The War of the Irish with the Foreigners

"The War of the Irish with the Foreigners" (Irish: "Cogad Gaedel re Gallaib") is a two-part medieval Irish chronicle that claims to record the depredations of the Vikings in Ireland and the Irish king Brian Boru's great war against them. That war culminated in the Battle of Clontarf (1014), at which Brian was slain but the Vikings of Dublin utterly defeated and driven from Ireland forever. But the chronicle, which extravagantly compares King Brian to Augustus and Alexander the Great, was written in the early twelfth century, at least a hundred years after the events that the anonymous composer claims to record had unfolded.

The main purpose of the chronicle seems to be to eulogize Brian Boru and to thereby show that the record of achievements of Brian's Dál Cais dynasty proved that they deserved Ireland's high kingship. This was an issue because the Ua Briain sept of the Dál Cais was struggling to remain High Kings of Ireland at the time of the chronicle's writing.

Another reason for the chronicle's composition may have been to counter the Brjánssaga (Brian's Saga), written before 1118 by a Dubliner in an attempt to distance Dublin from the killing of the national hero, Brian. However, our chronicle depicts the Vikings as vicious barbarians and suggests that the Dubliners are like their ancestors. In short, it may have been partly an attempt to "put the Dubliners in their place." [Ó Corrain 1997: 105–6]

Modern scholars consider "The War of the Irish with the Foreigners" to be a piece of "brilliant propaganda" written in a "bombastic style and full of patriotic hyperbole." Thus, this chronicle is a valuable source of information about the Viking Age in Ireland, but its accuracy is uncertain. [Ó Corrain 1997: 105–6]

Comparable works include the earlier "Fragmentary Annals of Ireland" and the later "Caithréim Chellacháin Chaisil".

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