It is a tale of ambition, determination, courage and sacrifice. The battle was not just influential in Irish history; it also had a major impact on the subsequent history of the jarldom of Orkney - a Scandinavian power that lay to the north and west of medieval Scotland.

Brian Boru emerges from the pages of this illustrated book, not as the great reforming high-king of legend, but as a still highly ambitious and intelligent monarch, whose steely resolve led his army to victory on the Clontarf battlefield that Good Friday in 1014.