Clontarf, 23 April 1014

The battle, stage by stage

1. Spring 1014 (Lent)

   Brian before Dublin

   Dublin under its king Sitric Silkbeard, and Leinster under Sitric's uncle Máel Mórda, have risen against Brian Boru, the Munster king who had made himself king of Ireland. After a first siege in the autumn of 1013 failed, Brian returns in spring 1014. He camps on the green outside the town, the Faicthe Átha Cliath, which Seán Duffy places probably near Kilmainham, and his men raid Fine Gall and Howth. Sitric has recruited help overseas: Sigurd, jarl of Orkney, and a fleet under Brodir, possibly from Man. These ships gather in Dublin Bay around Easter. Positions here are schematic; no source gives the size of either army.

2. Dawn, Good Friday, 23 April 1014

   The fleet comes in on the tide

   The ships sail into the bay on the high tide and land on the Clontarf shore (exact place unknown). In 1861 Samuel Haughton calculated high water on the north shore at about 5:30 a.m. and again at 5:55 p.m. that day, which fits the Cogad's tide story. The Dublin and Leinster men march out of the town and cross the Tolka to join them, led in the field by Sitric's brother Dubgall. In the Irish tradition followed by Duffy, Sitric himself stays in Dublin (Njáls saga puts him in the battle). Brian's army comes up onto the higher ground behind Clontarf. All routes are schematic. The bay was much wider then: the shore ran along North Strand and Fairview Strand, and today's Fairview Park and Clontarf promenade were tidal flats.

3. Morning, 23 April

   Lines along the shore

   The Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib, a 12th-century work written to glorify Brian's descendants, describes three battalions on the coalition side. Duffy counts about a thousand men in mail among them, following the Annals of Ulster's '1,000 breastplates'. Facing them, Murchad leads Brian's Dál Cais, backed by the rest of Munster and men from Connacht. Brian, now at least in his seventies, probably does not fight. The Annals of Ulster say Máel Sechnaill, king of Tara, came with Brian; the Cogad says he stood aside. Duffy finds no evidence that he held back; Sitric and Máel Mórda had raided his kingdom of Mide that year. Tradition puts the line from the Tolka to Clontarf. Duffy puts the heart of the fight between Castle Avenue and Seaview Avenue, on ground sloping to the sea. The side-by-side order and which Irish contingent faced which are not given by any reliable source and are drawn arbitrarily; Duffy describes the coalition as overseas Vikings in the van, the Dublin Norse in the middle and the Leinstermen in the rear.

4. All day, 23 April

   Murchad and Sigurd fall

   The battle lasts from morning to evening. The Annals of Ulster call it a fight 'the like of which was never before encountered'. The Cogad says the slaughter was so thick that men knew their own kin only by their voices. Murchad is killed, and so is Sigurd of Orkney. The Icelandic sagas say Sigurd died carrying his raven banner, which was said to bring victory to the army but death to whoever bore it, and some accounts set him against Murchad. Brian's 15-year-old grandson Tairdelbach is also among the dead. The duels and the banner come from saga literature, not from the annals.

5. Evening, 23 April

   Rout at the weir and the bridge

   The coalition line breaks. In Duffy's reading of the Cogad, the ebbing tide had drawn the ships off and scattered them across the bay, and the evening flood (about 5:55 p.m. by Haughton) now cuts the routes back over the Tolka and east toward Howth. Trapped with the sea behind them, many are killed or drowned. Tairdelbach is said to have drowned 'against the weir of Clontarf'. The Cogad says only twenty Dubliners escaped, and that the last of them was killed at Dubgall's Bridge. Where that bridge stood is unknown: the usual view puts it on the Liffey near the Four Courts, while Duffy prefers a bridge over the Tolka at Ballybough. The Annals of Ulster put the coalition dead at about 6,000, killed or drowned.

6. Evening, 23 April

   Brodir kills Brian

   Brian dies on the day of his victory. The Annals of Ulster name Brotor (Brodir), chief of the Viking fleet, as the man who killed Brian and list him among the dead; the details of how it happened come from the Cogad and Njáls saga. In the Cogad, Brodir finds the old king praying at his tent; in Njáls saga, written in Iceland around 1280, Brian stands inside a ring of shields, and the boy Takt loses his arm trying to stop the blow, and Brodir cries 'Now let man tell man that Brodir felled Brian' before he is caught and killed. These are literary accounts. Where the tent stood is unknown; it is drawn here behind the Munster lines, on the rising ground where some accounts place Brian's final camp. Tradition also puts him back at Kilmainham.

7. After the battle

   Sitric keeps Dublin

   The coalition dead include Máel Mórda of Leinster, Sigurd of Orkney and Dubgall mac Amlaíb. On Brian's side Brian, Murchad, Tairdelbach, Brian's nephew Conaing and a number of other Munster and Connacht kings are killed (Annals of Ulster). Máel Muire, the successor of Patrick, carries the bodies of Brian and Murchad to Armagh, where they are waked for twelve nights. In the Irish tradition followed by Duffy, Sitric stayed in Dublin, so the town was not taken (Njáls saga puts him in the battle). He rules it for another two decades and founds Christ Church around 1028–30. Without Brian, Munster's high-kingship falls apart as his sons Donnchad and Tadc fight each other, and Máel Sechnaill takes back the kingship of Ireland. Britannica calls the result a pyrrhic victory, not the end of Viking Ireland.