringed Pins from Dublin, Medieval Dublin Excavations 1962-81, Ser.
B, vol. 4 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1994), nos. 124, 126.
86
James T. Lang, Viking-Age Decorated Wood : A Study of its Ornament and Style, Medieval Dublin
Excavations 1962-81, Ser. B, vol. 1 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1988), no. 7
87
Lang, Viking-Age Decorated Wood, no. 1.
88
Lang, Viking-Age Decorated Wood, no. 70.
89
Chris Corlett, ‘The Rathdown Slabs – Vikings and Christianity’, Archaeology Ireland, 17 (2003), 28-
30; Christiaan Corlett, Antiquities of Old Rathdown (Bray: Wordwell, 1999), pp. 45, 54-55.
clerics or political leaders diminished the significance of heathen deities in Viking
Dublin.
Religion is of course a matter of culture and identity as well as faith. Just as
viking converts in northern England carved heathen scenes on Christian monuments
to show themselves as the inheritors of different (but not irreconcilable) mythical
traditions, legends from Scandinavia may have continued to influence the identity of
Dublin’s townsfolk after conversion. The people of Dublin are linked to ‘Tomar’ in
Irish poetry.90 This may be an Irish rendering of the divine name Thor (Þór).
Alternatively ‘Tomar’ appears interchangeably with ‘Tomrair’ (Þórir) so the name
may pay homage to an early viking leader of that name.91 Nevertheless the
interchange in the spelling of these names is not common, so a case can be made that
‘Tomar’ refers to the Norse God, whereas ‘Tomrair’ is a personal name (derived from
Þór) and scribes sometimes confused their spellings.92 Memories of the legends of
Thor may have been linked with Caill Tomair (‘Wood of Þór/ Þórir’) which lay close
to Dublin.93 A ‘ring of Tomar’ is identified as part of the regalia of Dublin in 995
along side the ‘sword of Carlus’.94 It is possible (but far from certain) that this ring
was in origin a heathen cult object. Subsequent references to the ‘sword of Carlus’ in
the eleventh century omit any mention of ‘Tomar’s ring’ which could indicate that it
had been cast aside or destroyed.95 It may have that an association between royal
power and a heathen object brought bad publicity at a time when vikings were berated
in Irish literature for their heathen past.
One striking feature of viking settlements in Ireland is that local ecclesiastical
sites appear to have continued in business during the early Viking Age.96 Of churches
located around Dublin, Finglas, Glasnevin, Lambay, Clondalkin and Tallaght survived
the viking settlement of Dublin in the ninth century.97 In addition St Patrick’s
Cathedral in Dublin boasts a series of early Christian grave-slabs which range in date
from the eighth to the eleventh century, which indicates continuity of worship at the
site.98 This evidence suggests that Christians living under the rule of Dublin kings
were able to continue practising their faith at local churches. When vikings converted
to Christianity, these churches may have been at the front-line in providing pastoral

90
Annala Rioghachta Eireann: Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters, ed. and trans.
John O’Donovan, second edition, 7 vols (Dublin: Hodges, Smith, 1856), II, 652-53 (s.a. 942[=944]);
Lebor na Cert: The Book of Rights, ed. and trans. M. Dillon (Dublin: Irish Texts Society, 1962), pp. 10-
11.
91
Annals of Ulster, ed. and trans. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, pp. 306-07 (s.a. 848.5).
92
For instances where these spellings are interchangeable with reference to Tomar/Tomrar/Tomrair, see
The Annals of Clonmacnoise, ed. Murphy, pp. (s.a. 922[=927]); Annals of Inisfallen, ed. and trans. Mac
Airt, pp. 132-33, 146-47 (s.aa. 866, 922); Cogadh, ed. and trans. Todd, pp. 24-25 (§24).
93
Annals of Inisfallen, ed. and trans. Mac Airt, pp. 174-75 (s.a. 1000.2).
94
The Annals of Clonmacnoise, ed. Murphy, p. 163(s.a. 988[=995]); Annala Rioghachta Eireann, ed.
and trans. O’Donovan, II, 732-33 (s.a. 994[=995]); Chronicum Scotorum, ed. and trans. Hennessy, pp.
(s.a. 993[=995]).
95
Poul Holm, ‘Viking Dublin and the City-State Concept: Parameters and Significance of the Hiberno-
Norse Settlement’, in A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures: An Investigation Conducted
by the Copenhagen Polis Centre, ed. Mogens Herman Hansen (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzals Forlag,
2000), pp. 251-62: 259.
96
Ailbhe MacShamhráin, The Vikings: An Illustrated History (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 2002), p. 99.
97
Downham, ‘Vikings in Southern Uí Néill’, pp. 244-47. This does not preclude the possibility that
these churches had to be evacuated temporarily during periods of viking attack, and they may have
simply survived rather than thrived.
98
Heather King, ‘The pre-1700 Memorials in St Patrick’s Cathedral’, in Dublin and Beyond the Pale:
Studies in Honour of Patrick Healy, ed. Conleth Manning (Bray: Wordwell, 1998), pp. 75-104: 82-84.
care.99 It is not until the late eleventh century that there is evidence of bishops of
Dublin being appointed, by which time Christianity was already established.100
The final matter to be addressed in this article is the religion of vikings who
migrated from Dublin to settle across the Irish Sea. The migration of vikings from the
Ireland and the Scottish islands to north-west England, south-west Scotland, and Man,
is witnessed by place-names and archaeology. It was long assumed that these settlers
all came from Dublin as a result of the Irish takeover of that settlement in 902.
However Alfred Smyth has made the case that many of these migrants came from the
Hebrides.101 Indeed it seems simplistic to see all of the hybrid Norse/Gaelic place-
names in mainland Britain as being the result of a single event. Furthermore, the port
of Dublin seems to have remained inhabited after its leaders were expelled in 902; so
the number of exiles cannot have been vast.102 Place-names and archaeology testify to
a complex pattern of population movement which ranges across the late ninth and
early tenth centuries and which included viking settlers from Ireland, Scotland, and
eastern England. The religious affiliations of vikings in these areas of secondary
migration seem to have been diverse. The grave of the ‘Pagan Lady’ excavated at
Peel, Isle of Man, has been dated as late as the 940s (and, interestingly, the contents of
the grave suggest that she may have originated in the east of England, not in
Ireland).103 On the other hand, Christian sculptures of mixed Gaelic and Scandinavian
heritage on Man have been dated from the early to mid-tenth century. The evidence of
furnished burials and stone sculpture therefore offers an intriguing picture of co-
existence between heathen and Christian vikings during the tenth century.104
Fiona Edmonds has presented a strong argument that the cults of the fairly obscure
Gaelic saints Bega and Sanctán were transferred from the hinterland of Dublin to the
west of Cumbria by Christianised vikings.105 Edmonds has argued that the expansion
of these cults may have been the result of ongoing links between viking communities
in Dublin and Cumbria rather than these vikings being devotees of Gaelic saints when
they migrated.106 We cannot therefore use these cults to date the conversion of vikings
in any precise way. However, these religious affiliations do suggest that Irish churches
played a role in Christianizing vikings, even (indirectly) in England.107
This article is not intended to convey the impression that vikings always converted
rapidly once they settled in a Christian society. Rather the interpretation tends towards
syncretism and a rather complex road to religious change (a pattern which has been

99
Edmonds, ‘Hiberno-Saxon’, I, 206-07.
100
Howard B. Clarke, ‘Christian Cults and Cult Centres in Hiberno-Norse Dublin and its Hinterland’,
in The Island of St Patrick: Church and Ruling Dynasties in Fingal and Meath, 400-1148, ed. Ailbhe
Mac Shamhráin (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004), pp. 140-58.
101
Smyth, Scandinavian York, I, 80.
102
Linzi Simpson, ‘Forty Years a-digging: A Preliminary Synthesis of Archaeological Investigations in
Medieval Dublin’, Medieval Dublin, 1 (1999), 11-68: 25; Downham, Viking Kings, p. 27.
103
James Graham-Campbell et al., ‘Tenth Century Graves: The Viking Age Artefacts and their
Significance’, in Excavations on St Patrick’s Isle Peel, Isle of Man 1982-88, ed. David Freke
(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002), pp. 83-98: 83-87.
104
David Griffiths, ‘Settlement and Acculturation in the Irish Sea Region’, in Land, Sea and Home:
Proceedings of a Conference on Viking-Period Settlement at Cardiff, July 2001, ed. John Hines et al.
(Leeds: Maney, 2004), pp. 125-38: 131-33.
105
Edmonds, ‘Hiberno-Saxon’, I, 176-82; Clare Downham, ‘St Bega – Myth, Maiden, or Bracelet? An
Insular Cult and its Origins’, Journal of Medieval History, 33 (2007), 33-42.
106
Edmonds, ‘Hiberno-Saxon’, I, 211.
107
For the possible impact of Christianized vikings from Ireland in the Faroes, see S. Stummann
Hansen and J. Sheehan, ‘The Leirvík “bønhústofnin”’ and the early Christianity of the Faroe islands
and beyond’, Archaeologia Islandica, 5, 27-54.
highlighted by Lesley Abrams). The stereotype that vikings from Ireland were
markedly more heathen than vikings from England can be challneged. This can be
argued from varied evidence: intermarriage between vikings and Irish; the adoption of
Christian names among the viking elite; the behaviour of some viking kings in
relation to the Church; the discovery of objects of a Christian nature in Dublin; the
survival of ecclesiastical structures in the hinterland of viking settlements; and the
influence of Gaelic cults in viking held areas. Perhaps the last member of the Dublin
dynasty to die without baptism was Rögnvaldr whose death is reported in 921.

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