en.wikipedia.org
Viking period[edit]
From the 9th to the 12th century Viking/Norse-Gael
Dublin in particular was a major slave trading center which led to an increase in slavery.
[4] In 870,
Vikings, most likely led by
Olaf the White and
Ivar the Boneless, besieged and captured the stronghold of
Dumbarton Castle (
Alt Clut), the capital of the
Kingdom of Strathclyde in Scotland, and the next year took most of the site's inhabitants to the Dublin slave markets.
[4]
When the Vikings established
early Scandinavian Dublin in 841, they began a slave market that would come to sell
thralls captured both in Ireland and other countries as distant as
Spain,
[5] as well as sending Irish slaves as far away as
Iceland,
[6] where Gaels formed 40% of the founding population,
[7] and
Anatolia.
[8] In 875, Irish slaves in Iceland launched Europe's largest
slave rebellion since the end of the Roman Empire, when
Hjörleifr Hróðmarsson's slaves killed him and fled to
Vestmannaeyjar.[
citation needed] Almost all recorded
slave raids in this period took place in
Leinster and southeast
Ulster; while there was almost certainly similar activity in the south and west, only one raid from the
Hebrides on the
Aran Islands is recorded.
[9]
Slavery became more widespread in Ireland throughout the 11th century, as Dublin became the biggest slave market in
Western Europe.
[9][5] Its main sources of supply were the Irish hinterland, Wales and Scotland.
[9] The Irish slave trade began to decline after
William the Conqueror consolidated control of the English and Welsh coasts around 1080, and was dealt a severe blow when the
Kingdom of England, one of its biggest markets, banned slavery
[10] in its territory in 1102.
[6][9] The continued existence of the trade was used as one justification for the
Norman conquest of Ireland after 1169, after which the
Hiberno-Normans replaced slavery with
feudalism.
[6][11] The 1171 Council of Armagh freed all Englishmen and -women kept as slaves in Ireland.
[12] It was clear from the Decree of the Council of Armagh that English were selling their children as slaves. "For the English people hitherto throughout the whole of their kingdom to the common injury of their people, had become accustomed to selling their sons and relatives in Ireland, to expose their children for sale as slaves, rather than suffer any need or want."
[13]
