I've never quite believed the story of St Patrick being kidnapped by Irish pirates: they are as plausible as Senegalese iceskaters, Eskimo bungee jumpers or Saudi Arabian synchronised swimmers.
Because to have pirates, you must have a sea-faring tradition, and notwithstanding the great John de Courcy Ireland, by the standards of most Atlantic civilisations, our seafaring habits are negligible. The myths and the preoccupations of the Gaelic peoples of St Patrick's time seem to be largely free of the maritime wanderlust possessed by other insular or Atlantic seaboard populations.
The exceptions to the Atlantic norm are of course the Highland Scots and the Irish, whose common disdain for the sea is as evident in their diets today as it is in their failure to develop ocean-going vessels, unlike, say, the Portuguese, Spanish, Scandinavians or the English. No penal law prevented Irish fishermen from harvesting the seas; but lack of interest did. It is remarkable that distaste in Ireland for the food of the sea is such that there are two oyster festival banquets in Galway each year; and at neither are oysters served. The oysterless oyster banquet is surely a uniquely Irish phenomenon.
Early contacts?
So, who were the pirates who grabbed St Patrick and brought him here? My guess is that they were early Danes. No doubt this theory doesn't quite accord with the usual chronology of Danish settlements here, which occurred half a millennium after St Patrick arrived, but that's just a little snag historians are going to have to sort out. Maybe it was those early contacts - not yet recorded by historians - which caused the Old Irish and the Old Danes to swap names like Niall/Niel or Briget/Bridget.
It must be nice to be Danish. Nobody says anything nasty about the Danes, and quite rightly. They, and not the Swedes, are probably the best looking people in Europe. The reason why the Swedes have the reputation of being handsome is the secret Swedish government policy of giving passports to handsome Swedes only.
Most Swedes are not allowed out of the country, largely because their faces resemble the vegetable named after them.
What do we name after the Danes? A delightful, light and delicate pastry, which sums up the Danish sense of humour. I have walked down the main shopping thoroughfares of Stockholm, packed with pedestrians, and it was as quiet as the ocean-bed, so speechless was everybody. In Copenhagen, there is the constant sound of laughter: and wouldn't you laugh if you looked as good as the Danes looked, and enjoyed your drink, your sex, your food, your football and your life as much as the Danes do, and with everything running on time? The nice thing is that for whatever reason, and certainly not our looks or our time-keeping, the Danes tend to regard themselves as the Irish of Scandinavia. Actually, that's not difficult, if the competition is coming from the turnips and the Norwegians.
Nordic tumble
The Norwegians, ah yes the Norwegians, the fine people who have traditionally thought that the violin is the instrument of the devil and who fall over flat on their faces if brushed by a Brazilian eyelash. If the Moroccans, who have been forced out of the World Cup by such a nordic tumble were to declare war, I think we should raise a brigade to help them, as many other countries undoubtedly would. The campaign should not last long. Oslo is as anagram of how Norway would have to fight its war.
I'm not sure what I'd be saying here if the Norwegians were planning a Scandinavian cultural festival here this autumn. Probably, God, not Peer bloody Gynt again; and what would there have even been of that if that nice Scottish fisherman called Grieg - from the lowlands, naturally - hadn't consorted pelvically with a Norwegian lass? Happily, the festival is being sponsored by the Danish government, which means, of course, nobody falling down flat on their faces because an eyelash fluttered behind them.
One item in the programme is further proof of how unmaritime we actually are - it will be the construction to scale of a Viking ship in the National Museum in Kildare Street - but by Danish craftsmen. The extraordinary truth is that, for whatever reason, indigenous Irish economic culture does not produce shipwrights or shipwright's skills.
Why? Is it because Irish waters and Irish inlets are inimical to ship-building? Hardly: the great shipyards of Belfast - though based on an industrial culture of North-West Britain - prove that; and so does the primary exhibit at the Ship Museum at Roskilde in Denmark, which is providing many of the artefacts on display at the National Museum this autumn. That exhibit is the Skuldelev warship, which was built by Norsemen in Dublin in 1060.
We don't have them
Not merely do we not have a native tradition of ship-building, we have not produced a composer of any international distinction - the Danes of course have Neilsen - and we have no school of painting. Painters, to be sure, but no schools - unlike the Danish Skagen painters, whose works will be on display in the National Gallery.
The Danes like to think how like us they are, but in many ways we are very different: and the really interesting questions begin with, why? As always, the whys have it.