S13E01

Welcome to Echoes of History, the place to explore the rich stories from the past that bring the world of Assassin's Creed to life. I'm Matt Lewis. Over the past six episodes, we've put ourselves in the 18th century and examined some of the moments and people who shaped an age of revolution. In this sequence of episodes, we're turning the clock back a millennium to the Viking Age, the setting of Assassin's Creed Valhalla. We'll assess the impact of the Vikings on the Gaelic-speaking world. Today, we'll meet one man in particular who dealt with the Vikings in the Emerald Isle, Fland Shinner, High King of Ireland. The hill is swarming with people. Not just any people. They wear the opulent garb of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the land. The softest cloth. The brightest gold. The rarest colours. Kings and their retinues are gathered here, and are in their finery. You've never seen so much royalty in one place. Not peacefully, anyway. If the elite gathering weren't enough of a clue that this is a special place, at the centre of the crowd is a giant stone pillar, the tallest you've ever seen. From it, stretch drapes of many colours, forming a festive scene. In front of the pillar is an empty throne. After taking a moment to find the right words in the native tongue, you whisper questions to the nearest person in the crowd. They seem astonished by your ignorance until they observe that you are a foreigner. With a look of condescension, they give you a terse answer. Lea foil, they say. You translate in your head. The stone of destiny. Does the stone foretell fate? Who's the person who will sit in that throne? If so, where are they? Suddenly, the crowd stands to attention. You follow the gaze of everyone around you to a break in the crowd. A man walks through it. Tall and dignified, he cuts an imposing figure. He carries himself with the confidence of a strong leader. A distinctive scar on his face indicates that he's seen warfare. Looking at his broad shoulders, you can easily imagine the power of his strike. The glint in his eye suggests a mighty, ruthless cunning. The man sits on the throne. A bishop brings a crown and places it on his head. A bard plays a haunting melody on the lyre. Holy words are said, and when the prayers are concluded, the man stands up and walks to the pillar. He firmly places his feet in a particular spot and carefully places his hands on the stone of destiny, as if he might cause a fence, if he's shifted, even an inch. The person next to you mutters something. In translation, you think they said, speaking stone. That doesn't make sense. You must have misheard it. Yet the whole crowd has fallen utterly silent. The bard has stopped singing. Everyone is listening. Before too long has passed, the priest raises his hands and cries out praise to almighty God and the high king of Ireland. The crowd erupts into cheers. The man at the stone, the king, smiles and waves. As the party really begins, you're distracted. You mull over the same questions. The high king of Ireland, a king of kings. What must a man be like to achieve such greatness? And what must he do to keep it? Looking back at your new high king with his daunting physique and clever eyes, you shudder to contemplate the answers. This is how Flan Shinner is introduced to us in Assassin's Creed Valhalla. I'd like to know more about him and the high kingship of Ireland. To answer my many questions, I'm joined by medieval history and literature expert Professor Moira Nivoyna. She's currently working on a project with the Leverhulme Trust on landscape literature in medieval Ireland called Dinhenukus. Between now and 2026, it will reveal how many places got their names and the relationship of medieval peoples to their environment. Welcome to Echoes of History, Moira. It's fantastic to have you with us. It's very, very nice to be here. Thank you very much, Matt. I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into this as well. There's loads I don't know about this, so I'm really keen to find out more. I guess to set the scene for us, we're talking about Ireland around about the 9th century. Can you give us a sense of the political structure of Ireland? What did it look like around the 9th century? Absolutely. Of course, there's a lot we don't know, but I suppose if we think about the map of Ireland, we can certainly think about big territorial groupings like we still know today in terms of there are references to, I suppose, what we would call provinces. The term in Irish is a fifth because there's a reference to, you know, Leinster, Munster, Connacht in the West, the Olleid or Ulster in the North. But there's also reference to a place in the middle called Midde and the term actually means Midde. Sometimes people kind of associated with the area kind of around Meath, Westmeath today. But I suppose really what we're talking about in terms of kind of political structures are a large number of kingdoms, dynastically, if kind of affiliated to one another. And we don't know how many kingdoms, I mean, Frances John Byrne about 50 years ago suggested that there might have been about 150 at a slightly earlier period. But it really is impossible to say. But we do have, you know, reference to lots and lots of kingdoms. So in Leinster, for example, there would have been groups like Yenschle, Gihonwinger, the Inelier, the O'Neill were very, very important. In the north of the country, in the south of the country, we have a confederation of groups called the O'Hmachte, we have the Yves-Jou and the Yee-Yee-Hroc. So we have from kind of analytic sources and other types of sources, lots and lots of different names. So we know that there would have been lots of competing and competing groupings. But I say this kind of overarching provincial structure, there is also a kind of a reference to that. And it becomes more important as time progresses. Do we have any sense of how those kingdoms were ruled, how kings were appointed? Was it hereditary or was power seized quite often? I think military might was very, very important. It wasn't officially hereditary. But what's interesting, again, if we look at the historical sources, what's interesting is how often that, you know, a son succeeded a king directly. But I think, you know, what that indicates to us is that the closer you were to the centre of power, the more likely it was that you would be able to succeed. Because, of course, you could take over, you know, the power base of your closest relative. So, you know, military might was undoubtedly very, very important, how you curbed your enemies, but also how you kind of kept control over your, over those closest to you, and particularly, you know, your siblings or maybe, you know, your cousins who also would have been wanting power. And there were various ways of doing that. So we have references, for example, to, you know, perhaps sending, you know, sending your brother off to become an abbot in a church or whatever. So kind of giving him an important position, but obviously one that took him away from the kind of the centre where he might be kind of attacking you. But also there's an awful lot, as well as military might, there's an awful lot of, you know, political strategy going on. So we have references to kind of different kinds of political strategic alliances at particular times. We also have references to marital alliances that played a really, really important part. Fostering children could also be a way of if you fostered or if you sent, you know, one of your children to be fostered with another dynasty. Again, that was a way of kind of creating a link between dynasties. So all of these kinds of all of these kinds of approaches were, you know, really political kind of manoeuvres. But I suppose the other thing to say is that, you know, while the sword was really, really important, the pen was also very important. So again, you know, medieval Ireland was a society that had lots and lots of writing. So in effect, propaganda, you know, king lists, genealogies, writing origin legends after the event, obviously, the kind of, you know, put your own group to the fore, you know, writing that was also that was also important. So there were various ways of maintaining power and indeed getting to power in the first place. Now, I think there's always a temptation to view societies everywhere around this time as solely based on military might. But that's only ever it's a significant piece in the jigsaw, but it's only ever really one piece, isn't it? There is always so much politics going on and, as you say, propaganda, myth building and all of those kinds of things that help maintain a family in power. And also, I suppose the other thing is, of course, our sources are biased in favour of particular types of evidence. So, for example, you know, Chronicles, Analystic sources that gives that give us lists of kind of what they would consider to be, you know, the most important kind of events. You know, they talk about the deaths of kings, the deaths of kind of churchmen, and they talk about significant battles. But of course, the kind of, you know, they don't give us they don't give us the same kind of information about other types of evidence. So sometimes we have to read between the lines to kind of get the nuanced picture. And so then do we see Ireland over a period of time consolidating those many, many, many kingdoms into sort of slightly larger ones, not dissimilar, I guess, to what's going on in England with the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms eventually consolidating into the heptarchy? Yeah, no, it is very, very, very similar. So even the terminology of kingship kind of gives us some education of that, because if we go back, you know, a little bit before the ninth century, if we think about seventh and eighth centuries where we have, you know, a really rich corpus of legal material and there are references there to a king of a Tawoth. And a Tawoth is a particular policy over which a king would rule. But in addition, then we have references to various kings of these Tawotha, and the plural, various kings of these Tawotha allying and coming together. And there's a term then for a slightly bigger king who was a king of a number of these, and so on and so forth. So I suppose the terminology would give us indication of some kind of hierarchy, and I suppose the existence of some kind of layer of over kings, but really increased territorial expansion, you know, greater kind of political power, you know, really significant kind of over kingships that we might think about in terms of provincial kingships. In that context, we have to wait until about the 10th or 11th centuries. So there's certainly a move towards, you know, increasing might, increasing power. But that, of course, would have brought with it, you know, you needed a kind of a greater standing army then because you needed to kind of control places that were much further away. You probably also needed then a kind of a more complex administration at home because if you had to go away for longer periods and further away in order to control those places that were much farther from your own kind of locality. Again, so I suppose all of that, you know, all of those changes in terms of the kind of administrative context in terms of armies and things, that's very, very gradual. So I suppose it's really the kind of the 10th, 11th centuries where we can think about large over kings, but we're certainly moving in that direction in the ninth century where you're starting here. Yeah, it's all right being good on the battlefield, but you've got to have a good admin behind you as well. Not least to kind of keep the home crew in check. And I guess when we think about Gaelic societies, we quite often think about the idea of clans. Was there a clan structure in Ireland and how did that sit with the kingships? Was it kind of the same thing as the kingships? There were certainly dynastic groupings and of course clan, as you know, is a Gaelic word. It still means kind of offspring descendants today. And the word was also used for some political groupings. So there's a very famous grouping, the Clanchena belongs to Claung, which is the word for clan, Claung Holmaung. But there were other words used as well. So, for example, the O'Neill's, that goes back to a word which means descendant of. There are other kinds of words used again for particular groupings like canal, which again means kindred or shil, which is a word for seed. So certainly, again, in this kind of period, the focus does seem to be on kind of dynastic groupings that are related to one another that come from the same kind of ancestor. And of course, very often those ancestors would have then been built up often through kind of propaganda and literary texts into somebody, you know, a glorified ancestor that you really kind of wanted to descend from. But interestingly, when we look at the earlier stage of the language and when we look at the words there concerned with kind of population groups, they don't seem to focus on that kind of link as much. So one of them, for example, is a type of word that ends in righa or AIGE. So Kerry today, for example, down in the southwest of the country, that comes from a term kihrigha. So the kind of this collective kind of word. And that doesn't seem to have the same kind of affiliation. So what's interesting there is, of course, that the change in terminology does cast light on the nature of the different kind of groupings. But in terms of whether these groupings were the same as kingdoms, well, each of these groupings would, of course, have had their own king. But then it's how they group together, how they come together in larger conglomerations, then the king of that larger group would have been a different one. You mentioned the name flanshinna then. And part of the reason that we're doing this episode in Ireland is that an expansion to Assassin's Creed Valhalla allows players to travel to Ireland in the year 879 to witness the inauguration of flanshinna as the new High King of Ireland. What do we know about flanhinna in his life? Where does he come from? How does he emerge as this High King figure? Well, I suppose he was born into a very, very powerful family, and that always helps. You know, his father, a man called Mwelsachmal, and a very, very powerful king in his own right, and somebody who was called King of Tara, he had died in about 862. And he belonged to this clan Holmaughn branch of a kind of a subgroup of the O'Meeals, the southern Inel. And what's interesting, though, is that flan doesn't seem to have he doesn't seem to have succeeded to his father immediately. So again, what the sources would indicate is there was some kind of power struggle in the 860s. So he certainly didn't have it easy. Again, when we look at Kingless, they certainly mention other names. We know that flan probably had to contend certainly with cousins. So we get a reference to flanhinna killing one of his cousins. And then he seems to have kind of come to power after that. So there was something of a kind of a shaky, a shaky start. And then, of course, he had to kind of keep control, not just over his own branch of the Inel. So this clan Holmaughn group. But he also had, of course, to kind of keep control over and keep control or at least keep on side with his nearest neighbors as well. So, you know, we get references, as I say, in sources to some kind of political grappling. We also know that he pursued politically kind of directed, should we say, kind of marital alliances, not just for himself, but also for his children in due course. So, you know, he had a fairly typical career up to 879, the date you mentioned, as was the difference. What really happened in 879 that then propelled him to kind of a different dimension was that in 879, a man called a king called Aeth Finlya. And he was of the northern Inel dynasty. So he was from the other kind of sub branch of the Inel. And he was definitely the kind of the most powerful O'Neill ruler at the time. And indeed, he was the most powerful ruler in the country at the time. He died and that, of course, then gave Flan the kind of the opening to move into a different kind of sphere. Yeah, fascinating. So he sort of murdered, potentially murdered his way to power, got to the top of the family, and then he's ended up on the brink of taking this role of hiking of Ireland. Can you give us a sense of what the hiking was, what it meant to be hiking? Are you then effectively in charge of all of Ireland? No, is the simple answer. And I suppose, you know, on some level, we need to kind of problematize the whole concept of hiking ship, because it's not a role, it's not an institution, it's not something to which you kind of aspired or indeed, which was then bestowed upon you. And indeed, you know, there are very few references to the term High King. There is a term, you know, High King or Great King in contemporary sources, but it doesn't at all seem to indicate, you know, somebody who would then have control over the whole country. It simply didn't work like that. I mean, I suppose really what it is is a kind of an aspirational title. You know, if somebody calls themselves Ordrí, which is the word for High King, or indeed the synonymous and indeed more frequently used title King of Tara, if somebody call themselves King of Tara or as I say, Ordrí, then in effect, you know, they were proclaiming that they considered themselves to be the most powerful king in Ireland in their day. But that's about as much as it was. And of course, you're only as powerful as your most recent battle or your most recent kind of propaganda, you know, propaganda text or whatever. So, you know, it didn't at all convey any kind of sense of power over the whole country. And indeed, you know, in effect, all of these people who are called either Kings of Tara or High Kings, what we see them having to do all the time is travel to various places, try to keep control over various groupings. So I think, you know, what it later became or what we understand under the kind of the concept of High Kingship, it's very, very far from the reality. I love the idea that it's almost like one of those made up job titles that someone's given themselves to try and make them sound more important than they are. You mentioned the Hill of Tara then, so or being King of Tara, and I know the Hill of Tara is an important place during this period. Can you just give us a sense of what the Hill of Tara is, where it is and what it meant to Irish people during this period, please? Yeah, no, absolutely. I've been delighted to. So Tara is in the Boyne Valley. So it's just this most wonderfully kind of lush, fertile plain, you know, a little bit north and west of Dublin, as I say, counties, Meath and Westmeath today are really where the kind of the Boyne Valley is. We know that in the prehistoric period. So when we go back much further than the period we're talking about today, we know that in the prehistoric period, it was an important center. There's lots of archaeological evidence that it was a key place in the prehistoric period. And there's some sense that it was a sacral center, a kind of a sacred center that was involved, that it was associated with ritual. And when we come to think about it in the eighth and ninth, tenth centuries, I think what we have to imagine is that that kind of earlier association as a kind of a sacred landscape with indeed kind of sacred kingship, that that had survived. And I suppose, you know, what our, you know, ninth and tenth century kind of kings are doing is trying to kind of play into that, trying to kind of get some of that notion of that kind of sacrality, as it were, for themselves. So they're very much by kind of associating themselves with Tara. What they're doing is kind of, I suppose, wanting to link themselves in with the authority that it was perceived that Tara had had for a long, long period. So, you know, there's a lot of kind of ceremonial association with it. So it's certainly not that Tara was a kind of a thriving, vibrant center of kingship at the time of flanchino, indeed, these other these other kings, but was associated with kingship. And I suppose this kind of mystique of Tara had grown up, but actually had also been deliberately cultivated, because, of course, if you want to kind of, you know, if you want to suggest that your authority, that your kind of sacrality goes back into the dim and distant past, then you write stories and you give an account of Tara that kind of highlights its kind of association with kingship. So in a way, you know, just going there, I think, you know, if we go there today, I think we have to think that, you know, people in the ninth century would have had a kind of a similar kind of experience. It's a hugely atmospheric place. As I say, it's, you know, it's a hill. So it looks out, it has this most incredible view. So you can immediately imagine why it would have been a place of strategic importance at one point. But as I say, we're talking about the prehistoric period. And, you know, there is evidence on the. So there are archaeological, you know, archaeological excavations have shown. Indeed, you can see some kind of structures on the ground, but you don't get a sense, I think, of, you know, the once bustling kind of center it would have been in the prehistoric period. But that would have been true for ninth century contemporaries as well. So it was much more the kind of the ceremonial nature of it. I think that would would have been important in the time, say, of flanshinna. Yeah, I've had the absolute pleasure of going to the Hill of Tara. It's an incredible location to visit. I think the fact that I heard was on a clear day, you can see something like two thirds of the landmass of the island of Ireland from the top of the Hill of Tara. You know, you can see just so far is an incredible experience to be there. And you get the impression that it's one of those places where people would feel this connection to ancestry to the past. So it's not that it's a massive castle. It's not that it's some huge seat of power, but it's this connection to everything that has gone before the kind of the memories that linger in that landscape of what's really important. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it is hugely, you know, it's a hugely moving place, actually, when you when you go there, as you've as you've absolutely rightly articulated, but not in the sense of kind of, you know, big, big buildings or the like. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. And there is the Irish stone of destiny there, too. Would that have been there at the time of flanshinna, too? Again, you know, in effect, that's something that's kind of very much constructed in literary texts as as this kind of stone that spoke when the rightful king approached it. But again, that's very much part of this focus on authority. You know, again, another sign or symbol, you know, reassuring people, as it were, in various different ways that they've chosen wisely or indeed the person who's imposed themselves upon them as king isn't isn't so bad. But again, you know, these are you know, these are literary tropes. They're kind of, you know, symbols. You know, they have a kind of a function in the kind of the literature of kingship in the in the paraphernalia of kingship. But whether it was there or not, we simply can't say it's a lovely story. And indeed, there's, you know, the reference to, you know, the reference to the stone is kind of so prevalent in quite a lot of texts and kind of appears in different ways. And the stone kind of moving apart to let a king, the right-wing king to go through it. But these are all that's associated with kings, obviously, in the in the dim and distant past. For what it's worth, I tried most of those things and it turns out I'm definitely not the high king of Ireland. So never mind. It was worth a go. Are there other aspects or elements or places connected to the idea of kit hiking ship to? Yeah, absolutely. So again, in that same kind of landscape, not actually not actually too far from Tara, and you may indeed have visited as well when you were there is a place called Tell Town, Paltu in Irish, and there's a reference in these contemporary sources in the 9th and 10th century, there are references to rituals. So there's a reference to a fish or a feast, literally a kind of a celebration of Tara, but there's also a reference to Aya Moghar, a kind of a gathering at Tell Town. And these two places then would have been very, very significant places of ritual associated with the kingship of Tara. And, you know, again, if we go back to Flanshina that your listeners might be interested in, and we have reference to Flanshina holding this Aya Moghtaalchen, this kind of gathering of Tell Town. And what seems to have been involved there is it was kind of like, you know, a powerful king gathering all of his subjects kind of together. And again, we have some references in various texts that kind of give us an indication of the kinds of things that might have gone on there. Certainly political decisions might have been taken. There might have been kind of argy-bargy in terms of laws. There would have been a lot of kind of social interaction, trading, you know, music, that kind of that kind of thing. So it seems to have been, you know, a public kind of communal gathering. And of course, the way it's presented in the sources is that by holding the gathering of Thaltu, as it were, or the Feast of Tara, a king was showing his kind of power and was in effect, you know, proving that he was the rightful king because he could gather together these people. And what's interesting is, Flanshina, we know there's reference to him holding this gathering, but his predecessor, A. Finlias, in some of the chronicles, we get kind of marmoorings and kind of marmoorings of complaint. I hope I'm not kind of exaggerating there, but at least kind of marmoorings that he should have been holding this gathering and he wasn't. So, you know, it had kind of ritualistic significance, but it was also a kind of a practical thing. And kings, you know, kings needed to associate themselves with these occasions, with these celebrations, again, that are presented as going back into the dim and distant past. So again, by holding them, then a king would have been kind of associating himself with kind of glorious predecessors and in a way, you know, showing that he too had this kind of authority. So those are the two that are most frequently mentioned in this period, this Ayamocht, this gathering of Thaltao and the Feast of Tara. Fascinating. And so for Flanshina, for example, having had himself inaugurated as High King of Ireland, what does that actually mean for his role? How much power does he really have and what do people expect from him in that position? I suppose even the whole concept of inauguration is a kind of a, you know, is a difficult one. I mean, he certainly, as I say, you know, took power upon himself, but was, you know, really a very good kind of political strategist. I mean, people would certainly have assumed that he took care of them, as it were, in a kind of a more general sense. I mean, there was a kind of an ideology of kingship in that, you know, in the literary text, the kind of the tropes that are highlighted again and again is that if the rightful king is ruling, then basically, you know, everything is incredibly fertile and, you know, wheat grows and, you know, there's masses of honey and the cows give as much milk as you could possibly want. So there is this very kind of close association between good kingship and the fertility of the land. That's a literary trope. But of course, we can assume that what lies behind it is that people expected that if their king was doing the right thing, that that would be reflected in their everyday lives, that there would be kind of plenty. So we can, you know, assume that what people would want of a powerful king is for their lives to be, you know, comfortable, regulated, all that. Of course, the reality is that even kings as powerful as Flanshinna had to make sure that they retained their power. I mean, towards the end of Flanshinna's life, for example, we get reference to him having to contend with some of his sons who I suppose were getting restless for their own kind of turn at it. So again, you know, while he might have wanted to kind of, you know, he succeeded as the most powerful king in the country when a Finliet died, but that wasn't the end of the matter. He couldn't just rest on his laurels then. He, you know, kept having to kind of come back, make sure that, you know, various groups were kept in check and the like. Sounds like he had a pretty rough time from his own family, which seems like a trope in kingship, doesn't it? The sons are always the biggest problem. Do we have a sense then of whether Flanshinna was a good high king? Is he remembered as a good high king, a strong high king? I think the very fact that we have a reasonable amount of information concerning him would suggest that, yes, I mean, he inherited power. He also then kind of passed on power and he was part of, you know, a really very, very authoritative dynasty. So, yes, I think he would be seen as somebody who, you know, played his part in the lore of of that particular dynasty, as somebody who was authoritative and in control. Clearly he had his setbacks, but I think he would have been, you know, he wasn't unusual, but he would have been seen as somebody who was relatively, relatively powerful. And, you know, they didn't try to they didn't try to disown him when they kind of, you know, went on. Indeed, quite the contrary. Sometimes he was kind of, you know, exalted. And was there any particular religious significance to the position of the high king too? So, you know, Ireland famously referred to frequently as the land of saints and scholars. St. Patrick has bought Christianity over there a couple of centuries, a few centuries earlier. And this is a church that grows up sort of separate to the Roman traditions. Does the high king have a role to play in the religious life of Ireland? I think I suppose the starting point is that there's a very, very close connection between secular and ecclesiastical power. There's no doubt that the kings used the church, you know, for their own kind of political ends. But of course, the church got a lot out of kings as well. I mean, even, you know, even the very kind of land that monasteries were kind of built on or whatever, you know, would have been bestowed by particular kings. So I think in kind of modern times, we think very much of a kind of a clear division between kind of church and state. But as you know, that wasn't the case at all. They were very much interconnected. I think in terms of, you know, being the most powerful king in Ireland, I think what's interesting in that regard is that really, really powerful kings often aligned themselves with the Church of Armagh, because, of course, the Church of Armagh, which was, of course, Patrick's church, the Church of Armagh very, very early, established itself as something of a kind of a Church of all Ireland. I mean, Patrick, as he's constructed by his kind of later biographies, biographers, I should say, was meant to kind of go around the country and, you know, in effect, link various churches together. So I suppose if Armagh had this at least this kind of aura of being an all-Ireland church, one can imagine that kind of very powerful kings by linking themselves to Armagh, then they wanted to kind of, you know, at least give the impression that they too might have been kings across the across the country. I mean, Flanshin and the O'Neill's, of course, they were very close to Armagh was, you know, in their territorial kind of hatches that were. But we see that happening with monster kings as well. So, for example, Brian Baruch in the 10th century, he died in the early 11th. He's somebody who's, you know, his own kind of territorial patches very, very far south. He's a monster king, but he aligns himself with Armagh. And again, the reason is that he absolutely, you know, wants to be perceived as the most powerful king in Ireland in his day. So we can very much see kings and ecclesiastics and powerful ecclesiastics kind of working hand in hand. But in terms of kind of, you know, religious significance or deed in terms of real piety, you know, it's very, very hard to see if that ever came into it. I mean, what we actually get a sense of is the kind of the political use of the church. Interestingly, actually, now that I think about it, a finliya, he has for some reason a reputation for piety, again, because of a couple of things, a couple of kind of nuances in various journalistic kind of sources and actually a later writer said of him that he had said that, you know, battles weren't won through kind of, you know, the power of warriors, but actually it was God deciding whether battles should be won or not. But that's a very, that's a very unusual kind of sentiment. And as I say, it was it was ascribed to him much, much later. So we don't get a real sense of what they actually thought, but we do get a sense of how they used, how these kings used the church for their own kind of political ends. I'll have to keep my voice down because right now I'm between the actual bedsheets of some of history's most famous figures. Want to know more about what Hitler might have been like in the sack or Julius Caesar or our very own Billy Shakespeare? You wouldn't believe the details I'm able to uncover here on Betwixt the Sheets, a podcast by History Hit. Because sexuality explored through a historical lens can reveal a surprising amount about the human experience, what's and all, if you'll excuse the pun. And we don't just stop at sex, expect outrageous scandals throughout the centuries, as well as probing into everyday issues, the nitty gritty of human life that really connects us to all people throughout history. Join me, Kate Lister, every Tuesday and Friday on Betwixt the Sheets to find out more. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Right, time to slide out here and avoid the bedpan. Hi, I'm Dan Jones, host of This Is History. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be sharing my studio with some phenomenal historians chatting about everything from the history of sex in the church to teenage life in the Middle Ages to the family rivalry that would change England. He had found himself bereft of the power that he felt should have been his. What he wanted was an army that could be used against his own subjects, and that was what he built up by 1397. Just search This Is History wherever you get your podcasts. From an Assassin's Creed Valhalla point of view, we're partly in Ireland in connection with the Norse presence there. What did the arrival of Norse people mean for the Irish? I mean, there's the element that the Norse were pagans whilst the Irish were Christians. The game seems to present Flanshina as hiking, having a pretty good relationship with the Vikings. Do we know how the two groups got on? Yeah, no, I think obviously, again, it changed over time. I mean, you know, when they came, when Vikings came at the very end of the eighth century, I mean, the first couple of decades, we have a lot of references to short, you know, sharp attacks. I mean, obviously, they wouldn't have been considered such for the people who were suffering these attacks. But we have a sense of Vikings coming, attacking, going. We have a lot of references to raids on coastal centers, but quite early. So, you know, they came around 795. You know, already in the eight thirties, we have references to alliances being made and Vikings becoming more and more part of the kind of the shifting political allegiances of the medieval Irish kind of political scene. We know that they overwintered, for example, in Dublin in 848-41. So as soon, of course, as they started being more of a kind of a permanent presence on the scene, they would have, of course, been incorporated into the kind of the political shenanigans as it were at the time. And we have lots and lots of references to, you know, kings, contemporaries of F And indeed, earlier kings who allied with and fought against Vikings in turn. So, you know, we see them being incorporated into the kind of the Irish political scene. And we see them being incorporated into the kind of the Irish political scene. And we see them being incorporated into the kind of the Irish political scene. And we see them being incorporated into the kind of the Irish political scene. And we see them being incorporated into the kind of the Irish political scene. And we see them being incorporated into the kind of the Irish political scene. And we see them being incorporated into the kind of the Irish political scene. And we see them being incorporated into the kind of the Irish political scene. And we see them being incorporated into the port into the sort of the Irish political scene. And we see that with that as a sense that it would have been the same with it would have been the same with with F He too had Students with the Irish Political Scene. and he too hadScandinavian help when he needed it and would have fought against them in turn. Yeah, I mean it's striking how the Vikings will kind of settle and become part of the fabric of Ireland during this period. Do we have a sense of the kind of the cultural impact that the Norse people have on Ireland at this time? It was quite significant. I mean, I suppose we certainly, we have to assume that of course, Norse was spoken and indeed written in significant parts of Ireland for, you know, for a considerable period, particularly when, you know, there were groups of settlers, say in Dublin and Limerick, in these kinds of various places. And, you know, we have to assume that they would have continued to compose their own kind of literature. But interestingly as well, we get references again quite early on to Vikings being referred to in medieval Irish literary sources. So there is a relatively well-known poet who writes quite a lot of kind of historical political poetry. His name is Kinead O Hartegorn from the 10th century. And one of his poems has survived to Olafur, Auliv, King of Dublin. And he says at the end of his poem that he got a gift in return for writing this poem from the King of Dublin. We know that that same king and indeed others were patronizing churches. Back to your earlier question about kind of religious significance again, these Viking kings were behaving like kind of Irish kings as well. So again, a bit like they were doing kind of in political circles, we see them being incorporated into kind of into the cultural and social life as well. And as I say, we have references to Hiberno Norse kings of Dublin, because I suppose by then they would have had a kind of this hybrid identity, whatever we want to, whatever we want to see behind it. These Hiberno Norse kings of Dublin were also being kind of celebrated, written about in vernacular Irish material. So that too, of course, had cultural significance. I suppose it also had one of the other ways that they may have been significant in this regard is particularly in the early period, I suppose identity is relational. So if you encounter a different group, then you begin to, you kind of assess yourself as a group in relation to another group. So certainly I think there would have been some influence on how various groups of Irish kind of thought about themselves. I don't think it's a coincidence that it's precisely in the ninth century when we have Vikings coming in that we also get for the first time in journalistic sources, a reference to a king of Ireland, re-Asian. So we've been talking about kingship of Tara, the more kind of vague high king, but we do get references to a king of Ireland. And again, you can imagine that just there's a slight kind of redefining or rethinking of who you are, what your kind of boundaries are, if you encounter another group or indeed different groups. Because I know Dublin and lots of those other kind of cities, particularly on the east coast of Ireland, trace their emergence back to the Vikings. So the Vikings established lots of those cities. And I don't get a sense there was so many towns and big areas, big settlements like that in Ireland before the Vikings come. Do they almost bring urbanisation to Ireland too? Yeah, that's certainly an argument that's been made. I mean, there were communities, as it were, there were centres, there were trading centres, ecclesiastical centres that would have had all kinds of things going on. But certainly in terms of centres that were outward looking, they traded beyond Ireland. I mean, there was some of that, but larger centres came into being certainly under Viking influence. It's difficult to say what developments might have happened had they not come. I mean, that's the kind of the what if of history, as it were. And just to take us back to Fanshinna before we close, what happens to him in the end? How long is he hiking? Is he succeeded by one of his sons? Yeah, no, and he dies in 916. And we know certainly that towards the end of his life, there was quite a lot of dynastic strife, I suppose you might call it. I mean, in about a decade or so before he died in 904, his son, a man called Donnachod Donn revolted against him. So clearly, you know, clearly the younger generation absolutely were kind of standing in the wings. Actually, it wasn't that person. It wasn't Donnachod who immediately succeeded Flan. It was actually another son of his, Konchauver, who had worked alongside Donnachod, but he actually died in a big battle, the Battle of Dublin in 919. So he didn't follow Flan for too long. And then eventually Donnachod Donn did come to the throne and reign for, I don't know, another 20, 25 years. So yes, the lineage continued. And when does the position of hiking of Ireland, whatever that really meant, when does the position of hiking of Ireland finally disappear? I suppose in a way, I kind of, in a way, I put the question the other way. I'd kind of say, when does it become almost a kind of an institution that's putting it a little bit too strongly? Because on some level, it's when, you know, with the English invasion in 1169, they come in. And they, one of the ways that the most powerful King of Ireland at the time is perceived, namely O'Connor from Konoch, is to them as High King. So he's always presented from them, from then on. And indeed, his successors are presented as High Kings. But of course, you know, by then, you know, the English had colonised part of the country. So by then, you know, on some level, when we have increasing number of references to it, that's precisely the time when, of course, it's less meaningful. So I suppose in the 12th century, it just so happens that we have a number of kings from Konoch, from the north of the country, from Munster, and indeed from a place called Brefna between the north and the west. We have a number of kings who reigned for a very, very long time. So we can see them, you know, we can kind of follow their political careers for a significant length of time. And we see them very much kind of jostling and indeed wanting to be most powerful King of Ireland. So there, I think, you know, one might imagine that what they want is to kind of become, you know, what they might then be thinking of as High King. But because I suppose it's so vague, I don't think we can really, you know, talk about it then suddenly dying or disappearing. Sorry, that's not probably a very, very good answer to what you've asked. But it is, it's a really, really complex concept. I think the fact that it becomes more institutionalised, perhaps with the arrival of the Anglo-Normans is interesting, because I guess from their point of view, they probably want one enemy that they can fight and focus on. What they don't want is to have to fight four, five, six different Kings, lots of different clans, potentially. They want one figure they can negotiate with, focus on and conquer. So it suits them to institutionalise this notion of a High King more than it ever has been in Ireland before. Absolutely, yeah, no, absolutely. And just to end on, I like to ask all my guests this, the idea of Assassin's Creed is that we can put you into an animus and you can travel back in time and you can witness all of these events playing out. If I could put you into an animus and assure your safety, you're in no danger, no physical danger whatsoever. Is there a moment in perhaps in the life of Flan Shinner or a moment in the roles of the High King of Ireland that you would like to go back and witness? I suppose in the case of Flan Shinner, I'd very much like to be put back to observe his daughter, a woman called Gollumla, who's actually a kind of a very interesting woman in her own right and one of the women that we have at least a glimpse of. And she was of course also kind of married off, but she does seem to have some kind of agency to use that kind of word herself. And I'd like to be a fly on the wall and see how her kind of dealings with her father might have played out and what she would have thought of in a way being kind of a pawn, a political pawn, but also what she might have made of it all. So yeah, I'd like to be Gollumla for a day. I guess I think I'd really like to go back to a point on the Hill of Tara when it's being used for its ceremonial purposes and to get a real sense of that atmosphere there. But I think it's probably just because I've been there and I found it quite an evocative space and to be there when it's being used at the height of its prominence for what it was designed for, I think would be incredible. Yeah, I know. I completely agree. Yeah, no, no. I mean, if we have this, it's so atmospheric today when it's kind of empty, even if you're there on a kind of a, you know, grey October day like today is, yeah, you're absolutely right to kind of see it in a different context would be very illuminating. Yeah, fascinating. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Moira. It's been great to try and get a bit closer to the idea of the hiking of Ireland to understand what it was, what it meant, what these people did, what it took to get there and to explore the life of Flanshin or a bit more. It's been absolutely fascinating. Thank you. Thank you very much. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Many thanks to our guest Moira, whose ongoing project on medieval Irish landscape literature will result in a number of publications that you might like to look out for. In the next episode, we'll don our guises and carve our jack-o'-lanterns as we investigate Samhain, the Gaelic festival that became Halloween. Don't forget to subscribe and follow Echoes of History wherever you get your podcasts. If you're enjoying it, you can leave us a review too. I'll see you next time amongst the Echoes of History.