February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The skeleton was found with an iron shield and what appears to be a dagger in a shallow grave on the South Great George’s Street site by archaeologist Linzi Simpson.
The site is near the 9th century settlement of Dubh Linn, the Gaelic name for “black pool,” from which Dublin gets its name.
“It is a fantastic find. It is very, very exciting and very, very rare,” Simpson said.
It is only the second Viking warrior to have been archaeologically excavated in Dublin. Simpson also found the other one last year.
“That one was a very bad condition,” Simpson said. “This one is much better preserved.”
The burial site of the warrior, now nicknamed Eric by archaeologists, appears to have been disturbed at some stage during development work in the past and his sword is missing.
The find backs up theories that the location may have been the site of the first early origins of Dublin before settlement was later concentrated closer to the Liffey in the Temple Bar/Parliament Street area.
Simpson believes Eric may have been part of an early raiding party that arrived about 40 years before a Viking settlement was established.
The site is close to where there had been a Dubh Linn monastery.
“I have no doubt that this guy was a member of a raiding party probably doing something nasty to the monastery,” she said.
The warrior’s remains has been cut out of the site intact and brought to the National Museum to be X-rayed and examined more closely in a laboratory.