 For more than a dozen years in the middle of the 9th century, most of the Viking raids in Ireland appear to have been part of a co-ordinated effort to conquer the country on behalf of the King of Laithlind.If later accounts are to be believed, this campaign was initially masterminded by a warlord referred to in Irish annals as Turgesius, Turgéis or Turges.According to the medieval Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson, Thorgils was a son of the first King of Norway Haraldr hárfagri (Harald Fairhair).