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The Ossianic poems are full of references to
Lochlann and the Norse as the opponents of Fionn
mac Cumhall, whom Macpherson curiously called
"Fingal," which means "the Norseman," and as a
personal name was introduced and used by the
Vikings. Irish and Hebridean folklore relates that
before the Christian era the islands were ruled by sea-kings
called Fomorians (fomhor, a giant, a pirate)
and popularly identified with the Scandinavian pirates.
The confusion existed in old Irish historians; Duald
Mac Firbis, writing in the seventeenth century and
following authors of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, in his tract on the Fomorians and the
Lochlannachs (edited by Prof. Alex. Bugge, Christiania,
1905) classed them together, though he knew that
"the Fomorians were the first who waged war against
the country" of Ireland. "The Wars of the Gaedhil
and the Gaill" tells an impossible tale of the
mythological King Nuada of the Silver Hand and
the Fomorians who came from Lochlann or Norway:
and when the Norse King Magnus Barefoot of the
eleventh century became an important figure in
Celtic folklore, as he was in the sixteenth century,
the story-tellers found no difficulty in pitting him
against Fionn mac Cumhall in a great battle fought
on the island of Arran. Giraldus Cambrensis
tells the tale of Gurmundus, who, though a
Norwegian, came from Africa in the sixth century to
Ireland, and then invading Britain, took Cirencester
from its Welsh king, and ruled the realm. Now late
chronicles, like the Book of Hyde and Gaimar, called
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