Showing posts with label Ivar the Boneless. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ivar the Boneless. Show all posts

Friday, May 30, 2014

Ivar the Boneless

Ivar the Boneless, played by
Vaclovas Kiselevicius in the TV show
"The Dark Ages"
The post on Vikings in Ireland mentioned Ivar the Boneless, which was just begging for more detail on this fellow.

He was born Ivar Ragnarsson, the son of Ragnar Lodbrok and Aslaug Sigurdsdottir. Viking sagas considered him a ferocious warrior.

He was a leader (with his brother Halfdan) of the so-called "Great Heathen Army" that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says invaded East Anglia in 865 and then a year later marched northward and took York from the Northumbrians. A few years later, he left England, either to rule Dublin or to go back to take up rule in parts of Denmark and Sweden.

Curiously, this fearsome warrior, who was said to be so large that he towered over everyone else, had the nickname "the Boneless." It might have been some snake metaphor suggesting "slipperiness of character." His brother had the nickname "Snake in the eye" which might suggest that you could not trust him. We are not sure of that. But Viking sagas describe him with:
Only cartilage was where bone should have been , but otherwise he grew tall and handsome and in wisdom he was the best of their children. [link]
It is possible, since he was such a great fighter, that the epithet "the boneless" (in Norse: hinn beinlausi) referred to an extraordinary flexibility, which would have contributed to his fighting prowess. Suggestions that it refers to sexual impotence cannot, of course, be substantiated, although there is no evidence that he fathered any children, or even took a wife.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Vikings in Ireland

A sign of Viking presence in Ireland:
a Viking ship built in Dublin c. 1042
As alluded to in the post on King Edmund I, Ireland was the target of raids from Scandinavian countries almost as much as England. Based on hints in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, some believe the earliest raids took place in 795 at the island of Lambay off the coast north of Dublin. (In fact, "Lambay" is from Old Norse for "lamb island.")

There were, in fact, two separate periods of Viking incursion, separated by less than a single generation. The first was from 795 until 902, when (according to the Annals of Ulster, mentioned here) "The heathens were driven from Ireland." Those heathens (descendants and followers of Ivar the Boneless) seemed to hang about the Irish Sea, hassling Northumbria and Strathclyde. They returned to the mainland in 914, taking over Dublin.

Ireland was a good place from which to stage incursions into northern England. It was this clan of Ivar's that produced King Olaf III Guthfrithsson, who succeeded his father to become King of York and was driven out by King Edmund in 942.

Although typical Viking raids tended to plunder monasteries and towns and then depart, Ireland was good land for settlements. Viking and Irish intermarried, and produced a group now called "Norse-Gaels." Between the 12th and 14th centuries, the English referred to the Norse-Gaelic people living in Ireland as Ostmen, "East men," because of their origin in Scandinavia. They were considered ethnically and legally distinct from Irish, and lived in their own communities. The modern Oxmantown, now a suburb of Dublin, derives its name from Ostmentown, where Norse-Gaels lived outside of Dublin. According to a 2006 paper, Norse DNA is still found in the Irish population, especially in the areas of Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Wexford.