The War of the Irish with the Foreigners (Irish: Cogad Gaedel re Gallaib) is a two-part medieval Irish chronicle that claims to record the depredations of the Vikings in Ireland and the Irish king Brian Boru's great war against them. That war culminated in the Battle of Clontarf (1014), at which Brian was slain but the Vikings of Dublin utterly defeated and driven from Ireland forever. But the chronicle, which extravagantly compares King Brian to Augustus and Alexander the Great, was written in the early twelfth century, at least a hundred years after the events that the anonymous composer claims to record had unfolded. The name Viking is a loan from the native Scandinavian term for the Norse seafaring warriors who raided the coasts of Scandinavia, Europe and the British Isles from the late 8th century to the 11th century, the period of European history referred to as the Viking Age. ... Brian Bóruma mac Cennétig (926 or 941[1]–23 April 1014) (known as Brian Boru in English) was High King of Ireland from 1002 to 1014. ... Combatants Irish of Munster Irish of Leinster and Dublin Vikings Commanders Brian Boru† Máelmorda mac Murchada, Sigtrygg Strength ca. ... For other uses, see Dublin (disambiguation). ... For other persons named Octavian, see Octavian (disambiguation). ... For the film of the same name, see Alexander the Great (1956 film). ...

The main purpose of the chronicle seems to be to eulogize Brian Boru and to thereby show that the record of achievements of Brian's Dál Cais dynasty proved that they deserved Ireland's high kingship. This was an issue because the Ua Briain sept of the Dál Cais was struggling to stay High Kings of Ireland at the time of the chronicle's writing. The Dál gCais (also Dal Cais; IPA: ) were a dynastic group of related septs located in north Munster, and who rose to political prominence in the early medieval era in Ireland. ... The High Kingship of Ireland was a pseudohistorical construct of the eighth century AD, a projection into the distant past of a political entity that did not become reality until the ninth century. ...

Another reason for the chronicle's composition may have been to counter the Brjánssaga (Brian's Saga), written before 1118 by a Dubliner in an attempt to distance Dublin from the killing of the national hero, Brian. However, our chronicle depicts the Vikings as vicious barbarians and suggests that the Dubliners are like their ancestors. In short, it may have been partly an attempt to "put the Dubliners in their place." Brjáns saga is a hypothetical early specimen of Old Norse literature. ...

Modern scholars consider The War of the Irish with the Foreigners to be a piece of "brilliant propaganda"^{[citation needed]} written in a "bombastic style and full of patriotic hyperbole."^{[citation needed]} Thus, this chronicle is a valuable source of information about the Viking Age in Ireland, but its accuracy is uncertain.^{[citation needed]} Viking Age is the term denoting the years from about 800 to 1066 in Scandinavian History[1][2][3]. // The Vikings have been much maligned in European history, due in large part to their violent attacks on Christians in the first centuries of their excursions out of Scandinavia. ...

References

The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings. Ed., Peter Sawyer. Oxford University Press, New York, 1997. Chapter Four: "Ireland, Wales, and the Hebrides" by Donnchadh Ó Corrain, Professor of Irish History at the University College in Cork. The quotes are from page 105-6.