Vikings

Viking on Lough Ree

Black and white photograph of Viking taken during the Tercentenary Festival in Athlone in 1991

© PJ Murray

Viking on Lough Ree
© PJ Murray

Viking on Lough Ree

Black and white photograph of Viking taken during the Tercentenary Festival in Athlone in 1991

© PJ Murray

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There were two distinct periods of Viking activity on Lough Ree. In the ninth century the Vikings had a fleet on Lough Ree and one of the most notorious Vikings of this period was the dreaded Turgesius who was on Lough Ree in 834. The following year he was captured by Maelsechlainn and drowned by him in Lough Owel outside Mullingar.

From 931-937 there appears to have been a continuous Viking presence on Lough Ree. One of the most ferocious Vikings in occupation at that time was Olafr Ceancaireach (Olaf the scabby-head) who landed in Lough Ree in 936 having moved his longships overland following a raiding expedition on Lough Erne. Olafr Ceancaireach was a Viking who had made his way from Limerick. In 937 he came into conflict on Lough Ree with Olafr Gothfrithsson a Dublin based Viking king and was taken prisoner and brought to Dublin.

Based on the discovery of two major Viking hoards on Hare Island in 1802 we can safely assume that the island was among those occupied by the Vikings during one or both of their major periods of occupation on Lough Ree. Charles Vallancey, writing in 1804, records a hoard which contained "ten gold bracelets, and a number of silver anklets, with some ingots of silver" which had been found on Hare Island two years previously. The Marquis of Lansdowne purchased the gold antiquities in Dublin but in 1812, after his death, they were offered for sale again this time by Messrs Rundel and Bridge, Silversmiths of Ludgate Street, London. Fortunately Vallancey had made drawings of four of the ten arm-rings because it seems that they were later consigned to the melting pot. This is not perhaps so surprising when one considers that the intrinsic value of the hoard was put at "nearly a thousand guineas".