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At the end of the eighth century broad ships reached the Irish coast, wich were able to resist wild storms. Those ships belonged to the Vikings, Scandanavian people from today`s Norway and Denmark. They sailed upstream and invlicted devastation. The Vikings plundered and destroyed monasteries, and killed all the monks and every Irish person they saw.
In 841 AD the Vikings conquered two harbours, Anagassan and Dublin, and changed them into fortresses, because they had decided to stay on the island forever. The natives did not put up tough resistance (they liked peace and, as there was no big war before, they did not know how to fight !). The climate was not as bad as in Scandinaia, and the land was much more fertible than the ground at home.
But in the long term the harbour in the north founded by the Norwegian Vikings (Annagassan), could not survive, in contrast to the more southern Harbour, Dublin, founded by Danish Vikings, wich expanded. Gradually the power of the Danish grew more and more inland. However, they also lost some of their warlike character and began to associate and marry the Celtic inhabitants.
At the beginning of the 11th century, many Celts became hostile to the Vikings at Clontarf (near Dublin), finally effected when Scandinavian allies of the king of Dublin were defeated by High king Brian Boru in 1014. The power of the Vikings was broken. Yet there was no peace. After Brian Boru died the local kings fought each other for the position of high king.
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