 The pioneering 19th-century historian Charles Haliday bewailed the silence of contemporary Irish sources "respecting the social position, religion, laws, and monuments of those who occupied Dublin for more than three hundred years on all facts ... excepting such as relate to their inroads and devastations".Most of our knowledge concerning the day-to-day lives of the Norse settlers in Dublin has been learned from extensive excavations at Wood Quay and in the neighbourhoods of Winetavern Street and Fishamble Street.The Norse built their houses almost exclusively out of perishable materials such as wood and straw, but many early buildings have been preserved in this area in a two-metre-thick waterlogged layer of estuarine mud, making Dublin one of the most important Norse sites in Europe.