CCIV10040 Vikings in the Celtic World

Academic Year 2020/2021

Students will need a laptop and Wifi connection to participate fully in this module.

This course will consider the Viking experience of the Celtic-speaking lands and how the Vikings, through both confrontation and collaboration, had a transformative impact on that world between c. 780 – 1020. The Vikings were largely a silent people and it is largely through the eyes of those they encountered – peoples who were already literate – that we first get to know them. Many of our enduring images of the Vikings are based on sources from the Celtic world, and some of the earliest and most complete accounts of the initial Viking raids are found in the Irish annals.

As the Vikings become a permanent presence in these lands, the Celtic and Norse views of the spiritual, heroic and economic world intersected and, at times, collided. We will look at the manner in which the Vikings are treated in literature and how this changes over time. We will trace the survival of rituals and beliefs brought from Scandinavia as exemplified by the decorated slabs and burials on the Isle of Man, where legends from Norse mythology feature on Christian crosses and a warrior was buried with a sacrificed slave.

There were personalities, both Norse and Celtic, who straddled both worlds, and many of these men and women were nurtured in both traditions and reflect the enduring and transforming contacts made through intermarriage, fosterage and political alliances.

The emergence of new dynasties and kingdoms is a product of the special circumstances of this period and we will consider how they arise and what their impact was on the wider Norse and Celtic worlds. Towns develop in the west and the north as a result of the Vikings’ new raiding/trading activities, and the connections between the contemporary developments of Dublin, Waterford and Limerick in Ireland and Kaupang, Birka and Hedeby in Scandinavia will be surveyed.

This multifaceted course will provide students with a clear understanding of this fascinating and dynamic period in the history of the Norse and Celtic worlds.