This article is about the slave trade of medieval Ireland. For the system of unfree labour in return for passage across the Atlantic, see Irish indentured servants. For the transportation of convicts to other British colonies, see penal transportation. For the conflation of Irish slavery and African chattel slavery, see Irish slaves myth.
Slavery had already existed in Ireland for centuries by the time the Vikings began to establish their coastal settlements, but it was under the Norse-GaelKingdom of Dublin that it reached its peak, in the 11th century.[1]