The Battle of Clontarf (1014) was one of those unique and dividing moments in Irish History, but how much do we know about it?

The traditional narrative of this event places the Irish fighting against the Norse invaders who held Dublin. Still, in this episode, Dr Denis Casey https://deniscasey.com/ shows us that this hypothesis is not entirely true.

Brian Boru, king of Ireland and killed at the battle, achieved heroic status in the Irish imaginary, but how did this story come to be? Join Niamh and Dr Denis Casey in this investigation.

Resources: https://www.tcd.ie/library/exhibitions/boru/index.php

Seán Duffy, Brian Boru and the battle of Clontarf (Dublin, 2013).

Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Brian Boru: Ireland's greatest king? (Stroud, 2007).

The various annalistic compilations can be found on the Corpus of Electronic Texts (CELT) website: https://celt.ucc.ie//publishd.html

James Henthorn Todd (tr., ed.) Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh (The war of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, or, The invasions of Ireland by the Danes and other Norsemen (London, 1867).

Magnus Magnusson & Hermann Pálsson (trs.). Njal’s Saga (Harmondsworth, 1971).

Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday). Email: medievalirishhistory@gmail.com Twitter X: @EarlyIrishPod Supported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University, & Science Foundation Ireland/The Irish Research Council. Views expressed are the speakers' own. Production: Tiago de Oliveira Veloso Silva. Logo design: Matheus de Paula Costa Music: Lexin_Music

In this episode Prof. Robin Chapman Stacey (University of Washington) chats to Niamh and Tiago about medieval Ireland's unique and remarkable legal system and the huge volume of law tracts that survive in both Latin and the Irish language. With topics ranging from status and gender to what happens when you get stung by a neighbour's bee, we discuss social theorising, how useful the study of law texts can be to the historian, and how astonishing it is that the Irish material, the most extensive in western Europe, is generally ignored outside of Ireland.

Suggested reading:

Robin Chapman Stacey, The Road to Judgment: From Custom to Court in Medieval Ireland and Wales. (Philadelphia, 1994)

Robin Chapman Stacey, Dark Speech: The Performance of Law in Early Ireland (Philadelphia, 2007)

Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin, 1988) [A bit outdated in areas but still the best introductory overview of the topic]

Fergus Kelly, Early Irish Farming. A Study Based Mainly on the Law-texts of the 7th and 8th centuries AD (Dublin, 1997). Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday). Email: medievalirishhistory@gmail.com Twitter X: @EarlyIrishPod Supported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University, & Science Foundation Ireland/The Irish Research Council. Views expressed are the speakers' own. Production: Tiago de Oliveira Veloso Silva. Logo design: Matheus de Paula Costa Music: Lexin_Music