Everything about The War Of The Irish With The Foreigners totally explained
The War of the Irish with the Foreigners (Irish:
Cogad Gaedel re Gallaib) is a two-part medieval
Irish chronicle that claims to record the depredations of the
Vikings in
Ireland and the Irish king
Brian Boru's great war against them. That war culminated in the
Battle of Clontarf (1014), at which Brian was slain but the Vikings of
Dublin utterly defeated and driven from Ireland forever. But the chronicle, which extravagantly compares King Brian to
Augustus and
Alexander the Great, was written in the early twelfth century, at least a hundred years after the events that the anonymous composer claims to record had unfolded.
The main purpose of the chronicle seems to be to eulogize Brian Boru and to thereby show that the record of achievements of Brian's
Dál Cais dynasty proved that they deserved Ireland's high kingship. This was an issue because the
Ua Briain sept of the Dál Cais was struggling to remain
High Kings of Ireland at the time of the chronicle's writing.
Another reason for the chronicle's composition may have been to counter the
Brjánssaga (Brian's Saga), written before 1118 by a Dubliner in an attempt to distance Dublin from the killing of the national hero, Brian. However, our chronicle depicts the Vikings as vicious barbarians and suggests that the Dubliners are like their ancestors. In short, it may have been partly an attempt to "put the Dubliners in their place." [ÓCorrain 1997: 105–6]
Modern scholars consider
The War of the Irish with the Foreigners to be a piece of "brilliant propaganda" written in a "bombastic style and full of patriotic hyperbole." Thus, this chronicle is a valuable source of information about the
Viking Age in Ireland, but its accuracy is uncertain. [ÓCorrain 1997: 105–6]
Comparable works include the earlier
Fragmentary Annals of Ireland and the later
Caithréim Chellacháin Chaisil.
Further Information
Get more info on 'The War Of The Irish With The Foreigners'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://the_war_of_the_irish_with_the_foreigners.totallyexplained.com">The War of the Irish with the Foreigners Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
