Ireland

Ireland is the green, contested land to the west that the Norsemen raided, settled, and died in — the seat of Norse Dublin, the battlefield of Clontarf, and the country where more than one viking career met its end. It is where Magnus Barefoot campaigned on his second western expedition, allied with the Irish king of Connaught and betrothing his son into the island's royalty — and where, ambushed in a boggy Ulster country where his heavy-armed men could not keep their footing, the last great viking king of Norway was cut down. It is also, through the slave-princess Melkorka, the source of Irish royal blood in the greatest Icelandic clans. Ireland is the saga world's image of the rich, dangerous western neighbour — a land of Norse towns and native kings, of trade and raid and intermarriage, where the Northmen reached deep and where the bogs and the Irish swallowed even a king who had conquered the isles.