.PNG){kind=link}
Flag of Ongellsey
Lying off the Welsh coast and facing Dublin across the Irish Sea, the Isle of Ongellsey (Anglesey) has enjoyed a long history of political autonomy and cultural distinctiveness.
Ongellsey was known as Môn in the original Welsh language. In the Ninth Century it formed part of the Kingdom of Gwynedd.
Early Viking era[]
Like the Isle of Man, Ongellsey was a perfect base for Vikings to raid the coasts of England, Ireland, Wales, and Cornwall. After the Viking conquest of England, Ongellsey remained an important center for Viking Raids in the Irish Sea. Over the course of the Tenth Century, the island attracted many Scandinavians. Some brought their families, while others intermarried with the native Welsh population.
Ongellsey's long association with Celto-Nordic Ireland began in 894, when King Sigfrid Ivarsson of Østangeln lost a battle to an army from the Kingdom of Dyflin (Dublin). King Anarawd of Gwynedd was forced to switch his feudal allegience: formerly he had owed tribute and fealty to Østangeln, but now he owed them to Dublin.
In 902 the Viking rulers were driven out of Dublin. They appealed in vain to both of the Anglo-Norse kings for aid. They consequently settled in Ongellsey. Although they had lost their Irish kingdom against local rebels, they successfully kept Anarawd at bay and held on to the island. Thus the Dublin Vikings formed the new Kingdom of Ongellsey.
 Ethelred the Pious |
|---|
|
|
The kingdom had closer ties with the other Irish Norse than with the larger kingdoms of Great Britain. Dublin changed hands again, falling first to a Jorvikish fleet in 920 and then to the rogue chieftain Erik Bloodaxe in 935. Ongellsey remained independent and continued to attract Norse settlers fleeing the turbulence in Ireland.
Vassal of Dublin[]
Ongellsey's brief period as a kingdom ended in 946, when Bloodaxe's son Erik the Mariner conquered it. Erik's father had conquered a small galaxy of vassal states, but the Bloodaxe War of the 960s and 70s left Ongellsey as Dublin's only dependency. The island's Þing was forced to acknowledge Helmut I, a grandson of Bloodaxe, as its Jarl. The Saga of Erik the Mariner was composed during the 970s or 80s: it is considered a masterpiece of Ongellseyan poetry and remains the isle's national epic.
Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark was crowned King of Dublin in 999, making him Ongellsey's new overlord. Helmut Jarl remained in power, however. When the Danish Empire disintegrated in the mid-Eleventh Century, Ongellsey was still connected with Ireland. There continued to be an exchange of people, goods and ideas between Ireland and Ongellsey, which had acquired a distinct flavor combining Welsh, Irish, and Scandinavian elements.
The Welsh Rebellion and union with Dublin[]
In the 1040s and 50s, the petty kings of Ireland and Wales who were traditional English vassals rose up to oppose Olaf I, the first local king of a united England. The war waged for years, and in 1056 Olaf finally managed to conquer the northern part of Wales, annexing the kingdom of Gwynedd to England. In Dublin, Olaf put in motion a conspiracy to depose the Greycloak descendants and replace them with an allied king.
The king fled to Ongellsey to find refuge with his kinsman the jarl, now Helmut's son Thorvald. For two years the island held out as a rebellious redoubt, prolonging the war and preventing Olaf from sending forces to subdue south Wales and Kernow. A Dubliner fleet finally subdued the island, killing both Thorvald and the former king, in 1058.
Ongellsey's jarldom was put in personal union with the kingdom of Dublin, and for the rest of the Twelfth Century it was governed as an Irish outpost. When England began to suppress its pagans in the 1140s, some found refuge on the island, where paganism was still tolerated.