A Response to a FB Post Conflating Vikings with Bronze Age Celts

((Note bene: Because this piece begins in medias res, right in the middle of things, it doesn't have an introductory lead-in paragraph. I didn't know I was going to get so involved in it, or I would've saved the Facebook poster's statement. At one point, in her attempt to equate all things Celtic as Scottish, she conflated Vikings with Bronze Age Celts, by then, I was gnashing my teeth. Hence this bloggy bit. Of course, at this point, I'm writing into the void, as she'll never lay eyes on this post. Hopefully it will entertain you. There are some cool maps at the bottom too. This is how my Irish redheads blog evolved as well. In bits and pieces. Unlike Athena who sprung, full grown from Zeus's forehead, I have to ramble about to get to where I'm going—and I often know not where. And so, here we are, together again.)


Dear Historically-Challenged Reader,

The Vikings were LATE on the Irish cultural event horizon by nearly 2000 years. They had less influence in Ireland than what they were given credit for. Not only that, they were quickly assimilated in Ireland.

That's what happens when you marry Irish women, their children are half Irish, whose sons will who marry more Irish women, so they're now only 1/4 Viking in two generations. You see where that goes—since the Vikings brought few Viking women to Ireland.

And Viking power waned after the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 at the hands of Irish High King, Brian Bóruma mac Cennétig. If the Norsemen hadn't attempted to impose taxes in Munster, then, Irish history might have been different, then Viking influence would have had a profound impact.

Viking heritage in Ireland is but a drop in the bucket of time. Viking settlement and rule lasted roughly 200 years. And of course, those Icelandic Vikings had a lot of Irish ancestry, as the migratory brunt came from the Dublin Norse stronghold. See  the Icelandic Laxdæla saga, and Burnt Njall's saga, etc., rife with Irishmen and Irish women—most favored as slaves and feisty concubines.

Yes, the Vikings did settle permanently in Shetland, but the Celts (and pre-Celts) who lived there before the Vikings arrived, never actually went away. There's the historical misnomer. (Lots of Celtic DNA survives to this day.) Ditto with the Viking settlements in the Hebrides, and the Isle of Man. The Celts, or more technically correct, the Irish Scoti as they were called (which does NOT mean they were Scottish, but Irish), eventually drove the Vikings out. (Battle of Largs.)

Also that marrying/taking the Irish women thang, applies here too. Somerled, Lord of the Isles, was more Irish than Viking by blood (and by allegiance). The Norse-Irish culture was hybrid, not just Viking.

BTW, the word Scotland comes to us via Latin naming by way of Ireland. Scotia Major was Ireland, and because there were so many Irish living in what is now called Scotland, which was known as Scotia Minor until the 11thc. and the term was still used up to the 16th c.).

Isidore of Seville in 580 CE wrote: "Scotia and Hibernia are the same country." Adomnán, St. Columba's 3rd cousin, referred to the Gaels as Scotti.

It wasn't until the 15th c., that Pope Leo X (1475-1521) decreed that Scotland was, well, Scotland, and as such, had exclusive right over the word Scotland, which resulted in a huge landgrab as the English-Scots took over Irish monasteries on the Continent (i.e., Schottenklöster Irish Benedictine monasteries in south Germany taken over by Scots.).

Schottenklöster (meaning "Gaelic monasteries" in German, singular:Schottenkloster) is the name applied to the monastic foundations of Scottish and Irish missionaries in Continental Europe, particularly to the [Irish] Benedictine monasteries in Germany, which in the beginning of the 13th century were combined into one congregation whose abbot-general was the Abbot of the Scots monastery at Regensburg. —Wiki

So there must've been internecine Irish/Scottish/English squabbling over who owned what, and perhaps some genuine confusion, for a pope to adjudicate as to what country owned the placename. The Irish monks got kicked out of their own monasteries; I'm sure there were some seriously irritated Irishmen. I bet full coffers were also at stake.

So, the next time you notice that Lindisfarne is referred to as an Anglo-Saxon monastery, that's propaganda, the polar opposite of historicity, at work. It was an Irish founded Hiberno-Saxon venture. But I digress. (If Blogger had a sidebar, this would be encapsulated, but I don't want to start another post.)

Where was I?

As to your note on the Viking and Irish similarities in artwork, therefore the Vikings must've taught the Irish how to utilize knotwork design, the Irish practically invented it! The La Tène culture, the source behind a lot of Irish art, equally predates the Viking era by 2000 years. A lot of native British Celtic art is erroneously attributed to Anglo-Saxons in Great Britian, who also predate the Vikings. (The Irish and the Britons shared many cultural traits, including artifacts. Then there was the British-Irish_Anglo-Saxon hybrid culture that followed.

I would venture to say that the Insular art style with Celtic spirals, curvilinear, and geometric shapes employed in the Book of Durrow were not influenced by Norse or Viking raiding artisans. This kind of complex, intricate art did not suddenly spring forth in a brand new art form, the illustrated book arts. Especially when one's homeland was being invaded by Vikings. So what came first? Chicken or egg? (See folios 1v, 85v, 125v at bottom of Wiki page.)

There's more of a correlation with Anglo-Saxon art, and even that was a hybrid art form, later called the Hiberno-Saxon style. I find no Germanic Continental evidence of this Insular art form. What each of these cultures have in common, is exposure to Insular Celts. Early medieval Celtic book treasure bindings were highly coveted by the Vikings. One can only imagine what the lost treasure cover for the Book of Kells looked like.

Various metal fragments of what were probably book-mounts have survived, usually adapted as jewellery by Vikings. —Wiki

(Also, the Bronze Age Celts, and Celtic culture dominated the Continent, so some of their artifacts could have been found by what later become the ancestors of the Vikings.) There was cultural contact. But there's scant evidence that Viking artifacts predate Irish and Celtic art styles. To make an absurd parallel, many little girls the world over love Hello Kitty, that doesn't mean they were all Japanese samurai.


Gospel of Mark, Book of Durrow, 650-700 AD. —Wiki

The Vikings were raiders, they brought back artifacts from other cultures, which in turn, influenced their art. Geometric interlace doesn't appear in Viking culture until after they had contact with Britain and Ireland. They also brought back (Irish) slaves, who were artisans....Again, keep in mind the timeline, and it was a hybrid culture].

(See mid-9th c. Oseberg ship-burial. Artifacts included the Oseberg bucket, with patterned enamel figures similar "to the Gospel books of the Insular art of the British Isles, such as the Book of Durrow, (ca.650 AD)." —Wiki, and Irish Archaeology.

Several Viking ships in Roskilde Fjord, and the Skuldelev ships were made in Ireland. So claiming who did/owned what in the past is never quite as simple as it seems from our perspective. We don't know who carved the ships, and, again, it was a hybrid culture. Also, there was no timber in Iceland, so Icelandic ships too would've been built in Ireland or wood imported to Scandinavia.)

Book of Durrow Carpet page, similar in style to the Oseberg bucket, 650-700 AD. —Wiki

Check out the timeline, The Vikings (780–1100), and this one, but keep in mind that much of what we think of as Viking art was the result of artifacts collected from other cultures during raiding.

If you get a good grasp of the pre-Classical, Classical, and post Classical Celtic cultures, and migrations, then it will all make more sense.

Unfortunately working from a knowledge base that dates to the Plantation of Ulster as a reference point, is politically biased, therefore suspect. History written in the voice of the victor, and all that. Also, the intense hatred the English harbored for the ethnic Irish has also adversely colored "history." So, most Irish connections were extirpated. The OED is a prime example.

In Scotland, a lot of so-called Scots, were actually Irish. The Industrial Revolution, and two famines meant that many Irish immigrated to Scotland—especially The Barrows in Glesga, and along Clydebank (ships).

Yes, the Romans named the Picts, Picti, after a Continental Picti tribe, who were probably from the same Gaulish tribe. Picts were probably P-Celtic vs. Q-Celtic speakers. The Picts were also in N. Ireland, they were called the Cruithne, or Cruithín (they have an asteroid named after them, LOL!) The Cruithne/Criuthín included several tuatha, including the the Dál nAraidi—who settled in Scotland. Qritani/Cruithne comes from the word *pritenī (Pretani). Q-Celtic Irish speakers hated the plosive P sound and swapped it out for a more gutteral cough sound, hard c/q/k C: Cruithne/Pritani. mac/map, etc.

Ireland had many P-Celtic speaking tribes, as well as Q-Celtic speakers (Gaels, Galicia). See Ptolemy's map of Ireland for tribal names: Briganti, Dumnoni, etc. Cruithni and Menapi were probably Gaulish. The Ganganoi were also in N. Wales. In the 5th c AD, Gwynned was an Irish enclave, so there was a lot of back and forth movement.

A rendition of Ptolemy's map (Vlaclav Hollar, ca. 1650s-70s) —Wiki

Julius Caesar, in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico, is the first to call the island Hibernia... —Wiki

Galicians were not Spaniards, but Iberian Celts, one of many CeltIberian tribes. Asturias, Galicia were Celtic kingdoms that managed to survive until the Middle Ages. They probably were the original Hispania immigrants who settled in Ireland, according to the Lebor Gabala Erenn (where the name Scotia is chronicled.)

In the Song of Amergin, the first Gael to settle in Ireland, (Galician) poet-druid Amergin (mac) Mil quells the sea, after the very tall Tuatha Dé Danánn send a big wind spell, proving he was a bigger, badder druid, than they. And to really ridiculously telescope mythological time, they slunk away, shrank, went underground, and became the fairyfolk!

Here's a lovely Roman world view map of Scotland & Eire; note the use of the word Scotti in N. Ireland. Note also that Scotland was not called Scotland, but Valentia, and Caledonia. The Brigantes of Maxima Caesariensis were a buffer between Caesariens (Roman Britain) and what we now refer to as Scotland. Only Southern England, Kent, Cornwall and Devon (Cantii, Damnonii and Belgae tribes) was called Brittania.


Roman Britain —Wiki

Another old map.


Roman Britain in 410 —Wiki

And an updated 1654 map that chronicles Scotland as Scotia and Ireland as Hibernia/Ivverna. Pope Leo X (1475-1521) decreed (when?) that Scotland had exclusive rights to the term Scotland.

In early medieval times Ireland was known not only as Éire but also as Scotia, a name that the Romans used at times to refer to Ireland as well as Scotland. —Wiki

A 1654 map that notes Scotia as Scotland and Hibernia/Ivverna —Wiki

English evolved from Scandinavian?

"The English language brings out the best in the Irish. They court it like a beautiful woman. They make it bray with donkey laughter. They hurl it at the sky like a paint pot full of rainbows, and then make it chant a dirge for man's fate and man's follies that is as mournful as misty spring rain crying over the fallow earth." T E Kalem —from Brendan Behan's play, Borstal Boy

A Science Daily post from Nov, 2012 suggests that English evolved from Scandinavian. Two professors in Norway make an interesting hypothesis that English evolved from Old Norse, making English North Germanic rather than West Germanic.

Jan Terje Faarlund, professor of linguistics at the University of Oslo said: "What is particularly interesting is that Old English adopted words for day-to-day things that were already in the language. Usually one borrows words and concepts for new things. In English almost the reverse is true—the day-to-day words are Scandinavian, and there are many of them," says Faarlund.

Here are some examples: anger, awe, bag, band, big, birth, both, bull, cake, call, cast, cosy, cross, die, dirt, dream, egg, fellow, flat, gain, get, gift, give, guess, guest, hug, husband, ill, kid, law, leg, lift, likely, link, loan, loose, low, mistake, odd, race, raise, root, rotten, same, seat, seem, sister, skill, skin, skirt, sky, steak, though, thrive, Thursday, tight, till, trust, ugly, want, weak, window, wing, wrong. —Linguist Makes Sensational Claim: English Is a Scandinavian Language

I nearly snorted and circular breathed in my cuppa tea when I read that headline. I can hear the linguistic shit hitting the fan now.

Awww, there goes Beowulf!

So, let me get this straight, Everyone in the British Isles loved the Norse so much,   (they refused to have much to do with the invaders), that they couldn't even say Gimme an egg, Sister! in their own language(s) before the arrival of the Vikings? (It was mainly the Anglo—Saxons vs the short-lived Viking Danelaw (50 to 100 years of rule); most of the Britons were holed up in Wales or Brittany.

Sister and egg aren't even loan words ferhevinsakes! I'm no linguist but even I can poke holes in this argument. People usually borrow words and concepts for new things like computer, floppy disk, USB. Not for things they already know, or already have.

What would Bede say? All this splitting infinitives and hairs sounds like the Scandinavians are once again being culture pirates. A vikingr the academics will go.

Their hypothesis: English evolved out of Old Norse several centuries later? Not congruently? What about language drift, or convergent evolution—or even being closely related via the Indo-European continuum? It's like saying English (or Irish) evolved from Sanskrit because there are parallel words in both languages.

Sister is a prime example from the Proto-Indo-European continuum: *swésōr is recognizable and sounds familiar enough to be merely a dialect, rather than another language. No matter how many dialect armies and navys are conjured up, I'm fairly certain that Old Norse did not exist during the era that PIE was evolving. And then there's egg—clearly a very close word in Proto-Germanic:

From Middle English egge, from Old Norse egg (“egg”), from Proto-Germanic *ajją (“egg”).

Well, maybe egg isn't such a good example as Chaucer uses both ey, and egg. That could be a case of Norse and Anglo-Saxon eggs side by side. One could argue that that hard gg vs soft jj sound was borrowed from the Norse. I won't mention bull eggs here. (But you can look that world up if you like).

I wonder why outlaw wasn't on that list? That and law, and penny, schilling, etc.

The article was daft. (Not as daft as the eejit who recently posted that English has always existed in Great Britain. (MJ Harper, ‘The History of Britain Revealed’) The Belgae in Gaul and Britain were Celts, not Germans, ya twit. (It reads something like How the Martians Saved Civilization.) English ain't the mother tongue. Really.) Whose tongue was in what neither cheek?

Then there's the syntax argument:

•(subject/verb/object), SVO vs. Old English verb endings. Just to liven things up, Irish is VSOP. Good initials for brandy too. The Vikings, though they settled in Ireland too, had almost no impact on Irish other than town words, nautical terms, jarl, and window.

•Prepositions at the end of a sentence (a very good thing they didn't look at Irish!)

•My personal favorite: genitive (plural)s (The Queen of England's hat).

•Split infinitives (I promise to never laugh again). Well, there are no infinitive verbs in Irish, but we're not talking Irish here.

I admit I'm shaky on syntax. I know by doing. (By writing, that is). But since I had to go and make that strange segue, apparently the Norse absorbed more Irish words than the Irish themselves did of Old Norse words: "bachall (staff, crozier) >bagall; capall (horse) > kapall; lám (hand) > lámr; tarb (bull) > tarfr; and teine (fire) > dini.

Perhaps most surprisingly of all, one Norse word for a ship lung is taken from the Irish long." —Medieval Review Ó Muirithe, Diarmaid. From the Viking Word-Hoard: A Dictionary of Scandinavian Words in the Languages of Britain and Ireland. Dublin.

I'm sure I could argue some silly string theory that Gaelic impacted Old Norse, as spoken by Vikings, who, were, after a generation or two, no longer even Norse, but Norse-Irish, and Norse-Scottish. Irish and Scottish were pretty much the same people in those days as there was no Kingdom of Scotland yet. I can't use the term "one people" because nobody was unified.

Viking men did not bring any Norse women with them when they settled new turf. They just kidnapped Irish and Scottish women—and women are the bearers of language and culture—they taught their kids to speak Irish. And to a lesser degree, Norse British/Anglo-Saxon, mix, etc. (Iceland and the Faroes have a higher Irish/Scottish mDNA, than Norse yDNA but I already wrote about that).

So why would Old English suddenly die out, leave a linguistic void, and Old Norse suddenly take its place, and then evolve into modern English? Old habits die hard. We won't mention the other four English dialects that concurrently existed in the British Isles. Who has read Beowulf, or Sir Gawain in the original dialect? Or Blind Harry's Wallace?

OK, so the "Pearl Poet" author of Sir Gawain was from ca. the 14th c., as were Blind Harry, and Chaucer a little before that, and Beowulf was written in the late 10th or early 11th c., but the texts do serve to demonstrate that several different Middle English dialects survived, Not Old Norse. BTW, Beowulf was translated into late West Saxon from an older English dialect.

Clearly this is a case of lunatic fringe instead of Celtic Fringe. Like I said, those Norse academicians are cultural pirates! I don't think anyone was hypothetically sober at the time. Bring on Monty Python's version of Njall's Saga! Skol pafiskin!

Olaf the Peacock's Irish Mother

Heiðarvíga saga, story of the heath-slayings

  The Icelandic sagas are prose histories of the Norse —and Celts—who settled in Iceland during the 10th - 11th centuries. The sagas, capturing an earlier oral tradition, were probably set to writing during the 13th and 14th centuries.

"Some of the richest and most interesting writings from medieval Europe come from one of its furthest corners: during the 13th and 14th century Icelanders began to write down the stories they had collected orally from previous centuries. These sagas would cover events in Iceland and elsewhere, going back to the days when the island was first discovered and settled back in the ninth century. They are stories of family feuds, outlaws and the occasional monster lurking somewhere the uninhabited stretches of the Iceland.' —Medievalists.net 

The only problem with this post narrative (above) from Medievalists.net is that when the Viking Norse "discovered" an "empty" Iceland, and Norse colonists arrived ca. 870-930 AD—there were already Northern European settlements dating from ca. 400-500 AD. And the other problem with Medievalist's statement is that those Icelanders were not wholly Norse, their slaves and concubines were often Irish or Scottish. Of course, viking means pirate, so I guess pirating of history itself is fitting.

Naddod was a Faroese Viking (by way of Shetland) who is credited with the discovery of Iceland. Grímur Kamban became the first to settle ca. 825. Grimur was either Irish/Scottish or Norse Irish, with a Gaelic nickname. 

Garðarr Svavarsson is credited as the first Scandinavian to have lived in Iceland one winter. He was was married to a woman from the Hebrides. A Hebridean woman would be Irish/Scottish, not Norse as the Norse did not bring Norse women with them. They took Celts as slaves. The Vikings were NOT the first Northern Europeans in the Faroes, and Iceland. (Not to mention, the Inuit.) Unless, of course, one were to definitively define Icelanders (and Faroes Islanders) as half-Scandinavian and half-Celtic.

The medieval chronicler Ari Thorgilsson said Ingólfr was the first Nordic settler in Iceland, but mentioned that "Papar" – i.e. Irish monks and hermits – had been in the country before the Norsemen. He wrote that they left because they did not want to live amongst the newly arrived pagans.  Ingólfr Arnarson —Wiki

Hjörleifr had been murdered by his Irish slaves because of his ill-treatment. Ingólfr hunted them down and killed them in the Westman Islands (Vestmannaeyjar, named after the slaves).

This tidbit's significant as you will see from the excerpts of the tale posted below, the Laxdaela Saga. The sagas seem to be "fictionalised distortions of real societies.…" and 'family sagas' of Icelandic literature are quite distinct, the overall network of saga society is consistent with real social networks." It's a strong possibility the Icelanders were following in the tradition of Irish recording of oral tradition, though a few centuries later. They could also have had Irish scribes living among them.

(BTW, what is this skewed fascination with Vikings anyway, and why is most everything we associate with Vikings, is plain old wrong? Like (Celtic) horned helmets? Where did we pick up this romantic ideal fraught with bogus information? Does it date back to Hitler, and his search for the "pure" Aryan race? Or is it an earlier Victorian hangover? But I digress.)

The ceremonial Waterloo Helmet is the only existing Celtic bronze horned helmet —La Tène  c.150–50 BC. —Wiki

The word "viking" was first popularised at the beginning of the 19th century by Erik Gustaf Geijer in his poem, The Viking. Geijer's poem did much to propagate the new romanticised ideal of the Viking, which had little basis in historical fact.    —Vikings  

A romanticised picture of Vikings as noble savages began to take root in the 18th century, and this developed and became widely propagated during the 19th-century Viking revival.

Norse myths were religiously adopted by Germanic Neopaganists in Germanic countries during the early 20th c., and in most of the the English-speaking world during the 1960s. It's probably during that latest Neopagan adaptation that most of our Viking misconceptions were spawned.

There's an Irish oral tradition that a Tralee mariner Brendan the Navigator visited Iceland and the Faroe Islands circa 400 AD. Bantry's (where my family is from) patron saint is Brendan. (Based on an immram, or voyage tale, the Brendan Voyage tale was transcribed in Latin in 800 AD.) The description of Brendan's "insulae" (islands) is remarkably similar to the Faroe Islands.

One fanciful name for these mythical northern islands was Thule, which was reported to be "a six days' sail north of Britain, and near the frozen sea." (There was persistent belief that islands to the west of Great Britain recorded as early as 330 BC. Whether fact or fiction, it fed the questing beast)  

The Irish Tír na-nÓg (Land of the Ever-young) was another mythical island to the west. Reason enough to set sail—because they were there. "The Icelanders' own records mention about 400 original settlers "with mostly Celtic nicknames" who were living in Iceland previous to Norse colonization. (Clements). The significant part of that statement is that settlers were there previous to Norse discovery.

Thule or Tile on the Carta Marina of 1539 by Olaus Magnus, located northwest of the Orkney islands, with a "monster, seen in 1537", a whale ("balena"), and an orca. —Wiki

My Bantry grandmother told me that the Irish monks brought sheep to the Faroes, and the name, though Nordic, means sheep islands. And sheep islands do figure into the Brendan tales.

St. Brendan described the largest island as the Island of Sheep (Streymoy?) A bay in the southern part of Streymoy, is called Brandansvik (St. Brendan's Bay). His "bird paradise" might be the island of Mykines. There are several Faroe places named after the Irish monks (papar) including remote caves. —Faroe Islands Review History

The Faroes were part of a trade network with Dublin as a hub, and many Irish women made their way there as wives or slaves. DNA analysis shows that 84% of Faroese females are of Irish or Scottish descent.  —Faroe Islands Review History

(NB: contrary to modern belief, Irish monks were NOT celebate.)

Dicuil, in the 2nd half of the 8th century, wrote of "heremitae ex nostra Scotia" ("hermits from our land of Ireland"—Scotia was Ireland, not Scotland!) who lived on the northerly islands of Britain for a hundred years until the arrival of Norse pirates. An Irish nickname of Faroe islanders, Na Scigirí, possibly refers to the Eyja-Skeggjar (land of bearded men).

Northern European settlements (whether Irish, Scottish or Pictish) in the Faroes have been archaeologically dated to ca. 400 AD.

“There is also good evidence that they [the Celts] had sails: there is a model boat from Ireland that dates from about 100 BC that has a mast, which could be a model for Celtic boats more generally,” Jennings said. “There is not so much evidence of sails in Norway until as late as 700 AD. It is therefore more likely that these early Faroese settlers came from the British Isles.” —Andrew Jennings, Nordic Historian

The Vikings settled in the Faroe Islands before they went to Iceland, ca. 800 AD. Then, 60 years later, Iceland was supposedly "discovered" by the Norse. That's the equivalent of three generations in the Faroes before the Norse shoved off to Iceland. Plenty of time to hear about those Celtic settlements in Iceland. During the settlement of Iceland, the Faroes, the half-way mark, was the only provision stop for grain, meat and water.

The Faroe Islands, a remote North Atlantic archipelago, stepping stones half-way between Scotland Norway and Iceland, were inhabited 500 years before the Vikings arrived. Archaeologists taking "scientific samples for environmental archaeological analysis from the medieval Viking settlement,“ did not expect to find evidence of a previous culture.

Archaeologists Mike Church and Símun V. Arge said: “We uncovered some burnt peat ash containing barley grains under the Viking longhouse. It was not until we had it dated that we realized what we had found.” Barley is not indigenous to the Faroes, and there were "old field systems that didn’t seem to tie into later settlements." Church concluded, “There is evidence of Irish hermits sailing into the North Atlantic islands in a passage by an Irish Monk called Dicuil in 825AD.”

Many other islands lie in the northerly British Ocean. One reaches them from the northerly islands of Britain, by sailing directly for two days and two nights with a full sail in a favourable wind the whole time … Most of these islands are small, they are separated by narrow channels, and for nearly a hundred years hermits lived there, coming from our land, Ireland, by boat.

Here's the rub: Icelanders have maintained that they were purely Scandinavian, and that they lived in genetic isolation for 1200 years. Note that there were no Irish mentioned in the equation. The Irish were expunged from Icelandic oral tradition and there's almost no mention of the Irish in the Icelandic sagas that were recorded around the 13-14th centuries—with the exception of the Laxdaela Saga, and Burnt Njáll—whose name sounded suspiciously like the Irish Niall. (Kin to 5th c. Niall Nóigiallach, whose middle name was randy: he dinna wear pants; his Y-DNA genes got around. M222 sub-clade rools.) But in the 1970s, my English professors insisted there was NO relationship—merely coincidence. Icelandic peoples were Scandinavian.

Then the human genome mapping project got up to speed. Lo, there were chinks in the Viking armor. Iceland had relative genetic isolation, yes, but their preferred bedfellahs of choice were Irish captives—who did not come or go gentle unto that good night. And who were the real transmitters of culture? The Icelandic-Irish women who spoke to their children in Irish, and in some cases, gave them Irish names. And we know this because they just happened to turn up in Icelandic sagas.

New genetic studies in Iceland uphold a deep Irish connection in that the DNA genome tests reveals that 20% males and 63% females are of Irish ancestry (Irish Roots in Iceland). "The population of the Faroe Islands appears to have the highest level of asymmetry in Scandinavian vs British Isles ancestry proportions among female and male settlers of the archipelago." mDNA analysis shows that 84% of Faroese females are of Irish or Scottish descent. Mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to offspring. (Then there is the mystery of the Celtic sheep in the Faroes.)

Burnt Njáll the lawyer, and Erik the Red(head) had prodigious tempers. (I'm gathering that when the omens were bad, the Vikings burnt all the lawyers.) All that loose Irish DNA might explain some of those Viking redheads too. Tróndur í Gøtu of the Færeyinga Saga, was described as having "a shock head of red hair, and…freckled of face and right grim of look", features which were inherent to Faroese, who are said to have descended from Thorstan the Red's daughter. (I bet she was Irish). The appearance of red hair and freckles were exotic enough to be recorded in the sagas. By contrast, most Norse were dark-haired, not blond.

Excerpt from Njáls saga (Möðruvallabók AM 32 folio 13r cia. 1350). —Wiki

At least 60% of the Icelandic and Faroese.maternal gene pool hails from Ireland and Scotland. And the Viking contribution: "mtDNA lineages from Scandinavia to the populations of Iceland, Orkney, the Western Isles, and the Isle of Skye are 37.5%, 35.5%, 11.5%, and 12.5%, respectively." The mDNA study shows that the majority of female settlers came from the British Isles, "whereas ~80% of male settlers were Scandinavian." This data confirms Irish oral tradition. 

The study also notes that "the Gaelic contribution to the Icelandic mtDNA pool may have been at least as large as that from Scandinavia." (mtDNA and the Islands of the North Atlantic). That means there were almost no Scandinavian women emigrating form Norway. Norse-Irish women from Dublin and the Hebrides, yes.

I found interesting research on Iceland where "genealogy is an integral part of the culture — 80% of all Icelandic people who have ever lived can be traced on family trees." The country is isolated geographically, with little migration from other places ever since a few hundred Vikings and some Celts arrived almost 1200 years ago. (Decodeing Iceland's DNA). Note the acretion: "and some Celts," and these Celts are?

Islandia map by Abraham Ortelius ca 1590 —Wiki

Contrary to what we've been led to believe, Iceland was not an isolated Norse settlement unto itself. There's also a slew of Icelandic-Irish names which is curious as Vikings were more conservative naming boys than girls: Njáll/Njála, Brjan/Brjánn, Dufniall/ Domnall, Konall, Kjartan, Kjallakr, Kaðall, Kormakr, Meldun, Melpatrikr, Oskar, Patrek, Brigit. 

An Icelandic village, Patreksfjörður, is Padraig's Fjord. Vestmannaeyjar means "Irish Island." Írafell, and a mountain called, Írafellsbunga (are Éire (Irish) Fell, and  Éire Mountain, respectively), and Kjaransvík (Ciaran’s Bay) in the Westfjörðs, which seems to have been an Irish-Icelandic stronghold.

Of particular interest is the placename, Melkorkustaðir, once home to an irate Irish slave girl, Melkorka (see my story below), who was mother of Olaf the Peacock, a prominent character in many Icelandic sagas. None of this proves the Irish were in Iceland beforehand, it just proves they were there right alongside the Norse—in the thick of things. It also strongly suggests the sagas are based on historical fact.

Recent archaeological digs in the Faroes and Iceland note that there were Northern European settlements from ca. 400 to 800 AD, that definitely predate the Norse settlements. Archaeologists are reluctant to suggest as to who these people actually were. Chances of finding burials and intact DNA are slim to none. 

Also, Vikings often built on top of the older sites—which means their either integrated, or wiped the other settlers out. We know the earlier settlers raised barley, cut peat turf, and built soil beds with ash and seaweed—like Aran Islanders.

Another fact that seems to get buried in the Viking version of history is that female Icelandic settlers; slaves and concubines were predominantly Irish. Aud the Deep-minded, (Unn, or Auðr, daughter of Ketil Flatnose (ruler of the Hebrides)—he kicks off Laxdael Saga). Aud/Unn/Auðr, wife of Olaf the White, King of Dublin (853 AD), brought Irish slaves with her to Iceland from Dublin (by way of Caithiness). (Clements). She may not have been Irish, but it's possible that her father was Norse Irish, (and the chances of her mother being Irish?) which makes her…

At any rate, Aud/Unn/Auðr was a singularly unViking woman: she secretly built a ship in the forest (Scandinavian women were not allowed to own ships; had fewer rights—unlike Irish women who were on equal footing with men); she sailed to Orkney; married off one of her granddaughters; and then set sail for Iceland. She then freed all her Irish slaves in Iceland. Another reference noted she had a child with an Irish slave. I guess the attraction worked both ways. Fiercely independent Aud sounds similar to 15th c. Irish pirate queen, Gráinne Ó Máille ( c. 1530 – c. 1603).

Olaf the Peacock's grandfather, Höskuldr Dala-Kollsson's mother was Thorgerd Thorsteinsdottir, daughter of Thorstein the Red, who was son of Olaf the White, King of Dublin, whose father was Hiberno-Norse warlord Ingjald Helgasson. I won't even mention that several these Icelandic and Norse characters who settled the Hebrides, or came from there, before emigrating to Iceland, were also Norse-Irish. (And no you won’t be tested  on this.)

Ketill Bjǫrnsson, aka Flatnose (Old Norse: Flatnefr), was a 9th c. (Irish?) Norse King of the Isles—who led raids AGAINST Norway. (Orkneyinga Saga). However, Irish genealogy recorded that Aud's father was also Irish King Aedh. (Annals of Ulster). It could be a scribal error, or there was more than one outrageously uppity Norse woman named Aud. And Aud sounds a lot like Aedh. A female version of Hugh? 

Ketill sounds suspiciously like Kaðall/Cathal, and Flatnefr may be a phonetic corruption of Find (white). Scratch the surface—most emigrating Norsemen had Irish mothers, their children had Irish nicknames. (Jennings and Kruse).

The sagas of Iceland's colonization attempted to expunge all record of any Irish presence, but the Laxdaela saga-maker captured an Irish family pedigree—probably because the story wouldn't work without the Irish connection. Unique among Icelandic sagas, the Laxdaela Saga seems to have a feminine hand—recording matrilineal lineages in both Norse and Irish; perhaps it was composed by a woman, in Western Iceland, ca. 1230-1260.

Excerpts from the Laxdaela Saga, Chapter 21: