who were so much at sea, and who, it seems, liked to while away the time by playing draughts, such a precaution was doubly necessary, as the rolling of the vessel would otherwise have thrown the draughtsmen together every moment. It is remarkable that at Kilmainham, as well as in Scandinavia itself, the draughtsmen are found deposited in the graves, by the side of the arms and ornaments of the warriors. This affords an instructive proof that the old Northmen must have been very fond of gaming; and consequently that the picture drawn by Tacitus of the passion of the ancient Germans for play, which at times even led them to gamble away their personal freedom, might apply to their neighbours, the Scandinavians.

We can scarcely err in referring the antiquities found at Kilmainham to the ninth, or at latest to the tenth century. The mode of burial is heathenish rather than Christian; and, as is known, the Norwegians settled in Ireland were converted to Christianity in the tenth century at latest, and probably still earlier. It is not at all probable that the graves are to be attributed to an isolated band of heathen Vikings, who came over at a later period, and who, after a battle, buried their dead on the field. The great number of graves, and the careful manner in which each is said to have been set or enclosed with stones, rather show that they were made in all tranquillity by the Norwegians and Danes, who at that time dwelt in Dublin, or its immediate neighbourhood, and who probably had a common burial ground there. Scandinavians appear also to have been buried in an adjoining churchyard, which at that time belonged to a convent dedicated to St. Magnen, but which afterwards became the burial-place for a hospital of the knights of the order of St. John, founded at Kilmainham. It has at length become one of the largest churchyards in Dublin. In corroboration of the conjecture that Scandinavians were buried in it, it may be mentioned that a tall upright stone with carved spiral ornaments stands there a sort of monumental, or bauta-stone, under which,

several years ago, various coins were discovered, minted by Norwegian kings in Ireland; and near them a handsome two-edged iron sword, with a guard and a longish flat pommel. Some have, indeed, thought that this sword must have belonged to Murrough, a son of Brian Boru, or to Murrough's son Turlough, as both these warriors, having fallen in the battle of Clontarf, are said to have been buried in this churchyard. This, however, is only a vague conjecture; whilst it is quite certain that the abovementioned sword agrees most accurately in form with the many swords of the Vikings' times found in the North. There is, therefore, reason to suppose, that the sword was formerly deposited there with the body of a Norwegian warrior; and this supposition is strengthened by the discovery of the Norwegian-Irish coins.

Other old Norwegian, or Scandinavian burial-places, have been discovered in the Phoenix Park, near Dublin, where a pair of bowl-formed brooches were found near a skeleton. In making, a few years ago, some excavations in Dublin itself, in "College Green," which formerly lay outside the city, the workmen met with several iron swords, axes, lances, arrows, and shields, of the well-known Scandinavian forms. It is probable that this also was a burialplace similar to that at Kilmainham. With the exception of the burial-place on the coast of Lough Larne, the ancient Ulfreksfjord, no other decidedly Norwegian graves are hitherto known to have been discovered in Ireland.

Just as the proportionally numerous Norwegian graves near Dublin prove that a considerable number of Norwegians must have been settled there, so also do the peculiar form and workmanship of the antiquities that have been discovered in them afford a fresh evidence of the superior civilization which the Norwegians in and near Dublin must, for a good while at least, have possessed in comparison with the Irish. The antiquities hitherto spoken of only prove, indeed, that the Norwegians and other Northmen were superior to the Irish with regard to arms

and martial prowess. But there are other Norwegian antiquities, originating in Ireland, and found both in and out of that country, which also prove that the Danes and Norwegians formerly settled there contributed, like their kinsmen in England, by peaceful pursuits, to influence very considerably the progress of civilization in Ireland.

SECTION V.

Ancient Irish Christianity and Civilization.-Trade.—No Irish, but Norwegian Coins.-Sigtryg Silkeskjæg.—Norwegian Coiners.

CENTURIES before the introduction of Christianity into the Scandinavian North (in the tenth and eleventh centuries)— nay, centuries before the actual commencement of the Viking expeditions-the Irish people had been Christianized. At a very early period numbers of churches and convents were erected in Ireland, which was also celebrated for its many holy men. It was a common saying that the Irish soil was so holy that neither vipers, nor any other poisonous reptiles, could exist upon it. Numerous priests set out from Ireland as missionaries to the islands lying to the west of Scotland; nay, they even went as far as the Faroe Islands and Iceland, long before those islands had been colonized. Thus, when the Northmen first discovered Iceland (about the year 860), they found no population there; but on "Papey," in "Papyli," and several places in the east and south of the country, they found traces of "Papar," or Christian priests, who had left behind them croziers, bells, and Irish books; whence they perceived that these priests were "Westmen," or Irishmen; for just as the Irish called the Scandinavians "Ostmen," because their home lay to the east of Ireland, so also did the Scandinavians call the Irish "Westmen." The most southern group of islands near Iceland is called to the present day Vestmannaeyjar " (the Westman Isles),

66

because, at the time of their colonization, a number of Irish serfs, or Westmen, were put to death there for deceiving their masters.

Not even the Norwegian expeditions into Ireland, and the destruction of churches and convents by which they were accompanied, were able to annihilate the influence of the Irish clergy on the diffusion of Christianity in the northwestern part of Europe. Not only were the Norwegians and Danes settled in Ireland and the rest of the Western Isles soon converted from heathenism by Irish monks and priests, but Christianity was communicated through these converts to many of their Scandinavian countrymen, who visited Ireland partly as Vikings and partly as merchants. Thus the Norwegian king Olaf Tryggveson was baptized by an abbot on the Sylling Isles near Ireland, or, as other Sagas state, "to the west over in Ireland;" whence we may probably conclude that the Sylling Isles are not, as was before supposed, the Scilly Isles near England, but the Skellig Isles on the south-west coast of Ireland, on one of which there was at that time a celebrated abbey. At all events, it is certain that Olaf Tryggvesön, during his long abode with his brother-in-law, King Olaf Kvaran, in Dublin, must, by his constant intercourse with the Irish Christians, have been strengthened in his determination to christianize Norway. Another proof of the influence of Christianity in Ireland on the North is, that an Irish princess, Sunneva, was at a later period worshipped as a saint in Norway. Her body is alleged to have been deposited in a large and handsome shrine over the high altar in Christ Church, in Bergen, and on the 8th of July the Norwegians celebrated an annual mass in her honour. Even in Iceland there is a fiord, or firth, on the northwest coast, called "Patreksfjordr," after St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.

As we have before stated, the commencements of a national Irish literature were also developed among the clergy at a very early period; which, together with the

numerous ecclesiastical buildings in Ireland, prove that the Irish clergy of those times must have attained no mean degree of civilization, and that with regard to education they must, in certain respects, have been a great deal in advance of the heathen Scandinavians. But not to speak of the Icelandic literature-which developed itself in the remotest North immediately after the heathen times, and contemporaneously with the Norwegian dominion in Ireland, and which both in form and substance was undoubtedly far superior to the Irish-there is reason enough to doubt whether the Irish people of that time, although christianized, were really more educated or more advanced in true civilization than the certainly too much decried heathen Norwegians and their Scandinavian kinsmen. It is true, indeed, that the Norwegian Vikings made their way with fire and sword, that they destroyed a number of churches and convents in Ireland, and that in this manner they often occasioned the most violent intestine commotions, which for a time, at least, could not but tend to hinder the progressive development of Christian civilization. But the Irish chronicles themselves teach us that the Christian Irish acted precisely in the same manner at the same period. In their mutual contentions they often burnt ecclesiastical buildings, plundered the shrines of saints, and maltreated the clergy, besides, as is well known, constantly perpetrating amongst themselves the most horrible butchery. Lastly, in Ireland, as in England, we must certainly distinguish between the Vikings, who came to the country for the sake of war and plunder, and the colonists, whose aim it was to obtain a new home in Ireland. The latter brought with them not only great skill in the forging and management of arms, as well as in building and navigating ships for expeditions, both of war and trade, but likewise had their own runic writing; and by the readiness with which they imbibed the newer Christian civilization, soon acquired the ascendancy in the most important Irish cities, so as to become perceptibly