By 'age' you mean 'century'? Your English is so incredibly good that I regularly forget it's not your native tongue.
I believe that other missionaries in addition to St. Patrick were preaching at the same time, so it might be a bit difficult NOT to have Ireland converted. On the other hand, given the strengths of the pagan intelligentsia (bards etc), maybe they could have come up with that AH cliche of surviving paganism?
[PS despite my screen name, I don't actually speak the language - although Grandma did]
Why thank you

I read a lot in English and Icelanders in general speak English quite well. One might even argue that culturally speaking we are a part of the Anglosphere just as much as USA and Canada.
Yes, of course the legend of a single St. Patrick converting Ireland is not very plausible in the end. Hmm... But we could see St. Patrick's failure maybe as more of a metaphore, for a general missionary failure.

Sometimes I think AH.COM could just as well be renamed the League for Pagan survival.
[As for your PS, I may have pointed this out to you before, but if you want learn a little Icelandic and visit Iceland for a while there is a scholarship out there for Canadian and maybe USamerican students as well, to study in Iceland. Basicly all you have to do is to have an Icelandic grandparent and then the Icelandic government would actually pay for your stay and studies, you should look into it if your interested in looking at some roots as your screenname suggests

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