The National University of Ireland in collaboration with Dublin City Council and the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Ireland, each year organise an International Viking Event as part of the Dublin Festival of History.

We are used to reading and hearing about the wars fought by the fleets and armies of Dublin against their Irish neighbours and against the West Saxon kings who sought to drive them out of northern England. This lecture, however, will focus on the way Dublin developed as a community and how it governed itself and was governed by others in the course of the Viking Age and how it transformed itself from a nest of pirates to a commercial and political hub. Kings, earls, Dubliners, subjects and neighbours will all be considered.

This lecture will be delivered by Professor Alex Woolf, University of St Andrews.