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It was during the year 917 that two autonomous war fleets of Norsemen and Danes sailed out from their strongholds across the Irish Sea in England and Scotland and set forth for Ireland. It had been 15 years since they had been expelled from their strongholds in and around Dublin by a coalition of native Irishmen intent on reclaiming their lands, and now after building up their forces once more, they sought to reconquer the rich trading port first established by their ancestors over one hundred years before. The fleets were led by two men; Ragnall ua Ímair on the one side and Sitric Cáech on the other, both ambitious young pagan warriors seeking fame and glory, both members of the famous Uí Ímair dynasty which had ruled in Ireland for generations, and thus both possible descendants of Ivar the Boneless, the son of Lodbrok who had devastated the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons in England two generations before at the head of the Great Heathen Army. The many battles that took place during that fateful year of 917 would shatter the short period of peace which had followed the Viking exodus of 902, and go on to establish again a supremacy of Norse and Dane over native Irish.
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