Norsemen in Ireland 7 1 



drowned ; and his kingdom, the first Viking kingdom as 

 it really was, was likewise the most ephemeral of all. 



In the event, the presence of the Vikings in Ireland 

 took the form of settlements made at certain fixed 

 points^ not of wide-extended conquests. These settle- 

 ments, which covered no great area, were at last con- 

 tracted into those so-called kingdoms of the Northmen, 

 at Dublin, at Waterford, and at Limerick. The two lesser 

 ones did not deserve the pretentious name of kingdoms ; 

 they were generally dependent upon the kings of Dublin. 

 But these last were at one time people of no small 

 power. They exercised, if not actual rule, a leadership — 

 what the Greeks called a hegemony — among a group of 

 other Scandinavian settlements in the west. The settle- 

 ment in Man — kingdom of Man, as it was called, the 

 kingdoms and earldoms in the western islands of Scot- 

 land were in a way subservient to the Irish kings of 

 Dublin. They gave kings to the Danes and Norsemen 

 in Northunibria; some, at any rate, of these kings reign- 

 ing at the same time in Dublin and at York. And the 

 great hero of Norwegian history, he who so greatly 

 changed the position of Norway among the nations, — 

 I mean Olaf Tryggvason (of whom we shall have to 

 speak hereafter) was closely connected with the kings 

 of Dublin. It is possible that he came from among 

 the Dublin Norsemen. 



These Dublin kings were (in the time of our ^thel- 

 red the Unready) the first rulers in Ireland who issued 

 a coinage. 



Cut off at last from intercourse with their fellow- 

 countrymen, the Northmen of Dublin fell under the rule 

 of the Irish kings ; but they preserved no small amount 



