Day 3 - Waterford and Vikings!

I'm Jeremiah, and I'm a junior from Massachusetts. I'm interested in Ireland because both sides of my family are partly from there. I'm very interested in the culture of the local residents. The history is very interesting to me as well. I'm excited to learn about Vikings and early settlers of Ireland. I hope to get to see some real Viking artifacts while in Ireland.




We drove an hour to the Irish National Heritage Center, a recreation of prehistoric and Viking era castles and huts. We walked up and down the road looking at the different houses and the long boat. We learned about how the early Irish lived and interacted with their environment.

In the afternoon, we visited “The King of the Vikings," a virtual reality presentation explaining how the Vikings came to Ireland raiding monasteries in the late 700’s. After that we toured the nearby “Viking Triangle,” the original Waterford settlement. We learned how the Vikings came over in 914, setting up the settlement at Vatnafjord, and how the walls and towers around the town made of wood at the time but would be reconstructed in stone by the Anglo-Normans in 1137. While looking at some artifacts from a Viking grave we learned how historians put together the story of the person buried there, such as how swords were expensive and spears were much more common, meaning a sword in a grave might mean wealth. Or how the mingling of native Irish and Viking culture is seen in Irish inventions like the cloak pin that was found in a Hiberno-Viking grave.