Ivar of Limerick

Ivar of Limerick (Irish: Ímar Luimnich, rí Gall; Ímar ua Ímair; Ard Rí Gall Muman ocus Gáedel; Íomhar Mór; Old Norse: Ívarr [ˈiːˌwɑrː]; died 977), was the last Norse king of the city-state of Limerick, and penultimate King of the Foreigners of Munster, reigning during the rise to power of the Dál gCais and the fall of the Eóganachta.

[1] According to the author of the Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib, Ivar succeeded in establishing himself as King of Munster for a period in the 960s,[2] until routed in the Battle of Sulcoit in 968, but this claim has long been doubted by scholars.

[3] Unfortunately, however, though the Cogad author made extensive use of these annals, as well as local sources also now lost, and also some contemporary poetry, his purpose was political and intended to glorify Brian Boru and the Dál gCais for the benefit of his descendant Muirchertach Ua Briain, so although in part annalistic it is also full of exaggerations, flowery language, and dubious passages of various origin.

The major problem with the Annals of Inisfallen, on the other hand, is that they are a substantially abbreviated and otherwise edited redaction of the original and so actually preserve less ultimately reliable or contemporary coverage of Ivar in total than does the Cogad, with all its faults.

The Annals of Inisfallen also suffer from a considerable lacuna or simply an empty gap containing no entries at all, for whatever reason, of two and a half critical years in Ivar's career, from mid-969 to the beginning of 972.

The third most important source for this period of Munster history are the Annals of the Four Masters, but they were compiled much later and are occasionally of doubtful reliability, suffering in some cases from interpolations, misplaced entries, and so on.

Mumhain was plundered and ravaged on all sides by them, both churches and chieftainries, and they levied pledges and hostages from all the men of Mumhain, both Gaill and Gaedhil; and they afterwards brought them under indescribable oppression and servitude to the foreigners and the Danes.The author goes on to describe the system of government which Ivar imposed on Munster, but doing so in a way which reflects the "structure of assessment and control in the territories of the Uí Briain at the time of composition of the text":[6] Moreover, he appointed kings and chiefs, township reeves and king's agents, in every territory and in every district after that, and he levied the royal tax.

And such was the oppressivenes of the tribute and tax of the foreigners over all Ireland at large, and generally, that there was a king from them over every territory (tír), and a chief (toísech), over every district (túath), and an abbot over every church, and a reeve (máer), over every township, and a soldier in every house (tech).

The foreigners appointed a king over every territory, a chief over every tribe, an abbot over every church, a bailiff over every village, a soldier in every house, so that no Irishman had in his power, from the brood of a hen to the first milchcow, so that they did not dare to show devotion or care to father or to mother, to a bishop or to an ollav, or to a confessor, or to people who were ill or afflicted, or to an infant one night old; even if an Irishman had but one cow, the soup of her was forced to be given to the soldier, the night when milk could not be got from her, and an ounce of gold, or of silver, or of findruine[9] as the royal rent for every year; and the man who had not the means (of paying it) had himself to go into slavery, or also his nose was cut off.That Ivar or the Norse in general may have been attempting the actual takeover of some part of Munster possibly finds support in the Annals of Inisfallen: [AI972.1:] The banishment of [Norse] soldiers from Munster; and the three ordinances, viz., the banishment of the [Norse] soldiers, the banishment of the foreigners from Limerick, and the burning of the fortress, were enacted by the counsel of the nobles of Munster, namely, Mathgamain and Faelán and the son of Bran, and others.

[10][11]The term used here for the Norse soldiers is súaitrech "mercenary" and so the passage has been taken by Charles Doherty to refer to the practice of billetting the hired contingents of a standing army, as was common in later times.

[15] Notably Emly was attacked by Ivar or his relations in 968 not long after the Norse loss in the Battle of Sulcoit in 967,[16] and possibly in retaliation for the Dál gCais plundering of Limerick.

Accepting Mac Airt's translation of súaitrech not as soldiers but officials, she interprets this as Ivar and Norse Limerick's dominance of international trade within its region, sphere of influence, or "periphery" in Ireland.

Poul Holm has recently argued that Norse Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford, can all three be classed as genuine city-states as such an entity is defined by Mogens Herman Hansen and the Copenhagen Polis Centre.

But in 974 Ivar met with misforture, the Annals of Inisfallen reporting that "The son of Aralt made a circuit of Ireland with a great company, and plundered Inis Cathaig, and brought Ímar from it into captivity.

Elaborating, he reads this sequence beginning with "a battle over the exploitation of the Welsh" which the sons of Aralt won, and eventually ending with Maccus following Ivar all the way around Ireland to finish it.

[37] Uniquely Maccus brings the "lawmen" of the Isles with him and instead of being slain Ivar is captured, presumably for some offence in the opinion of Colmán Etchingham,[38] and perhaps related to his earlier expedition to Britain as argued by Hudson for another context.

[38] Alternatively, Alex Woolf suggests Ivar may have been ransomed for a sum, noting that the Norse cities "were rapidly becoming the repositories of silver bullion in the western world.

[44] But it has also been argued that this was entirely the product of Ivar's interference with Donnubán and that Máel Muad, a considerably distance away at the time, was in essence the natural and convenient beneficiary, a theory supported by the account in the Cogad.

[45] The annals make no mention of Ivar's involvement, simply reporting Mathgamain's seizure in treachery by Donnubán and the killing of the live prisoner by Máel Muad,[46] but at the same time do not exclude it.