claimhteoir wrote:It's funny... there's a display in the Viking exhibition in the National Museum on Kildare St that says the Vikings introduced the axe, bow and sword into Irish warfare. I was weary to accept it when I first read it, having been floating around these forums on and off for the last few years and I'd love to know how they (the Museum) justify it.
Well, it's broadly accurate. 100% of Irish warriors (as mentioned elsewhere) used spears in folklore, and spearhead finds are very common.
Bows were certainly not used in war until the Vikings landed here in sizeable numbers. Archery was prevalent in Northern Europe in the Bronze age, and fine yew bows have been dated to perhaps 1600BC. However, there is no archeological evidence of archery in Ireland from 1300BC to 800AD. None. Nada. Irish used light spears & darts as missiles, it's possible that they used those in conjunction with slings.
My personal opinion is that swords were seen as sidearms, not primary weapons. Try take on a fast spearman with a 65cm blade & a small shield, and you'd know why. Perhaps the Vikings changed that idea to a small extent, with longer blades of stronger steel which were more appropriate. The munstermen did use viking-sized shields - perhaps they took to Viking-style swords too; no proof though.
While the native Irish certainly did use working axes as opportunistic weapons - Hugh de Lacy was killed by a wood-axe - the first references to an Irish axeman in battle were the Laigin around 869. Few societies around the world used an axe as a weapon...and the Irish and the Vikings among the few cultures to develop such obviously refined battleaxes.
I can understand swords, if they consider native swords of the time as being only large knives. I know the spear and darts were certainly the main edged weapons, with the sling making various appearances in conflicts too, but surely axes were in use for farming and construction prior to the Vikings, so why would they not have been used?
Same reason you wouldn't think to use a spade as a weapon, despite the fact that it's damn dangerous. There are better ones. A wood axe, or worse yet, a small carpenters axe, is pretty crappy as a weapon. A lovely wide-bladed bearded axe, with a nasty stabbing point, is much better. And by the 12thC, the Irish had some really distinctive pointy axes.
Perhaps it is down to a lack of close-quarters combat in early Ireland, given little or no armour or cloth protection? If so and it was only with the arrival of the Vikings that close quarters combat came to the fore, then how did the Vikings introduce the bow to combat in Ireland? Surely bows were used in hunting prior to the coming of the Norsemen. I've read somewhere online (without a quote to verify it) that the early Irish considered bows in combat to be cowardly. But if this is the case, would their use by the Vikings really overcome that stigma? Would the need to retaliate against such ranged weapons mean the Irish would begin to use the bow too?
Nope. Irish didn't use the bow before the Vikings. They did adopt it pretty quickly, of course, both for military & hunting use. The Vikings used it quite differently to the Normans though; no dedicated archers. You dropped your bow and got stuck in with spear or axe when you got up close. Check out Halpin's new book; it answers a lot of these questions.
John
