Yose, Joseph and Kenna, R. and MacCarron, Máirín and MacCarron, Pádraig
(2017)
Network Analysis of
the Viking Age in Ireland
as portrayed in
Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh.
Royal Society Open Science.
ISSN 2054-5703
Abstract
Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh (“The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill”) is
a medieval Irish text, telling how an army under the leadership of Brian Boru
challenged Viking invaders and their allies in Ireland, culminating with the Battle of
Clontarf in 1014. Brian’s victory is widely remembered for breaking Viking power in
Ireland, although much modern scholarship disputes traditional perceptions. Instead
of an international conflict between Irish and Viking, interpretations based on
revisionist scholarship consider it a domestic feud or civil war. Counter-revisionists
challenge this view and a lively debate continues. Here we introduce quantitative
measures to the discussions. We present statistical analyses of network data
embedded in the text to position its sets of interactions on a spectrum from the
domestic to the international. This delivers a picture that lies between antipodal
traditional and revisionist extremes; hostilities recorded in the text are mostly
between Irish and Viking - but internal conflict forms a significant proportion of
the negative interactions too. Additionally, we quantitatively compare the network
properties of Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh to those of other epic-type narratives and
find that, in many ways, they resemble those of the Iliad.
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