Meanwhile, Clannad singer Moya Brennan and harpist Cormac De Barra are premiering and touring Ten14, a music show about Brian Boru’s life, for families and children. Other events will take place from Armagh to Tipperary. Much of this revival of interest is of course rooted in the 1,000th anniversary of the Battle of Clontarf, as institutions and artists mark the clash that saw Boru’s Christian Irish army defeat the pagan Norse led by the magnificently named Sitric Silkenbeard.Īmong the many official millennium celebrations, the National Museum of Ireland is hosting the exhibition Clontarf 1014, while Dublin City Council is recreating the battle at St Anne’s Park in Raheny with the help of various historical re-enactment societies today and tomorrow. A thousand years after they were supposedly vanquished by Brian Boru, the Vikings are back. Rather, it is a snapshot of contemporary Ireland, from the set of Vikings, the hit historical drama series, two seasons of which have been filmed with visceral verisimilitude in Co Wicklow since 2012.įrom books to comics, music to movies, blockbuster exhibitions to popular attractions, Vikings have never seemed so woven into our consciousness, be it cultural or historical. This is not some episode recounted in a dusty medieval chronicle, however. A horde of long-haired, sword-wielding, fearsome-looking foreign marauders run amok in a peaceful Irish settlement, desecrating a primitive church, terrorising the congregation and making off with gleaming Celtic crosses. It is a scene familiar from every primary-school history book.