Introduction

Summary

The Irish chronicles, also known as the Irish annals, are crucial sources for our understanding of early medieval Ireland and Scotland. They have frequently been the basis for studies of political history, have provided evidence for the development of the Irish Church, natural phenomena, the Vikings, and have been the subject of many studies. Moreover, the people and events described in the Irish chronicles recur in other texts, for instance kingship tales and saints' Lives, so the Irish annals are used to provide the dating and context for these sources.

It is, therefore, fair to claim that the Irish annals provide crucial evidence for the Gaelic world in the early medieval period, but they are still inadequately understood. The Irish chronicles covering the period before 1100 form a large corpus of material, including descriptions of thousands of events and people, which has made it difficult for the relatively small number of scholars to gain a good understanding of these sources. Also, the Irish annals all survive in manuscripts from the late eleventh century or later, so it is necessary to determine what is early and what is later additional material, partly through comparing the text of different chronicles. While there have been many studies, most have been concentrated on the early period, without being based on a solid understanding of the later development of these texts.