I was recently listening to a podcast which briefly mentioned how before the Norman Invasion, Ireland didn't have the same kind of economy that you might expect from the period. Instead, there were a lot of "fortified homesteads", and that things were generally very isolated.
They didn't expand beyond that really, and so I was hoping that someone here could talk briefly on what Ireland might have been like before the Norman Invasion in the 12th Century.
This is my topic! I'm studying Medieval Ireland extensively right now. Ok so Medieval Ireland was a society that was based on two things; Clan/family honor and herding. The Island was split between one High king, a few big kings (for lack of a better term) and 100s of kings. The High King was essentially a position like the pope; a spiritual and respected figure, but a man without any huge political power. The "big" kings had the loyalty of hundreds of smaller kings in their territory, who in turn controlled many families and clans in an area. An Irish king is unlike any "normal" European king; Kings were expected to fight in the front lines of every conflict (I did another post about how war was fought in the area here https://www.reddit.com/r/MedievalHistory/comments/7w7wy1/welshirishscottish_medieval_armors/dtyss9u/?context=2 ) and had to follow a huge amount of laws to keep their kingship. A king could legally lose his rule if he gets injured from fleeing, ever picks up a shovel, spade, or axe, is literally EVER caught alone in public, and ever fails to defeat an enemy clan. Basically, kings didn't last. Any man who could claim that his great grandfather was a king could take the position of king, so essentially a huge amount of replacements were available. Kings were basically warlords; law was controlled by an educated poet class, so he never dealt with courtcases. The King was just a soldier to lead the clansmen into battle against other clans. Honor meant everything, and every action of the king was tied to this.
This brings me to Cattle and hearding. The Irish economy and the Irish society was completely based on the herd you controlled. Getting married? One family had to give this amount of cows to the other and vise versa as a dowry. Kill a man? You are responsible to pay an amount of cows to the offended family (the amount depended on the mans position in society, ranging from low class, to upper class, to king. The class system and the law system in medieval ireland is extremely interesting but thats a question for a different time.) My favorite is if you killed the herd dog of another man, you had to A) buy him a replacement dog, B) give him a large amount of cattle, and C) pay him for any cattle/sheep he loses in the year it takes to train the new dog. They were fair and swift with retribution; all based on your honor and cows.
So what does this do to the society? Kings, whose sole purpose was to fight other kings and clans and could be replaced in a moments notice, didn't build huge castles for their kids to inherent (no promise of their kids even getting the position of king). Kings would donate a huge amount of money to build beautiful stone monasteries, so we know they COULD build castle like structures, but why build a castle? A ringfort did well enough, and like, if an enemy was intimidated by a castle, they could just move their cattle somewhere else, effectively making them useless. The landscape in western Ireland (excluding where the Vikings landed, who changed everything in their sections) could be summarized as fortified ring forts with a king, outlying small towns and houses for the folks who lived in an area and their cattle, and then well built monasteries for the monks. Anglo Norman Economics, which is based on grain and feudalism, needed castles and established land to work, but not the Irish Culture. hope that answers the question