Viking Surnames Across Ireland

[Grace O'Malley]

Sorry Jackson I just reread your answer and saw that you don't know about the Bretons.

[Graham]

Thanks Graham for the clarification. You seem to know your history very well. Regarding the map that I posted is it true that the Norse went to Scotland and Ireland and the Danes concentrated on England or was it not that cut and dry?

The Danes did try to take the North East Scotland before the English invasion. Scots under King Malcolm II defeated the Danes in 1012(Battle of Cruden).

If you look at the agriculture of Scotland. The Angles & Danes only properly wanted those areas that were good for farming, Eastern Scotland.

Whereas the Western Norse Vikings pushed into areas that were like Western Norway.

Wet, rocky & not so good agriculture. Good areas to sail through, pillage & steal a slave or two. Good old proper vikings.

[Grace O'Malley]

From your post it sounds like the Danes might have been the lesser of two evils as they were prepared to settle down and farm whereas the Norse wanted to ransack and pillage. I know that the Irish called the Danes Dubh-Gall (dark foreigner) and the Norse Fionn-Gall (fair foreigner) so they must have come across the Danes as well?

[Jackson]

Thanks for the the information Jackson. I'm very interested in the information about the cluster. Do you know if Brittany or Northern France are in that NW Euro cluster?

I believe they are on the southern edge of it yeah. At least i know there is a Breton on ABF who has shared his DNA results a couple of times, and he comes out closest to Irish and Cornish people if i remember correctly. It's an interesting place - Has roughly the same levels as R1b-L21 as Ireland and western Britain, and also has some Viking input too (Y-Dna I1 is something like 11% there i think, which is a bit more than the Irish average).

[Jackson]

Sorry Jackson I just reread your answer and saw that you don't know about the Bretons.

Well i don't know about them as a whole population, but if this Breton can be assumed to be quite typical, then they are basically the same as people in the British Isles. And Breton language is similar to Welsh also.

[Jackson]

The Danes did try to take the North East Scotland before the English invasion. Scots under King Malcolm II defeated the Danes in 1012(Battle of Cruden).

If you look at the agriculture of Scotland. The Angles & Danes only properly wanted those areas that were good for farming, Eastern Scotland.

Whereas the Western Norse Vikings pushed into areas that were like Western Norway.

Wet, rocky & not so good agriculture. Good areas to sail through, pillage & steal a slave or two. Good old proper vikings.

Give the Norwegians a bad rep... The Danes just wanted to grow their Barley so they could party more. Nothing changes.

[Albion]

The Danes did try to take the North East Scotland before the English invasion. Scots under King Malcolm II defeated the Danes in 1012(Battle of Cruden).

If you look at the agriculture of Scotland. The Angles & Danes only properly wanted those areas that were good for farming, Eastern Scotland.

Whereas the Western Norse Vikings pushed into areas that were like Western Norway.

Wet, rocky & not so good agriculture. Good areas to sail through, pillage & steal a slave or two. Good old proper vikings.

Gaining East Anglia and the East Midlands would have given Germanics an advantage in Britain. If the geography was opposite, if the east was cold, rocky and unsuited to arable farming then Celts probably would have prevailed.
Regarding eastern Scotland - today it is good for arable farming with hardy strains of wheat and potatoes, but in the past it was all oats rye and not much else. The best agricultural lands in that part of the world, but not as attractive as East Anglia. Apparently some Angles did briefly settled Orkney though.

[Útrám]

A common error within anthroponymy is the misidentification of names from different sub-branches within the same ethnic branch. Many of these names appear to be pre-Viking Anglo-Saxon in origin and even Norman or just simply native Celtic ones. To add to the confusion there's another problem with the names of serfs which stayed intact, names such as Melkorka, Kjartan and Njáll, one may think they're Viking but they're not.

I can spot some obvious ones.

Harold = Haraldur
Kettle = Ketill
Swan = Svanur

Names such as Brazil, Higgins, Gaynor are Gaelic. Tuke sounds more Norman to me rather than directly Norse.

If some other of these names are derived from Norse then most of them must be remotely derivative and/or highly corrupted variants. Which raises the question, if names/words have been altered beyond recognition how relevant becomes the origin?

[Grace O'Malley]

Thanks for all your feedback Graham and Jackson. I was never taught about the Vikings at school as in Australia it is not really a focus understandably. I did read a condensed history book on Ireland which is where I gained my little knowledge about the subject so it is interesting hearing about Britain.

As I said previously I'll be very interested when more information comes out about the People of the British Isles project and when this project on Ireland is updated.

[Jackson]

Thanks for all your feedback Graham and Jackson. I was never taught about the Vikings at school as in Australia it is not really a focus understandably. I did read a condensed history book on Ireland which is where I gained my little knowledge about the subject so it is interesting hearing about Britain.

As I said previously I'll be very interested when more information comes out about the People of the British Isles project and when this project on Ireland is updated.

Yeah i really think there needs to be more time spent on Ireland. It would also be interesting to see if there are genetic clusters associated with tribal boundaries or regions in Ireland as there are in Britain. I'm sure this is the case, but POBI are only covering northern Ireland of course.