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A thousand-year-old manuscript documenting Viking raids, comets, royal camel gifts and the lives of kings returns to Ireland for the first time since 1983 in a new exhibition at University College Cork.
Close to a thousand years old and handwritten in a mixture of Irish and Latin, the fifty-seven vellum leaves of the Annals of Inisfallen document the history of Ireland across more than a millennium, covering events from long before the arrival of Saint Patrick through to the later medieval period.
The manuscript, which forms the centrepiece of a new exhibition at University College Cork, presents a continuous, year-by-year narrative of death, conflict, dramatic weather events and unusual occurrences. It chronicles Viking raids on Skellig Michael off the County Kerry coast in 823, the arrival of a group believed to be Irelands first Jews in 1079, the great snow of 1047, and even the gift of a camel from the King of Scotland to the great-grandson of Brian Boru in the year 1105.
Invasions of Ireland from the mythical Tuatha Dé Danann and the coming of the Normans are all detailed within its pages, alongside the life spans of kings and poets. The manuscript is thought to have been initially copied in the monastery of Lismore in County Waterford, drawing on materials created in the monasteries of Clonmacnoise in County Offaly and Emly in County Tipperary.
At some point in the twelfth century, the volume was brought to west Munster, most likely to the monastery on Inisfallen Island in Killarney, County Kerry, where the annual records were continued. The earliest sections are contemporary with the writing of the book and involved contributions from a succession of roughly thirty scribes, while later additions extend the historical record into the fifteenth century. Much of the later, contemporary material relates specifically to west Munster.
Its pages preserve a unique record of Irelands political, ecclesiastical and cultural life across generations, capturing a powerful all-action history book that stands as a monument to the work of a multitude of scribes who facilitated the transition from Latin to Irish as the language of record and scholarship. The manuscript entered the collection of the seventeenth-century Irish historian James Ware before passing through subsequent collectors to Richard Rawlinson, whose bequest brought it to the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford, where it has been preserved for more than two hundred and fifty years.
The annals were last on display in Ireland in 1983, when a return was arranged to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of Killarney National Park. Now, for the first time in more than four decades, visitors can view the manuscript at the Glücksman Gallery in University College Cork, where the exhibition titled Recording the Past: The Annals of Inisfallen and the Making of Irish History will remain on display until the first of November.
The president of University College Cork described the Annals of Inisfallen as one of the great treasures of Irelands written heritage, noting that the exhibition offers visitors an opportunity to engage with a manuscript that has shaped our understanding of medieval Ireland. The Bodleian Libraries director expressed delight at collaborating with University College Cork to exhibit the Annals of Inisfallen in Ireland, emphasising that giving the public a chance to view and get up close with this much-treasured manuscript will help support greater understanding and appreciation of the medieval period and the role of manuscripts in preserving knowledge.
The exhibition has been made possible through the support of Brian McCarthy of Fexco, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, the National Monuments Service, Kerry County Council and Cork University Foundation
Annals Of Inisfallen University College Cork Bodleian Libraries Medieval Ireland Illuminated Manuscript
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