Beginish Island is a small island located in the Irish Sea between Valentia Island and the Iveragh peninsula, in County Kerry, Ireland. On the southwest-facing beach on the eastern end of Beginish is a group of eight houses, 15 cairns, and eight animal shelters, occupied between the 10th and 12th centuries, houses which appear to manifest evidence of early Norse/Viking occupation of Ireland.
The earliest occupation of the site appears to represent a Scandinavian marine way-station, dated to the 10th century. Two houses (Houses 6 and 7, as yet unexcavated) are rectangular in plan and contained a rotary whetstone, a soapstone bowl, and a ringed pin all believed to be of Scandinavian origin.
A third house, Beginish House 1, appears to date to the 11th century AD and is believed to represent Scandinavian/Hibernian origins. It is a pit-house, with a sunken floor 1.5 meters below the exterior surface, its walls faced with dry stone.
The lintel above the door of this house is a slab of slaty sandstone measuring 1.85 meters in length, 45 centimeters wide and 10 centimeters in thickness. Pecked into the surface is a small equal-armed cross and an inscription in runes. The inscription says, roughly, "Verr erected this stone; Munuflr carved the runes."
Beginish was excavated by M. J. O'Kelly in the 1950s and reinterpreted by Sheehan and colleagues in the early 21st century.
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com Guide to the Viking Age and part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Sheehan, John, Steffen Stummann Hansen, and Donnchadh Ó Corráin 2001 A Viking Age Maritime Haven: A Reassessment of the Island Settlement at Beginish, Co. Kerry. The Journal of Irish Archaeology 10:93-119.
