ABSTRACT
Although saints’ lives and other monastic sources have occasional references to ships and trade and certain of the larger monasteries such as Armagh and Kildare may have functioned as proto-towns, it was the Vikings who established the first towns and ports in Ireland. Beginning in the ninth century with their longphoirt, “fortified enclosures protecting their ships,” in County Louth and at Dublin, they expanded to become permanent settlements and centres of trade in the tenth century. Carrickfergus, Carlingford, Drogheda, Dublin, Wicklow, Arklow, and Wexford were ideally placed along the east coast of the Irish Sea to benefit from the traffic on the trade route from Scandinavia and the northern isles to England and the continent. The excavations of Viking Dublin show a thriving city of merchants and craftsmen in wood, metal, bone, and cloth who manufactured goods which they traded locally and abroad. Evidence of finds also suggests that food supplies in particular came from the local Irish, but perhaps the smaller Viking settlements to the north and south also shipped food and fuel supplies to Dublin.
