What follows is our interpretation of what we read and learned. We set it down so we can carry it with us and review it as we travel across Ireland.

This is a companion to the Peopling of Britain post (read it here). That post follows on from the Peopling of Europe post (read it here). The Europe post told how the continent was built from four great waves of people. Ireland is the far western edge of that story. The waves that reached Britain also reached Ireland, but they arrived later, in smaller numbers, and always by sea. Here we will not explain again who the hunter-gatherers, the farmers or the steppe herders were. We will follow them onto the island and say what they did once they got there.

This post covers the whole island of Ireland. That includes the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The peopling of the island happened long before today’s border, so we treat the island as one.

Ireland’s story shares its early chapters with Britain. After the Iron Age, the two stories split. Rome never came to Ireland. The Anglo-Saxons never settled there. Instead, Ireland kept much of its older population and its Gaelic language for far longer. It also saw one later arrival that Britain never did: a large planned settlement of English and Scottish people in the 1600s.

Like the Britain post, this one crosses the line into written history. Wars appear only to explain who ended up where. The battles themselves belong to the history primers.

The Island

During the last ice age, thick ice covered most of Ireland. As the ice melted, the sea rose. The most widely used study finds that the sea separated Ireland from Britain about sixteen thousand years ago. By about fourteen thousand years ago, deep water lay between them.

Not everyone agrees on the details. Some researchers think a strip of land or ice joined the two islands for a while longer. Others argue that Ireland was never joined to Scotland by land at all. Most agree on one point: there was no land bridge when people began to settle Ireland for good.

Britain stayed joined to the continent until about 6,200 BC, so its first peoples could walk in. The people who settled Ireland came by boat. Almost every later arrival came the same way.

The same sea kept out many animals. Snakes and moles, both common in Britain, never reached Ireland.

I. The Old Stone Age

In Britain, the Old Stone Age is a long story. Footprints on a Norfolk beach are about 900,000 years old. Early humans butchered animals at Boxgrove half a million years ago. Neanderthals came and went with the ice. Modern humans arrived around 40,000 years ago. The Britain post tells that story.

Ireland has none evidence of this. No trace of these earlier human species has ever been found there. There are no footprints, no bones and no accepted tools. Nobody knows whether they ever reached Ireland. Two things make the question hard to answer. Thick ice covered Ireland for long periods. As it moved, it scraped away much of what lay beneath it, and probably any traces of early visitors too. Ireland also lay at the far edge of the land where people could live. Even when it was joined to Britain by land or ice, it was the last and coldest corner.

The oldest accepted sign of people is a bear’s kneecap. It was dug up in 1903 in a cave near Ennis, in County Clare, and then sat in a museum box for a century. In 2016, researchers found seven cut marks on it, made by a stone blade on fresh bone. Radiocarbon dating showed the bone is about 12,500 years old. By then, Ireland was already an island. So these hunters most likely came by boat.

Older claims exist, but they are not accepted. A reindeer bone from a cave in County Cork is about 33,000 years old. One researcher has argued that its marks were made by people. Others are not convinced. In 2026, a research team also reported possible cave markings in several Irish caves. They are not yet dated, and the study is at an early stage.

No Neanderthal remains have ever been found in Ireland. A worked flint from County Louth is much older than any of these finds, but most researchers think the ice carried it there from somewhere else.

So the safe statement is this. People visited Ireland at least 12,500 years ago. They may have come much earlier, but that is still argued.

II. The Middle Stone Age

By about 7,900 BC, hunter-gatherers had crossed the sea to Ireland and stayed. They came by boat, most likely from Britain. Their genes show they were close relatives of the hunter-gatherers of Britain, such as Cheddar Man. Like him, they had dark skin and blue eyes.

The oldest known settlement is at Mount Sandel, near Coleraine in Northern Ireland. People built round huts there on a bluff above the River Bann. They lived there between about 7,900 and 7,600 BC.

They lived from the rivers, the coast and the woods. They caught salmon in summer and eels in autumn. They gathered shellfish and trapped sea birds. They stored hazelnuts for the winter. On land, the main animal they hunted was the wild pig. Red deer were rare or absent in Ireland at this time, so they were not an important food.

At Hermitage, in County Limerick, on a bend of the River Shannon, a person was cremated and buried between about 7,500 and 7,300 BC. A polished stone adze was placed in the grave. It is the oldest known burial in Ireland. The adze is the oldest securely dated polished tool in Europe.

Over time, the way these people made tools changed. The earliest settlers made very small flint blades. After about 7,000 BC, people across Ireland made large, heavy blades instead. Nobody has found tools that show a slow change between the two styles.

Ancient DNA adds one more finding. The hunter-gatherers of Ireland lived apart from everyone else for a very long time. Their genes show the mark of a small population, cut off on its island. Britain stayed joined to the continent for longer, and its hunter-gatherers do not show this pattern. The people of Ireland lived this way for about four thousand years, until the farmers came.

III. The New Stone Age

Around 3,800 BC the farmers came. They were the same people whose journey across Europe we followed in the Europe post, with roots in Anatolia, in today’s Turkey. They crossed the Irish Sea by boat with seed grain, cattle and sheep. Their genes are closest to early farmers in Spain. So some researchers think farming reached Ireland along the Atlantic coast, but this is not settled.

As in Britain, the newcomers largely replaced the hunter-gatherers already there. The replacement was not total. One farmer buried in the west of Ireland had a hunter-gatherer among his recent ancestors. So some of the earlier people joined the farming communities.

The farmers cleared the forest and divided the land into fields. At the Céide Fields in County Mayo, their stone field walls still lie under the bog. They are more than five thousand years old. They are among the best preserved Stone Age farming landscapes in Europe.

What the farmers left above all is tombs. Ireland has hundreds of them from this time. They come in three main kinds. Court tombs have an open court in front of a stone gallery.

Portal tombs, also called dolmens, have a huge capstone balanced on upright stones. Poulnabrone, in the Burren of County Clare, is the best known. An infant buried there is the earliest known case of Down syndrome anywhere.

The third kind, the passage tomb, is the largest. The greatest are at Brú na Bóinne, in a bend of the River Boyne in County Meath. There stand Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. Newgrange was built around 3,200 BC. That makes it older than Stonehenge and older than the pyramids of Giza. Knowth holds one of the largest collections of carved stone art from this period in Europe. Other groups of passage tombs stand at Loughcrew in County Meath and at Carrowmore and Carrowkeel in County Sligo.

At dawn on the shortest days of the year, sunlight enters Newgrange through a small opening above the door. The light runs down the passage and lights the inner chamber for about seventeen minutes. The builders planned it this way.

IV. The Bronze Age

Around 2,500 BC new people reached Ireland. They were the Beaker people, named after their bell-shaped pots. They carried the steppe ancestry that had spread west from the Yamnaya, the third of the great waves in the Europe post.

Bodies buried on Rathlin Island, off the north coast, around 2,000 BC show this new ancestry clearly. As in Britain, the population changed a great deal. Exactly how much is still being studied. The men’s lineages show the change most clearly. Most Neolithic men in Ireland carried one family of Y chromosome lineages. Today most Irish men carry another, R1b, which spread with the newcomers.

The newcomers brought metal. At Ross Island, on the shore of a lake near Killarney, they dug for copper from around 2,400 BC. It was the first major copper mine in north western Europe. Most of the earliest copper objects found in Ireland, and many found in Britain, were made from its copper.

Ireland also had gold, and its smiths used it well. Their best known work is the lunula, a thin crescent of gold worn at the neck. More than a hundred lunulae are known from western Europe. More than eighty of them were found in Ireland.

The newcomers also built a new kind of tomb, the wedge tomb. It is a long, low stone chamber, wider and higher at one end.

From this point on, the genes of Ireland change very little. The people of the Bronze Age are, to a large degree, the ancestors of the Irish today. A study in 2016 found that the main features of the Irish genome were already in place about four thousand years ago. Few places in Europe show such a long continuity.

V. The Iron Age

Iron working appears in Ireland from about 600 BC. Yet the Irish Iron Age is one of the hardest periods to see. Few houses or farms from this time have been found. Much of what we know comes from a handful of sites, a few fine objects and the bogs.

By the time the Romans wrote about Ireland, its people spoke a Celtic language. It belonged to the Goidelic branch, which became Irish and Scottish Gaelic. Britain spoke the other branch, Brittonic.

How and when this language reached Ireland is one of the great open questions. The old idea was that Celtic warriors invaded in the Iron Age. Most researchers now doubt this. Ancient DNA shows no large new population arriving at this time. The archaeologist J. P. Mallory thinks a Celtic language was spoken in Ireland by about 1,000 BC, in the late Bronze Age. He thinks it came with small groups, not with an invasion. Others argue it came even earlier, with the Beaker people. The question is still open.

From about 300 BC, objects in the La Tène style appear in Ireland. This is the curling style of art we met in Britain and on the continent. The Turoe Stone in County Galway is carved all over with it. The Broighter Hoard, found in County Londonderry, holds a gold collar and a small gold model of a boat with oars.

Power gathered at a few great royal sites. Tara in County Meath became the most famous. Others were Navan Fort near Armagh, Rathcroghan in County Roscommon and Dún Ailinne in County Kildare. These were places for gatherings and ceremonies more than towns. At Navan Fort, people built a huge round building of oak posts, about 40 meters across. Its central post was cut in 95 BC. Then they filled the building with stones, burned it and covered it with earth.

The bogs have kept some of the people of this time. Clonycavan Man and Old Croghan Man died between about 400 and 175 BC. Both were killed violently and placed in bogs. Both were found near old boundaries between kingdoms. The archaeologist Eamonn Kelly thinks they were failed kings, offered to the goddess of the land. This is a theory, and not all researchers accept it.

Like the Britons, the Irish of the Iron Age left no writing of their own. Writing came only in the next part of this story.

Where to see them: sites and museums

Ireland’s prehistory left a great deal of standing stone. The earliest ages left almost nothing to see, but from the first farmers on, the monuments are everywhere. Here is where to meet each age.

• The Old Stone Age
  Almost nothing from this age can be seen. The butchered bear kneecap from County Clare is in the collection of the National Museum of Ireland. The cave where it was found is on private land.
  
• The Middle Stone Age
  Mount Sandel lies in Mountsandel Wood, on the edge of Coleraine, reached by public paths. The mound in the wood, Mountsandel Fort, is a much later earthwork. The Stone Age camp was nearby, and nothing of it survives above ground.
  Nothing can be seen at Hermitage either.
  
• The New Stone Age
  Brú na Bóinne in County Meath is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Visitors reach Newgrange and Knowth only by bus from the visitor centre, so it is best to book ahead. Each year a small number of people, chosen by lottery, stand inside Newgrange at sunrise on the winter solstice.
  The Céide Fields in County Mayo have a visitor centre on the cliffs. In 2026 it is open daily from March to early November.
  Poulnabrone stands in open country in the Burren of County Clare and is free to see.
  Carrowmore in County Sligo has a small visitor centre. Carrowkeel, also in Sligo, is a walk up an open hillside.
  At Loughcrew in County Meath, the passage tombs stand on hilltops with wide views.
  
• The Bronze Age
  Ireland’s prehistoric gold, including the lunulae, is in the National Museum of Ireland.
  The Ross Island copper mine is on a walking trail in Killarney National Park.
  Labbacallee wedge tomb stands beside a road near Glanworth in County Cork and is free to see.
  
• The Iron Age
  The Hill of Tara is open ground, free to walk.
  The Navan Centre near Armagh tells the story of Navan Fort, and paths lead up to the mound.
  The Rathcroghan Visitor Centre in Tulsk, County Roscommon, explains the royal landscape around it.
  The Turoe Stone stands in a field near Loughrea in County Galway.
  The bog bodies are in the Kingship and Sacrifice gallery of the National Museum in Dublin. The Broighter Hoard, with its gold boat, is in the same museum.
  The Ulster Museum in Belfast covers the whole of Irish prehistory.

With time for only a few: Brú na Bóinne for the farmers, the Céide Fields for how they farmed, the National Museum in Dublin for the gold and the bog bodies, and the Hill of Tara for the kings. Together they carry the whole of this first part, from the first boats to the eve of written history.

VI. Rome, Which Never Came

The second part of this story begins where Britain’s turns. In Britain, Rome came to stay. In Ireland, it never came at all.

The Romans called Ireland Hibernia. Between AD 78 and 84, the Roman governor of Britain, Agricola, looked across the sea from Scotland. His son-in-law, the historian Tacitus, says Agricola thought one legion and some extra troops could take Ireland and hold it. Agricola even kept an exiled Irish king at his side. He may have planned to use him as a reason to invade but never tried.

So Ireland was never part of the Roman Empire. Its people did not become Roman, and Latin did not become their language. The kings and peoples of the Iron Age carried on as before.

The Irish left no writing from this time. What we know of their peoples comes from outsiders. The Greek geographer Ptolemy, writing in Roman Egypt in the second century AD, drew a map of Ireland. He never went there. He used reports from traders and sailors, gathered around AD 100. His map names rivers, places and sixteen peoples. Some names match peoples elsewhere. The Brigantes of south east Ireland share their name with a large people of northern Britain. The Manapii of the east coast may be related to the Menapii of Gaul. Ptolemy’s positions are distorted, so where each people lived is only a modern estimate.

Rome and Ireland still knew each other well. Traders crossed the Irish Sea. Roman coins have been found at Newgrange, left there as offerings. At Drumanagh, a headland north of Dublin, many Roman objects have been found. Researchers disagree about what the site was. It may have been a Roman camp, a trading post, or an Irish site that traded with Britain.

As Roman Britain weakened, the Irish turned to raiding its western coasts. The Romans called these raiders the Scoti. Roman writers recorded the raids. In the 360s, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus named the Scotti and another people, the Attacotti, among the peoples attacking Britain. Picts from the north and Saxons from across the North Sea attacked at the same time. Whether the Attacotti came from Ireland or from Scotland is still argued. Some raiders also served Rome. A late Roman list of army units includes several units of Attacotti.

Some of the loot ended up in the Irish ground. Near Coleraine, in Northern Ireland, a hoard of 1,701 Roman silver coins was found in 1854. With them were a silver bowl and about six kilograms of silver bars and cut silver. The hoard was buried in the early fifth century. It probably came from Roman Britain, as loot or as payment.

Some raiders stayed. Irish settlers made homes in west Wales, in Cornwall and above all in Argyll, in Scotland. There they founded the kingdom of Dál Riata. The Britain post tells that story.

Saint Patrick

The raiders also brought people back with them. The best known of them is Patrick. Unusually for this time, he left two pieces of his own writing, both in Latin telling his own story.

Patrick was a Briton from a Roman Christian family. His father was a deacon of the church and a member of a town council. His grandfather was a priest. He names his home as Bannavem Taburniae, a small place in Roman Britain. Nobody knows where it was.

When he was about sixteen, Irish raiders attacked his home. They carried him off to Ireland with, in his words, “many thousands of people”. He was made a slave and herded animals for six years. Then, he says, a voice told him a ship was ready. He escaped, walked about two hundred miles to the coast and sailed home.

Years later, back in Britain, he had a dream. In it, the people of Ireland called him to come and walk among them again. He became a priest and then a bishop, and he returned to Ireland as a missionary. He baptized many people and ordained priests. In his second letter, he condemns a British warlord named Coroticus, whose soldiers killed and enslaved some of his new Christians.

Patrick does not give dates. Most historians place his work in the fifth century, but the exact years are still argued. He was not the first Christian in Ireland. In 431, the Pope sent a bishop named Palladius to the Christians who already lived there.

Much of what people “know” about Patrick comes from legends written centuries after his death. The best known says he drove the snakes out of Ireland. As this post explained earlier, there were never any snakes to drive out. The story of the shamrock appears much later still. Patrick’s own writings mention neither. He became Ireland’s patron saint, and his feast day, 17 March, is now celebrated around the world.

Ogham, the first writing in Irish

Writing reached Ireland in the same centuries as Patrick. The Irish made their own alphabet, called Ogham. Its letters are groups of short lines, cut along the edge of a standing stone. They are read from the bottom up.

About four hundred Ogham stones are known. About three hundred and thirty are in Ireland, above all in Kerry, Cork and Waterford. Most date from the fifth and sixth centuries. Most carry a single name, often in the form “X, son of Y”. Many probably marked a grave or a claim to land.

Ogham stones are the oldest writing in the Irish language. They also help trace something else. Some stand outside Ireland, where Irish settlers lived.

Irish settlers in Britain

Patrick was carried west, but many Irish people went east and stayed. In the fourth and fifth centuries, as Roman Britain weakened, Irish settlers made homes along the western coasts of Britain. The evidence comes from Ogham stones, a few Latin inscriptions and later Welsh and Irish writings.

The largest settlement was in Argyll, in the west of Scotland. There the Irish founded the kingdom of Dál Riata, which held land on both sides of the sea, in Argyll and in north Antrim. Tradition says it was founded around 500, but some researchers think Irish culture reached Argyll earlier. The Britain post tells how these settlers, the Scots, later gave their name to Scotland.

In south west Wales, an Irish ruling family seems to have held the kingdom of Dyfed. About forty Ogham stones stand in Wales, most of them in this region. One of the kings of Dyfed, Vortipor, is named on a gravestone carved in both Latin and Ogham. A British writer of the sixth century, Gildas, also names him and calls him a tyrant.

In north west Wales, a later Welsh legend says a leader named Cunedda and his sons drove the Irish out and founded the kingdom of Gwynedd. That story was written down centuries later and may not be reliable.

Irish families also settled in Cornwall and on the Isle of Man. Each has five Ogham stones, and Devon has two more. In Cornwall, the Irish were a small minority and founded no kingdom. Many of their stones carry the same name in both Latin and Ogham, written for two kinds of readers. On the Isle of Man the Irish language took hold, and it later became Manx.

One Ogham stone was even found at Silchester, in Hampshire, far inside Roman Britain. It most likely marked the grave of a single Irish settler.

VII. Gaelic Ireland

In Britain, the centuries after Rome brought new peoples. In Ireland, they did not. The same population stayed, and it organized itself in its own way. This is the age of Gaelic Ireland.

The island was divided into many small kingdoms, more than a hundred of them, and their number kept changing. Each had its own king. Smaller kings owed loyalty and tribute to larger ones. Those larger kings, in turn, served the great kings above them.

Above the small kingdoms stood the great overkingdoms. The Irish word for them means a fifth, because there were five. They were Ulster in the north, Connacht in the west, Leinster in the south east, Munster in the south and Meath in the centre. Meath later became part of Leinster. Today four provinces remain, and their names are still in daily use, on maps, in sport and in conversation.

One family grew stronger than the rest. The Uí Néill, kings of Tara, spread out from the fifth century and took over many smaller kingdoms. Their branches ruled in the midlands and in the north. Later writers called the strongest of them the High King of Ireland. Medieval lists of High Kings reach back thousands of years. Historians think these lists were put together in the eighth century, to make powerful families look older and grander. In practice, no High King ruled Ireland as one country. At most, a High King was an overlord who took tribute from other kings. A real kingship over the whole island appeared only later, in the Viking Age, and even then it came and went.

Most people lived on scattered farms, not in towns. Many farms were protected by a round bank and ditch, called a ringfort. More than 45,000 ringforts are known in Ireland, which makes them the most common ancient monument on the island. Most were lived in between about 600 and 900. Some families lived on crannogs instead. These were small islands, built by hand in lakes.

Ireland had no towns yet, but it had great monasteries. Christianity spread through the island in the fifth and sixth centuries. Monasteries grew into large communities, with churches, schools, workshops and farms. Saint Ciarán founded Clonmacnoise, on the River Shannon, in 544. Saint Kevin founded Glendalough, in the Wicklow Mountains, in the same century. Irish monks then carried their faith abroad. In 563 Columba sailed from Ireland and founded a monastery on Iona, in Scotland. The full story of the Irish church belongs to the history primer.

By the end of this age, Ireland was Gaelic in language and custom. Its people were, to a large degree, the same people who had lived there since the Bronze Age.

VIII. The Norse

The Vikings reached Ireland soon after they reached Britain. The first raid in the Irish records came in 795, on an island called Rechru. It was probably Rathlin, off the north coast, though some think it was Lambay, near Dublin. In the same year, raiders struck Inishbofin, off the west coast. These first raiders probably came from Norway.

At first, the raiders came in summer and sailed home. Their main targets were the rich monasteries, which held treasure, food and people. Around 820, the raids grew heavier. By the 830s, Viking fleets were sailing up the River Shannon, and they plundered Clonmacnoise. After about 832, the Vikings began to stay. They built fortified camps on the coast and along the rivers, where they kept their ships through the winter.

In 841, they built a camp at a place the Irish called Duiblinn, “the black pool”. This camp grew into Dublin. In 902, two Irish kings joined forces and drove the Norse out of Dublin. The Norse came back from 914 and retook the town in 917. In the ninth and tenth centuries, other Norse camps grew into towns at Waterford, Wexford, Cork and Limerick.

These were Ireland’s first real towns. Before the Norse, Ireland had monasteries and royal sites, but no trading towns. The Norse built them for trade by sea. Dublin traded in silver, cloth and goods from across the Viking world. It also traded in people. Under its Norse rulers, Dublin became the largest slave market in western Europe.

Over time, the Norse married into Irish families and became Christian. Historians call them the Hiberno-Norse, meaning the Irish Norse. The Irish also had a word for people of mixed Irish and Norse culture, Gall-Goídil, “the foreign Gaels”. The Irish records also speak of “fair foreigners” and “dark foreigners”. Later writers took these to mean Norwegians and Danes, but historians still disagree about what the names first meant.

The Norse brought new things into Irish life. In the 990s, Dublin’s king, Sigtrygg Silkbeard, set up the first mint in Ireland, and Dublin began to make its own silver coins. Around 1030, Sigtrygg founded Christ Church Cathedral. It was first built of wood. The stone cathedral that stands today was begun in the 1180s.

On 23 April 1014, the High King, Brian Boru, fought a great battle at Clontarf, near Dublin. Against him stood the king of Leinster, the Norse of Dublin, and Viking fleets from Orkney and the Isle of Man. Brian’s side won, but Brian was killed. The Norse towns survived, but they no longer had real power of their own. Historians still argue about what the battle was. Some see Irish against Vikings. Others see an Irish civil war, with Vikings fighting on both sides.

Studies of modern DNA find a Norse trace in Ireland, but a small one. The deeper mark of the Norse is in the towns they founded, and in place names. Wexford comes from the Old Norse for “the fjord of the mud flats”. Waterford comes from “the windy fjord”. Wicklow probably means “the Vikings’ meadow”. Dublin is the exception. Its name is Irish, from Duiblinn, the black pool.

The Irish in Iceland

Irish monks reached Iceland before the Norse. They sailed north to find lonely places to pray. In 825 the Irish scholar Dicuil wrote about monks who stayed on a northern island in 795. He called the island Thule. Most scholars think he meant Iceland. This is the same year as the first Norse raids on Ireland.

Icelanders later called these monks the papar. Ari the Wise wrote about them in the 1120s. He said the papar left when the Norse came. They would not live among heathens. Other Icelandic texts say they left behind Irish books, bells and croziers. No dig has yet proved that the papar lived in Iceland. Place names such as the island of Papey may recall them.

The Norse settled Iceland from about 870. Many came from Ireland and the Scottish isles. They brought Irish and Scottish people with them. Many of these people were slaves. An Icelandic book of settlers tells of Irish slaves who killed their master. They fled to islands off the south coast and were hunted down there. The islands are still called the Westman Islands. The Norse called the Irish Westmen. The book was written centuries later, so the story may not be true.

DNA tells a similar story. A study of twenty seven ancient skeletons looked at the first Icelanders. Their ancestry was a little over half Norse and the rest Irish or Scottish. Today Icelanders are about seventy percent Norse. Studies of living Icelanders show more Irish and Scottish ancestry through mothers than through fathers. Scholars think many of these women came as slaves or wives. How many came by choice is not known.

IX. The Normans

A King asks for help

In 1166 Diarmait Mac Murchada, the King of Leinster lost his kingdom. A group of Irish kings drove him out. Their leader was the High King, Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair.

Diarmait sailed to Bristol with his daughter Aoife. He went to find Henry II, King of England. Henry also ruled Normandy and much of western France. He allowed Diarmait to recruit men among his lords.

The first leaders to answer came from south Wales. They were Norman lords and knights whose families had taken land there. Historians call them Cambro-Normans. Their followers included Welsh archers, Flemings and English.

The first of them landed at Bannow Bay in Wexford, in May 1169. There were only a few hundred. With Diarmait’s men they took the Norse town of Wexford.

In August 1170 a larger force came. Its leader was Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow. He took Waterford by storm. There he married Aoife. In September his men took Dublin. Diarmait died in 1171, and Strongbow claimed Leinster becoming a Norman King in Ireland.

The King Arrives

Henry II did not want a Norman kingdom next door that he did not control. In October 1171 he landed near Waterford with a large army. He was the first King of England to set foot in Ireland. Many Irish kings submitted to him. The High King did not, at first.

Henry relied on a letter from Pope Adrian IV. It is known as Laudabiliter. It is said to give Henry the right to take Ireland and reform its church. No original survives. Historians still argue over whether it was genuine, forged or altered.

In 1175 Henry and the High King made a treaty at Windsor. Henry was lord of the Norman lands. Ruaidrí kept the rest as Henry’s vassal. The treaty broke down within a few years.

Henry gave Meath to Hugh de Lacy in 1172. In 1177 John de Courcy marched north and took east Ulster. In the same year Henry made his son John Lord of Ireland. The kings of England held that title until 1542. Then Henry VIII made himself King of Ireland.

Castles, towns and settlers

The Normans held their land with castles. The first were made of earth and timber. Stone came later. Trim Castle in Meath is the largest Norman castle in Ireland. Its stone keep was finished in the 1220s. Carrickfergus Castle guarded de Courcy’s lands in Ulster.

They also founded towns and markets. Kilkenny, Drogheda, New Ross and Galway grew under Norman lords. The old Norse towns passed to them too. In Dublin the Norse moved across the river. The area is still called Oxmantown, after these Ostmen, or men from the east.

Settlers followed the lords. Most were farmers and craftsmen from England and Wales. In south Wexford their descendants kept an old form of English, called Yola. It was spoken in Forth and Bargy until the 19th century.

Many Irish surnames come from this time. Fitzgerald, Burke, Butler, Barry, Power and Roche are Norman names. Walsh comes from the Irish Breatnach, which means Welsh.

More Irish than the Irish

The Norman lordship reached its greatest size around 1300. Then it shrank. In 1315 an army came from Scotland. Its leader was Edward Bruce, brother of King Robert the Bruce of Scotland. Scotland was at war with England. Irish kings in Ulster invited him and called him King of Ireland. Famine came at the same time. Bruce was killed in battle at Faughart in 1318. His army did not stay.. The Black Death arrived in 1348. It struck the crowded Norman towns harder than the Gaelic countryside.

Irish lords won back land. Many Norman families began to speak Irish. They took up Irish law and customs, married into Irish families and hired Irish poets. In 1366 the Statutes of Kilkenny tried to stop this. They banned settlers from using Irish language, law, custom and dress. The laws had little effect outside the towns.

People often say the Normans became “more Irish than the Irish themselves”. The saying is not medieval. It was written down centuries later.

By the late 1400s direct English rule covered only a small area around Dublin. It became known as the Pale. A law of 1494 ordered ditches dug along its edge. Parts of the bank and ditch still survive in south Dublin.

Warriors from the Isles

Not every newcomer came from England. In 1259 an Irish king received one hundred and sixty warriors from the Hebrides. This is the first record of the gallowglass. The Irish name, gallóglaigh, means foreign warriors. They came from the Hebrides and Argyll in Scotland. Many descended from Norse settlers who had married Gaels. Irish lords gave them land, and they stayed. MacSweeney and MacDonnell are gallowglass names.

What the Normans left

The Normans changed who held land and power. They left castles, towns and many family names. Their mark in Irish DNA is harder to see. The Irish DNA Atlas found clear traces of the Norse and of later British settlers. It did not report a separate Norman signal. This may be because most Norman settlers came from England and Wales. Their DNA is hard to tell apart from that of earlier arrivals from Britain.

X. The Plantations

Planting people

In the 1500s the English crown set out to rule all of Ireland. Its main tool was plantation. Land was taken from Irish lords who rebelled. Then it was given to settlers loyal to the crown. They were to be English speakers. Later they were also meant to be Protestants. The word comes from planting people, the way trees are planted.

The first plantations

The first came in 1556, under Queen Mary. Land was taken from the O’Moores and the O’Connors in the midlands. Two new counties were made, Queen’s County and King’s County. Today they are Laois and Offaly. The settlers stayed close to the forts, and the plan mostly failed.

Munster came next. The Earls of Desmond were a great Norman family, the Fitzgeralds. They rebelled twice against the crown. The second rising ended in 1583. Their lands were surveyed and given to English settlers from 1586. Walter Raleigh and the poet Edmund Spenser were among the new landlords. By 1598 about four thousand English lived on these lands. That year war drove most of them out. The plantation was rebuilt after 1603.

Ulster

Ulster was the most Gaelic province. Its great lords were O’Neill and O’Donnell. They fought England in the Nine Years’ War. They lost at Kinsale in 1601 and made peace in 1603. In 1607 they sailed for Europe and never came back. This is called the Flight of the Earls. The crown took their lands.

The official plantation began in 1609. It covered six counties: Armagh, Cavan, Donegal, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone. The City of London paid for part of it. In return it received Derry, which was renamed Londonderry. Antrim and Down were not part of the official plan. Private landlords had already brought Scots there from 1606.

The settlers came mostly from the Scottish Lowlands and the north of England. A survey in 1622 counted about six thousand four hundred British men on the plantation lands. By the 1630s there may have been about eighty thousand settlers. Many more came later. In the 1690s famine struck Scotland. Up to fifty thousand Scots arrived between 1690 and 1710.

The Irish were not driven out of Ulster. Most stayed as tenants and labourers, often on poorer land. The two groups lived side by side but seldom mixed. Religion, language and land divided them.

The settlers brought their own speech and churches. Lowland Scots speech grew into Ulster Scots. It is still spoken in parts of Antrim, Down and Donegal. The Scots also brought the Presbyterian church.

Rebellion, Cromwell and a new order

In 1641 the Irish of Ulster rose against the settlers. About four thousand settlers were killed and many more were driven out. Reports at the time gave far higher numbers. Historians still debate the true figure. War then spread across Ireland.

In 1649 Oliver Cromwell landed with an English army. The war ended in 1653. War, famine and plague killed a large share of the people. Estimates of the loss vary widely.

A law of 1652 took most of the land still held by Catholics. Soldiers and investors were paid in Irish land. Catholic landowners were ordered west, to Connacht and Clare. Irish memory sums this up as “to Hell or to Connacht”. Historians doubt the government ever used those words. In practice most Catholics stayed where they were, as tenants. About seven thousand five hundred soldiers settled on the land.

The change in ownership was huge. Studies give different figures for 1641. Catholics then owned somewhere between two fifths and three fifths of the land. By 1703 they owned about one seventh.

Smaller groups

Other Protestants came as well. French Huguenots fled persecution at home. Many settled in Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Portarlington. In Lisburn they helped build the linen trade. In 1709 German refugees from the Palatinate arrived. More than one hundred and thirty families settled near Rathkeale in Limerick. Half or more of the Palatines later left for America.

Leaving again

Many descendants of the settlers did not stay. In the 1700s Ulster Presbyterians left in large numbers. Most sailed for the American colonies, landing at Philadelphia and further south. Estimates vary, but perhaps one hundred thousand left between 1717 and 1775. In America they became known as the Scotch-Irish.

After 1815 more sailed to British North America, now Canada. The fare there was cheaper than to New York. Until the 1830s most Irish arrivals in Canada were Protestants, many from Ulster. They settled in Upper Canada, now Ontario, and in the Maritime colonies, such as New Brunswick. Many later moved on to the United States.

What the plantations left

The plantations changed who owned Ireland. In the north they also changed who lived there. The Irish DNA Atlas found groups of people in the north with ancestry shared with Britain. Its authors link these groups to the Ulster Plantations.

The divide between settler and native shaped the history of Ulster. Some historians see it as a deep cause of the partition of Ireland in 1921. Others say steady migration from nearby Scotland mattered as much as the plantation itself.

XI. Where everyone stands

The peopling of Ireland ended with the plantations. No army has conquered the island since. Each group in this post left something behind.

The first hunters left little. The first farmers and the Bronze Age newcomers left much more. Most Irish people today descend mainly from them. The Gaels gave Ireland its language and its kingdoms. The Norse left towns and a trace in the DNA. The Normans left castles, towns and family names. The planters changed the north most of all.

The Irish DNA Atlas, a study from 2017, shows these layers. Most Irish people share deep local roots. On top of them sit smaller traces. One looks like western Norway, probably from the Vikings. Another, in the north, is shared with Britain and linked to the plantations.

Emigration

For two centuries the main movement was out of Ireland, not into it.

It began before the famine. In the 1700s Ulster Presbyterians sailed to America. In the 1820s poor Catholics left from Cork. In 1825 about two thousand of them sailed to Upper Canada, led by Peter Robinson. Their settlement became the town of Peterborough, in Ontario, named after him.

Newfoundland drew the Irish even earlier. From the mid 1700s, fishermen from the south east of Ireland came for the cod. By the 1780s they were the largest group around St. John’s. Many of them spoke Irish. Newfoundland even has an Irish name, Talamh an Éisc, the Land of the Fish. The language died out in the early 20th century, but traces remain. Place names such as Kilbride and Skibbereen come from Irish. Their descendants still live along the Irish Loop on the Avalon Peninsula, which we drove in 2024.

Then came the Great Famine. In 1841 Ireland had about eight point two million people. Most of the poor lived on potatoes. In 1845 a disease called blight struck the crop. In 1846 almost the whole crop failed. The blight came back in later years, and the famine lasted until 1852. About one million people died. More than a million left. Historians still debate the exact numbers.

In 1847 alone, over one hundred thousand emigrants sailed to Quebec. Most were Irish. More than five thousand died at sea. Another five thousand four hundred are buried at Grosse Île. This island in the St. Lawrence River was the quarantine station. In New Brunswick the quarantine station was Partridge Island, off Saint John. Six hundred and one Irish are buried there.

Emigration went on long after the famine. Most people went to Britain and the United States. By 1911 Ireland had only about four point four million people. That is little more than half the number of 1841.

The Irish were not the only Gaels to cross the ocean. From 1773 Highland Scots settled Cape Breton, in Nova Scotia. Their Gaelic language first came to Scotland from Ireland, with the people of Dál Riata. At Baile nan Gàidheal, the Highland Village in Iona, this way of life is kept alive. We visited it in 2024.

Two Countries in One Island

In 1921 the island was divided into two states. The roots of the division go back to the plantations. They left a large Protestant community in the north east. Most of its people wanted to stay part of Britain. Most people in the rest of Ireland wanted their own state.

Northern Ireland was formed from six of the nine counties of Ulster. In these six, the Protestant community was the majority. Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan had Catholic majorities and went with the south. The rest of the island became the Irish Free State, and later the Republic of Ireland.

Today the Republic has about five and a half million people. Northern Ireland has about one point nine million. Together that is about seven point four million. The island has still not returned to its population of 1841.

Irish Travellers

Irish Travellers are a small community with their own way of life. For centuries many of them moved from place to place. They worked as tinsmiths, horse dealers and traders. Most live in houses today, but they keep their own customs and close family ties. Many also speak their own language, called Shelta. It mixes Irish and English.

About thirty three thousand Travellers live in the Republic. They are Irish by origin, not newcomers. For a long time many people believed the famine had driven them onto the roads. A DNA study in 2017 showed this is not true. Travellers began to separate from other Irish people about three hundred and sixty years ago, long before the famine. In 2017 the state recognised them as an ethnic group.

Ireland now also draws people in from abroad. In 2022 about one in eight people in the Republic held another country’s citizenship. Many Irish emigrants also come home.

English is the everyday language almost everywhere. Irish lives on in the Gaeltacht, mainly along the west coast. In 2022 about one point nine million people said they could speak Irish. About seventy two thousand used it every day outside school.

Where to see them: sites and museums

These places tell the story from the coming of Christianity to the great emigration. Our first list covered the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages.

• Ogham stones and the Roman edge
  Dunloe Ogham Stones, County Kerry. A row of Ogham stones near the Gap of Dunloe. The marks along the edges are Ireland’s earliest writing.
  
• The Coleraine Hoard. Over one thousand seven hundred Roman silver coins with silver ingots and cut silver, buried in the early 400s. It was found near Coleraine in 1854. Part is in the Ulster Museum in Belfast and part in the British Museum in London.
  
• Saints and monasteries
  Glendalough, County Wicklow. The monastery of Saint Kevin, with a round tower in a deep glacial valley.
  Clonmacnoise, County Offaly. Ciarán’s monastery on the River Shannon, with high crosses and round towers.
  Skellig Michael, County Kerry. Stone beehive huts on a rock in the Atlantic. Boats run only in summer and in good weather.
  Monasterboice, County Louth. Some of the finest high crosses in Ireland, carved with Bible scenes.
  The Book of Kells, Trinity College Dublin. A Gospel book made by monks around 800, probably begun on Iona.
  The Rock of Cashel, County Tipperary. The old seat of the kings of Munster, later given to the church.
  
• The Norse
  Dublinia, Dublin. A museum of Viking and medieval Dublin, beside Christ Church Cathedral.
  National Museum of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin. Its Viking Ireland gallery shows finds from Viking Dublin.
  Reginald’s Tower, Waterford. A Norman tower that stands where a Viking fort once stood. It now houses the Waterford Viking Museum.
  
• The Normans
  Trim Castle, County Meath. The largest Norman castle in Ireland, begun by Hugh de Lacy in 1172.
  Carrickfergus Castle, County Antrim. John de Courcy’s stronghold on Belfast Lough.
  Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. First built in wood around 1030 under a Norse king, then rebuilt in stone from the 1180s.
  Kilkenny. A Norman town, where the Statutes of Kilkenny were passed in 1366.
  The plantations
  The Walls of Derry. Built by the settlers between 1613 and 1619. Visitors can walk the whole circuit.
  Tully Castle, County Fermanagh. A plantation house inside a walled yard, built by a Scottish planter from 1612. It was burned in 1641 and never lived in again.
  
• Emigration
  National Famine Museum, Strokestown Park, County Roscommon. It tells the story of one estate in the famine. In 1847 one thousand four hundred and ninety of its tenants were sent away. The National Famine Way follows their route on foot to Dublin.
  EPIC, the Irish Emigration Museum, Dublin. The story of the Irish who left, and what they did abroad.
  Dunbrody Famine Ship, New Ross, County Wexford. A copy of an 1840s emigrant ship.
  Cobh Heritage Centre, County Cork. Cobh, once called Queenstown, was a major port of departure.
  
• Across the Atlantic
  The Irish Loop, Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland. Outports settled by Irish fishing families from the 1700s.
  Grosse Île, Quebec. The quarantine island of 1847. More than five thousand Irish emigrants are buried here.
  Partridge Island, Saint John, New Brunswick. The quarantine station where six hundred and one Irish were buried in 1847.
  Baile nan Gàidheal, the Highland Village, Iona, Cape Breton. The Gaelic way of life of Scottish settlers. Their language first came to Scotland from Ireland.

For a short trip: Glendalough, Trim Castle, Dublinia and Strokestown cover most of this post in a few days.