A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
Finn’s Seat: topographies of power and royal marchlands of Gaelic polities in medieval Ireland
Hill-and mountain-top cairns and mounds in Ireland are often viewed as epiphenomenal features of the medieval landscape. In recent years, research on early medieval ferta, ancestral burial places cited in the legal procedure of taking possession of land and invoked during disputes over land, has highlighted the role of some sepulchral cairns and mounds in boundary maintenance. This paper proposes that particular cairns and mounds, imagined at least as early as the tenth century as Finn’s Seat (Suidhe Finn), acted as territorial markers in boundary formation and continuity and signified royal marchlands (mruig ríg) where Gaelic kings went to hunt and to fight. It is argued that such lands were essentially forests, where a range of natural resources were available. A window onto royal marchlands is provided by the medieval Finn Cycle of Tales (fíanaigecht) which encode knowledge of medieval territorial boundary zones in the names of the places where the quasi-mythical warrior-hunter and border hero, Finn mac Cumaill, works for the king of Ireland, hunts with his fían (wild band) and accesses the Otherworld.
Finn’s Seat: topographies of power and royal marchlands of Gaelic polities in medieval Ireland
Hill-and mountain-top cairns and mounds in Ireland are often viewed as epiphenomenal features of the medieval landscape. In recent years, research on early medieval ferta, ancestral burial places cited in the legal procedure of taking possession of land and invoked during disputes over land, has highlighted the role of some sepulchral cairns and mounds in boundary maintenance. This paper proposes that particular cairns and mounds, imagined at least as early as the tenth century as Finn’s Seat (Suidhe Finn), acted as territorial markers in boundary formation and continuity and signified royal marchlands (mruig ríg) where Gaelic kings went to hunt and to fight. It is argued that such lands were essentially forests, where a range of natural resources were available. A window onto royal marchlands is provided by the medieval Finn Cycle of Tales (fíanaigecht) which encode knowledge of medieval territorial boundary zones in the names of the places where the quasi-mythical warrior-hunter and border hero, Finn mac Cumaill, works for the king of Ireland, hunts with his fían (wild band) and accesses the Otherworld.
Finn’s Seat: topographies of power and royal marchlands of Gaelic polities in medieval Ireland
FitzPatrick, Elizabeth (author) / Hennessy, Ronan (author)
Landscape History ; 38 ; 29-62
2017-07-03
34 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Swadal, Swar (and Erechwydd?): early medieval polities in Upper Swaledale
| Taylor & Francis Verlag | 1994
Castles in Ireland : feudal power in a Gaelic world
| TIBKAT | 1997
| British Library Conference Proceedings | 1998
Mapping cosmopolis: Moral topographies of the medieval city
| Online Contents | 2004
Persons, polities and planning
| Online Contents | 2014