Abstract

The Vikings first appeared off the shores of Ireland in 795 AD, and established the foundations for the city of Dublin in 841 AD. In the present day, Vikings continue to exercise a formidable influence over Ireland’s capital city, as Vikings have been incorporated into diverse heritage initiatives. In the form of walking tours, museum exhibitions, and living history performances, historic and re-created Viking visual and material culture is accessible to citizens and visitors throughout the modern Irish cityscape. The Vikings, however, have not always been valued or recognized as a component of the city’s or Ireland’s heritage. Working in an interdisciplinary way across the domains of history, performance studies, and design studies this thesis investigates how historic and present-day textual, visual and material representations of Viking Dublin have been recruited and exhibited by official Dublin-based bodies – in particular the Dublin City Council, the National Museum of Ireland, and heritage centre Dublinia. Having identified links between heritage, nostalgia and performativity, I argue that the Vikings have been used as a conduit to imagine Irish identity as transhistorical. That is, by co-opting the Vikings as a component of Dublin’s heritage, stakeholders with a vested interest in Irish heritage production have shaped how audiences think about Irish identity both in the past and present. By engaging with the history, visual and material culture, and performative pageantry of Dublin’s Viking heritage, this thesis investigates the twin processes of Viking exclusion and Viking inclusion that has characterized Irish history and heritage for centuries.