![]() ![]() ![]() Over the years, and unrelated to the new excavations, silver hoards have been found in the area.Īerial view of Woodstown in 2001. The possible burial of a high-status Viking warrior on the site (there was no body, but the partial remains of a shield and a sword were among the artefacts) also points to its use as a raiding base. The broken remains of ecclesiastical objects, like those found at Woodstown, are just the sort of loot we would expect to find at raiding bases used by Vikings to attack Irish churches and monasteries. Weights for a balance scale were also found on the site, and these could well have been used by raiders to divide up their plunder amongst themselves. Ships were of course necessary for Viking raids, and part of the reason for their success. The archaeological remains, especially the large quantities of iron nails, indicate that the people at the site were involved in repairing ships. That said, the definition of a temporary raiding base can certainly be fairly applied to some Viking sites, and Woodstown would seem to fit that description. So if these sites could be called longphorts by Irish writers, then the old definition of a raiding base must be only part of the overall picture of Viking settlement in Ireland. Prior to the raid on these Viking sites neither is ever mentioned, suggesting that the ‘foreigners’ who lived there may never have carried out a raid. If the inhabitants of these sites had flocks and herds, they were planning to stay, or already had stayed, for a while. A victory was gained over them at Loch Foyle and twelve score heads taken thereby’. in the territory of the North, both in Cenél Eógain and Dál Araidi, and took away their heads, their flocks, and their herds from camp by battle. ‘Áed, son of Niall, plundered all the strongholds (longphorts) of the foreigners, i.e. This definition, though, is probably overly simplistic, and the ninth- and tenth-century Irish writers do not seem to have used the term as diagnostically as modern scholars would like. The term literally translates as ‘ship camp’, and the most traditional definition of a longphort by historians would be a temporary base used primarily for raiding. The term longphort was used by medieval Irish chroniclers to refer to many different types of sites even early Dublin was called a longphort. And yet historical records such as the Irish annals describe many occupied Viking sites in the ninth- and tenth-century Irish countryside, often referring to them as longphorts. Very few Viking sites outside the major towns have ever been discovered in Ireland, and none outside Dublin has been excavated since the 1940s. The large quantities of iron nails found at Woodstown indicate that people there were involved in repairing ships such as this. The replica Viking ship Gaia, which visited Dublin in July 2005.
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