Stew your apples and Bradley Cooper's joke box you useful onus.

Welcome to the Blind By Podcast.

There's a church up in Dublin in the city centre on the north side by the name is St. Mykin's Church.

It's a church of great historical significance because it's really old. The church dates to the year 1095, almost a thousand years ago.

It's an ancient church. And in 1095, it was a Viking chapel. It was a church that Vikings built because it

smacked bang in the middle of what was Viking Dublin. Dublin was founded by Vikings, so was Limerick. If you've been to Dublin,

because I'm aware that most of my listeners are outside of Ireland now, but if you've been to Dublin, you've probably visited Old Viking Dublin, because it's right there on the river Liffey.

I'm talking Temple Bar near enough where the Guinness brewery is, the Jameson distillery, the real touristy areas of Dublin city, that's old Viking Dublin, and it's's centered around an area called Wood Key.

Now unfortunately we don't have much left of Viking Dublin.

It's a very frustrating situation. So the Viking City of Dublin probably

founded around the 8th century, I'm not 100% sure, but the Viking City of Dublin would have been mostly made of wood.

The problem with wood is that it deteriorates.

Remember I went to Oslo there a couple of months back and I had a big history horn on me because I was visiting

a perfectly preserved wooden Viking ship that was preserved in a bog. Well the Viking city of Dublin, Wood Key was very unique because the marshy clay of the banks of the river Liffey is anaerobic.

Oxygen doesn't exist there.

So the Viking City of Dublin was perfectly preserved in the ground.

Where most other Viking cities rotted away and were built over because it was wood.

Dublin was built over, but the anaerobic conditions in the clay preserved a lot of it really, really well. So this area known as Wood

Key, just on the River Liffey there on the south side, this was a treasure trove of artifacts and history about the Vikings and about the

history of Ireland and the history of the Irish people because the Vikings became

Irish. Dublin was a very important

global Viking city. So it was Limerick. Like you ever hear the phrase

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