Among the first things you see on a visit to the National Museum of Iceland in Reykjavik are skeletons: the remains of two bodies lying in the ground in which they were found. One is a woman believed to have been about 40 when she died in the 10th century. The other is that of a young warrior with his sword beside him. The black lava sand has been harsher on his bones than the less acidic earth that the woman was buried in; nonetheless, both have a strong presence. They are evocative representations of the first settlers on what had been an uninhabited land.
The tour guide mentioned that researchers had found traces of lead residue in the woman’s teeth which revealed that she been born in Ireland or Scotland and brought to Iceland as a young girl. It struck me as interesting that her native language must have been Irish, or at least the version of Middle Irish that was spoken in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man at the time. The guide went on to say that DNA evidence revealed that the young warrior’s father was Norse and his mother was Irish, and so, he too was probably bilingual, speaking Old Norse and Middle Irish.
That was the moment it dawned on me that one of the first languages ever spoken on this barren, unoccupied land was Irish. It’s likely that various seafaring wanderers had made brief visits to the island before them, but Irish and Old Norse were the languages that the rocks, waterfalls, fjords, lava fields and stunted trees first got to hear for any continuous period.
And, of course, it was so much more than just language that the settlers brought. With the Irish settlers came their folklore, cultural practices, proverbs and traditions. These were Irish people, with Irish mindsets and Irish heritage, interacting with a new landscape, an entirely new paradigm.
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I longed to know how long Irish lore and language had continued in Iceland? Just one generation, or two, three, or more? And where had it gone to? Had it been subsumed without trace into Norse and Nordic culture, or was it still there, hiding in plain sight?
As schoolchildren in Dublin, we learned that Viking sailors and warriors had ransacked Irish settlements and monasteries as they sailed around our coastline on their way northwards to explore and occupy new lands in the ninth and 10th centuries – and that they had taken Irish and Scottish women and children as slaves with them. Later, I had read studies showing that at least 50 per cent, and possibly up to 60 per cent, of the first settlers were of Gaelic origin, but I had never stopped to think about the cultural implications of this.
When I asked the museum guide about it, he referred to a study of the DNA of 181 Icelanders, 233 Scandinavians and 283 “Gaels” from Ireland and Scotland that revealed that not only did Iceland’s female founders have Gaelic ancestry, but between 20 and 25 per cent of Icelandic founding males were also from Ireland or the Western Isles of Scotland. This nugget of information changed everything for me. It meant that Irish people’s role in Iceland wasn’t just as slaves, carried off against their will by marauding Nordic seafarers, but that individuals, families or even whole clans had chosen to leave Ireland and begin new lives on this cold, barren land 1,200 years ago.
Why was there so little talk of Ireland’s role in the foundation of Iceland – at home in Ireland, and also in Iceland, for that matter? From the Irish perspective, it was a significant event, a profound cultural expansion, and yet it is hardly ever mentioned.
All this set me off on a journey that threaded together strands of myth and memory, DNA and geography, Icelandic sagas and Irish seanchas. I found Irish monks who arrived on Icelandic shores before the Vikings. I found placenames that feel eerily Gaeilge in tone. I found echoes of Irish cosmology and Christian mysticism buried within Norse texts.
A fine example of how entwined both cultures were can be found in the Laxdæla saga, which relates the story of an apparently mute Irish slave bought from a slave owner in Norway, named Gilli (from the Irish word giolla, or “servant”) in the 10th century. The slave has a child, Olaf, with her owner, and raises him in secret until one day her owner overhears her speaking Irish to Olaf, and demands that she speak to him too. She reveals her name is Melkorka, (from the Irish name, Máel Curcaig, “the servant or devotee of Curcaig”), and that her father is an Irish king, Mýrkjartan, (possibly Muirchertach mac Néill, of the Uí Néill dynasty). When Olaf turns 18 he returns to Ireland and is welcomed by his grandfather, the king, who offers him his crown, but he decides instead to spend his life in Iceland. It’s a fine example of how strong the links and lineages are between both lands. In fact, new research suggests that whole episodes of Icelandic sagas may have been borrowed, or strongly influenced by Icelandic writers reading Irish tales.
If a significant proportion of the make-up and mindset of Icelandic people arises from Ireland, might not they be curious about it? As the motherland, mother tongue and mother culture, do we have a certain duty to reach out to our more northern kinsfolk?
Icelandic names that derive from Irish ones are reasonably common once you listen out for them. The first name of the keyboardist with the band Sigur Rós, Kjartan Sveinsson, probably derives from the Old Irish name Muirchertach. The Icelandic film director Baltasar Kormákur shares his surname with a lead character in Kormáks saga from the 13th century, Kormákur Ögmundarson. The name derives from Cormac. The Irish name Niall, which probably derives from the Old Irish word niadh (“champion”) can be found in the eponymous Njáls Saga about a tragic feud between families that caused chaos in the lives of two friends. The name Brjánn also appears in Icelandic sagas and derives from Brian, (the Irish for “strength” or “nobility”.) There are numerous other Icelandic names that may derive from Irish, such as Kjaran, from Ciarán; Melkólfr’s from Mael Coluim; Bríet from Brigid; Kiljian from Killian; Eðna from Eithne; and Konall from Conal.
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Placenames, too, reveal an Irish influence. Írafell and Írafellsbunga in northwest Iceland derive from the Old Norse Íra meaning “Irish”, and fell means “mountain” or “hill”. Kjaransvík in the Westfjords translates as “Ciaran’s Bay” and seems to refer to St Ciarán, or some Irish settler named after him. In the southern part of the Westfjords is Patreksfjörður, a town and fjord named after Patrick, a Gaelic bishop in the Hebrides. The town of Akranes, just north of Reykjavik, has a weeklong festival in honour of its Irish roots, known as Írskir Dagur (Irish Days). The area was first settled around AD 880 by brothers Þormóður and Ketill, who came from Ireland, and it became one of the first Christian settlements in Iceland. Between the Westfjords and Akranes is the Snæfellsnes peninsula, and here too there are sites connected to early Irish settlers, such as the stone-lined well known as Írskrabrunnur (“well of the Irish”).
Archaeological excavations have also emphasised the Irish connections. Carvings found on man-made caves in the southwestern lowlands, as well as in south Iceland at Ægissíða and Seljaland, are strikingly similar to early medieval sculpture in Ireland and in the West Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland. These findings are confirming local folk memory that Papar (Irish or Scottish monks) regularly visited Iceland at least a century before the Norse settlement.
I haven’t even touched here on the shared mythological resonances in terms of na síóga (“fairy folk”) and landvættir (“land spirits”), or the shape-shifters, wolfmen and warrior frenzies (riastradh and berserkers). Really, the deeper you dive into Icelandic culture the more of Ireland you find, which all gives rise to one central question: if we in Ireland have distant cousins living just below the Arctic Circle, shouldn’t we spend some time getting to know them? And if a significant proportion of the make-up and mindset of Icelandic people arises from Ireland, might not they be curious about it? As the motherland, mother tongue and mother culture, do we have a certain duty to reach out to our more northern kinsfolk? To remind them from whence they came. My answer has been to write a book, Ireland in Iceland – Gaelic Remnants in a Nordic Land.
Ireland in Iceland – Gaelic Remnants in a Nordic Land by Manchán Magan illustrated by Aodh Ó Riagáin/Oreganillo will be published by Mayo Books next month
