Ólchobar mac Cináeda

Ólchobar mac Cináeda (died 851) was King of Munster from 847 until his death. He may be the "king of the Irish" who sent an embassy to Frankish Emperor Charles the Bald announcing a series of victories over Vikings in Ireland in 848.

Ólchobar was previously thought to have belonged to the Locha Léin branch of the Eóganachta, the kindred which dominated the kingship of Munster from the 6th to the late 10th centuries, whose lands lay around the Lakes of Killarney. More recent research however has shown that he was more likely a member of the Eóganacht Áine branch of the dynasty. This branch, found in the east of modern County Limerick, was part of the inner circle of Eoganachta which had rotated the kingship of Munster since the 7th century. The Eóganacht Áine provided several abbots of Emly in the 9th century.

Ólchobar is believed to have been abbot of Emly, the principal church of the Eóganachta, before he was chosen as king. His predecessor, the powerful Feidlimid mac Crimthainn, is the first king of Munster known to have combined clerical office with the kingship. This combination of secular and religious power appears to have been unique to Munster in the ninth and tenth centuries. Several of the kings who held abbacies as well as the kingship, Ólchobar among them but also the better known Cormac mac Cuilennáin, are thought to have been compromise candidates for the kingship.

Some of the Irish annals, among them the Chronicon Scotorum, record that early in Ólchobar's reign Emly was attacked by a Viking force. In 848, a year which saw multiple defeats for the Vikings, Ólchobar joined forces with his eastern neighbour, Lorcán mac Cellaig, King of Leinster, to defeat a Viking army at Sciath Nechtain, near modern Castledermot, County Kildare. Early sources say two hundred Vikings were killed, later ones increase the number of dead, among them one Tomrair, jarl and deputy of the king of Laithlind. Later in the year the Cashel branch of the Eóganachta inflicted a defeat on Vikings at Dún Maíle Tuile, near Cashel. Further victories had been won in the west, in modern County Sligo, by the High King Máel Sechnaill mac Máele Ruanaid and his ally Tigernach mac Fócartai.

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