20 Fakadav, Irish Influence on Icelandic Literature. 



among the Mac Domhnaill of the Isles, they are probably 

 Scandinavian. The very name by which the Irish called 

 the invaders, Lochlann, was taken by the Irish themselves 

 as a personal name, and Ua Lochlainn (O'Loughlin) 

 became the name of a great family. 



We find, therefore, no instance of a Norse name in an 

 Irish family until 17 years after the Battle of Clontarf had 

 settled once for all the relations between the Irish and 

 the settlers ; and they do not become common until 80 

 or 90 years after that event. We find the sons of Norse 

 fathers bearing Gaelic names 40 or 50 years before Clon- 

 tarf, but these names are of the character of nicknames, 

 such as Gluniaraind (Iron-knee), Cuallaid (Wild Dog), 

 Dubcend (Black-head), and would be given to them by 

 their Irish opponents. They are, of course, only found in 

 Irish sources. The only exception is Niall hua hEruilb 

 (Annals of Ulster, 957, Four Masters, 956) ; and as we 

 have seen, the name Njall was at this time already 

 naturalised in Norvva}'. We are surely justified in con- 

 cluding from this that real mixture between the two races 

 in Ireland did not become general until the beginning of 

 the 1 2th century, 200 years after the settlement of 

 Iceland was completed. This tells against the theory 

 that the early raiders who spent a short time in the 

 islands and then passed on to settle further west, obtained 

 even a fair knowledge of the Gaelic speech. Both proba- 

 bility and evidence are against the idea. It is not likely 

 that those Norsemen who only stopped at the islands to 

 plunder, on their way to found new homes in Iceland, 

 found either time or opportunity to study the speech of 

 the natives ; as a rule they did not even trouble to learn 

 the names of the thralls they took, but renamed them ; 

 these thralls, too, quickly died off in Iceland, or rebelled 

 and were killed. When it wah necessarj' that the two 



