Vikings and the Celtic seas

clipped from www.ireland.com For at least 1400 years, up to the ninth century, the civilization of Ireland remained uniformly Celtic. Then, in the year 795, came the first of the Viking attacks, on Lambay Island in Dublin Bay. "Viking" (from the Old Norse vikingr) means "sea-rover" or "pirate", and this is precisely what these people were. Ethnically, they were Teutons, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian farmers, fishermen and sea-merchants, who were forced onto the open sea in search of a livelihood by over-population and shortage of arable land. From the eighth century, their plundering raids terrorized much of the known world, reaching as far as America, North Africa, and Constantinople. In Ireland, the annalists distinguished two groups among the raiding vikings, the Lochlainn, or Norwegians, and the Danair, or Danes, the Norwegians being described as fair, the Danish as dark. Initially, the Norwegians dominated, and their raids were sporadic and unsystematic.