Chapter Two, Part Five: The Late Heroic Period 620-700
The effect of the Peace of Armagh on the Insula was surprisingly immediate. The Fánaithe, despite their rough and ready demeanor and their general disdain for the clergy on the island, had a great respect for the Christian hierarchy back home in Ireland. Though several were worried, now that the Abbott of Brendan’s was a newly consecrated Bishop, they were willing to put down their arms and respect his authority.
That by no means meant that they were willing to abandon their feuds with one another, however. They just took on a new element.
The Companies, by this point in time, were more akin to clans than business or adventuring endeavors. Their traditions, inherited and adapted from warrior societies of Ireland’s recent pagan past, helped to shape individual Company identity. The wrongs done unto them by their rivals were not easily forgotten. With the Peace of Armagh, however, the Companies began to take their feuds beyond the borders of the Insula.
Despite the Bishop of Tairngire holding ecclesiastical and temporal authority over the entirety of the known New World at this point in time, he had little ability to project this power beyond the shores of the Insula (and, in winter, beyond the borders of Peace Town). The Fánaithe, realizing this, began to make the trip across the Narrow Sea to Terra Ursus with greater regularity.
These trips, ostensibly for trade with the natives there (who the Fánaithe would strangely report were rapidly dwindling in numbers from season to season), they also went there to fight. While the fights were originally sudden brawls and melees when two different Companies came across one another in the wilderness, they slowly began to take on a more formal character and formed an alternative legak structure to the reparations enforced by the Bishop.
The idea behind this was that, if a man was wronged by a man of another Company, he could send a representative demanding to right this wrong through combat. Larger groups could request this as well. The two Companies would agree on a location in Terra Ursus to meet and settle their dispute through violence. While this was not a very effective way at ending feuds (often exacerbating then), it did manage to direct the violence from random ambushes to more ceremonial means. This, combined with the more formal measures of the Peace of Armagh, freed the Fánaithe by and large from the threat of sudden attack.
This, in turn, freed the Fánaithe to return to what they were actually in the West to do- get furs and other valuables to make money.
Perhaps the most significant development in this period was the Fánaithe roaming further afield than they ever had before. Spurred on by an increasing shortage of fur bearing animals on the Insula and the decline of the Skin People in Terra Ursus, the Fánaithe took their currachs to find new hunting and furring grounds, as well as trying to find new groups to trade with.
The latter would probe difficult, as the Fánaithe would discover the lands they visited were all but devoid of human life. They would sometimes find villages or camps that had the appearance of being suddenly abandoned. This strange phenomenon disturbed the Fánaithe to no end, and neither they nor the monks at Brendan’s could determine a reason why.
The prevailing modern theory for this is known as the “Drift Theory”. Postulated in the 1980s, it holds that the route taken by the Fánaithe and others to the New World was conducive to getting lost, or “drifting” off course. In several cases, these drifting boats may have overshot the Insula and made landfall on the continent. Those that survived this drifting were often sick from the long voyage- encounters with native peoples were likely to have the same effect as the Plague that devastated the Skin People of the Insula in the 6th Century.
At any rate, the Fánaithe failed to find groups to trade with; they did, however, document a land that was much more friendly than the Insula or Terra Ursus. These lands were also teeming with the game that they wished to trap and hunt for furs. Therefore, the Fánaithe increasingly sailed to these “abandoned”’ lands. Due to the distances involved, some men began to spend more time on the continent (as it was becoming increasingly evident to those involved that these new lands were much bigger than an island). One enterprising man even established the first permanent European outpost on the continental New World. Called “Three Pines” [1], it was a dank coastal settlement that existed simply to bring supplies in for expeditions and send furs out.
By 670, the Fánaithe had reached their farthest territorial extent, having explored almost all of the Bay of Saint Peter [2]. The fur trade was bringing in profits again, and the backers of the Companies in Ireland were happy. However, the discoveries of the Fánaithe would have greater effects on the Measctha.
By 620, there were two-hundred or so Measctha living in Peace Town. High birth rates would raise that number to nearly nine-hundred by the end of the century. For some of this rising generation, the confines of Peace Town were becoming increasingly cramped. Eyes looked towards the lands along the Bay of Saint Peter. While the Measctha would not venture from the Insula in great numbers yet, a few families began to settle in a few of the more permanent Fánaithe outposts along the Bay, performing various roles.
This settlement, beginning around 670, would lead to the beginning of the end of the Fánaithe Heroic Period. The Measctha were often the harbingers of the Bishop’s authority, holding loyalty to him and to the clergy of Brendan’s. This began to put clamps on the formal combat of the Companies and spread the enforcement of the Peace of Armagh. A more important event was the beginning of the Streachailt- the Struggle- in Ireland.
The issues of the balance of power in Ireland after the fall of Dál Riata had never been fully resolved, and the fights for dominance of the Western trade had been part of a slowly building conflict between the various petty Kings, clans, and clergy of the Emerald Isle. While the traditional account of the Northern Kings fighting the Southern Kings is an oversimplification of what took place, nevertheless it does illustrate the two main sides in the Streachailt.
While the Streachailt itself is beyond the scope of this work, suffice it to say Ireland was plunged into a series of bloody wars that would change the shape of the island. In addition to the Leontine Plague that hit Ireland around the beginning of the 8th Century, it would deal the Irish a blow it would take them centuries to recover from. The most able minds and rulers of Ireland were slain or perished in the Plague, and the remainder had to focus on rebuilding their lives.
During the waning years of the 7th Century, most Fánaithe would return home to fight as warriors as part of the Streachailt. Having a Fánai in your retinue was seen as a prestige bonus for a monarch, as the ballads surrounding the wanderers had built them a fearsome reputation. As the conflicts raged on, however, and the Leontine Plague began to first hit the island, a few former Fánaithe had an idea. Gathering their families, wealth, and all they could, they sailed out for Ireland. This group of sixty or so individuals would land in Peace Town in 700 A.D. It marked the first time a European woman was brought to the New World.
It also marked the beginning of a shift in the character of European interests in the Insula and the lands surrounding the Gulf of St. Peter…
[1]- OTL Shippagan
[2]- OTL Gulf of Saint Lawrence
