The Three Fragments

The ancient Irish annals known as The Three Fragments were significant in documenting the mass exodus from Ireland in to Wirral of Ingimund and his fellow Norsemen. These documents have been under scrutiny for the last 140 years since their discovery but are now accepted as genuine accounts of the arrival of the Norsemen into Wirral in 902 A.D. or shortly after.
 
The difficulties were that the original vellum manuscripts recording the Ingimund Story or “saga” were lost long ago, and all we have surviving is a 1643 copy (now in a museum in Brussels) of an earlier copy. But the painstaking work of scholars, particularly Frederick Threlfall Wainwright have shown that the part describing the Scandinavian settlements of Wirral at around 902 AD and the subsequent attacks on Chester in 907AD must have been true.

Besides the Three Fragments, and all the Scandinavian place-names in Wirral, the ancient Welsh chronicles also tell of the expulsion of the Norsemen – and their leader Ingimund - from Ireland in 902AD and unsuccessful attempts to land in Anglesey and other relevant events were happening and recorded by Anglo-Saxon chroniclers.  They tell of a strengthening of the Saxon stronghold of Chester around 907AD together with the fortification of other Saxon strongholds nearby such as Runcorn, Shotwick and Eddisbury.

This was done to contain the Wirral Norsemen from expanding southwards into Cheshire and beyond.  If the account of Ingimund’s arrival was false then there would have had to be some other group of Norsemen arriving in the same area at the same time.

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