Ireland and the North

Fionna Barber, Heidi Hansson,
and Sara Dybris McQuaid (eds)

Ireland and the North

PETER LANG

Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

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ISSN: 1662-9094

ISBN 978-1-78874-289-4 (print) • eISBN 978-1-78874-290-0 (ePDF)

eISBN 978-1-78874-291-7 (ePub) • eISBN 978-1-78874-292-4 (Mobi)

Cover image: Footprints in Tromsø, Rita Duffy (2011). Oil on linen, 45 x 56 cm. Courtesy of the Artist.

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About the editors

Fionna Barber is Reader in Art History at the Manchester School of Art. She is the author of Art in Ireland since 1910 (2013).

Heidi Hansson is Professor of English Literature and Deputy Vice Chancellor of Umeå University, Sweden. She has published widely on both Irish literature and northern and Arctic literature.

Sara Dybris McQuaid is Director for the Centre for Irish Studies and Associate Professor in British and Irish History, Society and Culture at Aarhus University. She is also a core research partner at the Centre for Resolution of International Conflicts at the Political Science University of Copenhagen.

About the book

Ireland and the North is an edited collection of chapters engaging with the relationship between Ireland and the Nordic countries. As a spatial and geographical point of reference for the formation of political and cultural identities in Ireland, the idea of ‘the North’ encourages the identification of overlooked connections between Ireland and the Nordic countries, which, like Ireland, are also small nation states on the periphery of Europe. Importantly, the book employs a double conceptualisation of ‘the North’ to include Northern Ireland. Moving beyond the nation state as a key framework for analysis of human activity, this collection engages with the transnational and transcultural in a mapping of connectivity and exchange. Relationships explored are imaginary and material exchanges, civic and personal linkages, literary adaptation and appropriation, transfers of cultural artefacts, political institutions and ideas. Chapters are drawn from a wide-ranging field of study that includes art history, literary history and theory, archaeology, antiquarianism, and media studies in addition to political analysis. With three sections on Material Culture, Political Culture and Print Culture, the book moves beyond the predominant literary paradigm in Irish Studies to make a significant contribution to expanding and developing the field.

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Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Sara Dybris McQuaid, Heidi Hansson and Fionna Barber

A New Geography of Reference

part i Visual and Material Culture

Ciaran McDonough

‘Ireland and Denmark Are Specially to Be Named’: The Connections Between Irish and Danish Antiquarians in the Nineteenth Century

Maria Panum Baastrup

Cultural Encounters Between the Vikings and the Insular West: Foreign Artefacts in the Hands of Vikings

Fionna Barber

Severance: Rita Duffy’s Paintings and the Affective Arctic

Stephen Joyce

Experiencing Northern Ireland as Game of Thrones Destination←v | vi→

part ii Political Culture

Andrew Newby

‘A True Friend of Scandinavia’: Michael Davitt’s Northern Travels of Summer 1904

Sara Dybris McQuaid

Better Together? Comparative Perspectives on Regional Cooperation in the British-Irish and Nordic Contexts

Stephen Hopkins

Dublin Provisionals Remember the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’: Irish Republican Memoir-Writing and Southern Perspectives

Eugene O’Brien

The Rhetoric of Grammar and the Grammar of Rhetoric: An Apophantic Reading of Seamus Heaney’s North

part iii Print Culture

anne karhio

‘Strange Woods and Seas’: W. B. Yeats, the Kalevala and Repurposing Folk Literature

Julie Anne Stevens

Reclaiming the Norse Myths: Padraic Colum’s The Children of Odin (1920) and the Keary Sisters’ The Heroes of Asgard (1871)

Eoghan Smith

Revivalism, Modernism and Beyond: Scandinavian Influences on Irish Literature←vi | vii→

David Gray and John Wilson Foster

Freedom and the North: Constance Malleson’s Lifelong Pursuit

Notes on Contributors

Index←vii | viii→ ←viii | ix→

Figures

Figure 1.1. Drawing of bowl-formed brooches found at Kilmainham in the first half of the nineteenth century. Image taken from Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae, An Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland and Ireland (London: John Murray, 1852), p. 327. Image is in the public domain.

Figure 1.2. Flint arrowhead in the collection of the Royal Irish Academy, taken from W. R. Wilde, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities of Stone, Earthen, Vegetable, and Animal Materials in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy (Dublin: M. H. Gill, 1857), p. 14. The work is in the public domain.

Figure 1.3. Reproduction of the Book of Leinster Cogadh Gaedhel Re Gallaibh in James Henthorn Todd’s 1867 edition and translation. Image is in the public domain.

Figure 2.1. Important magnates’ farms in Viking Age Denmark: Gudme, Tissø, Lejre and Toftegård. The dots show the distribution of metal artefacts from the insular area (status in 2012) (map: C. Krause).

Figure 2.2. Fragment of possible church inventory decorated with distinct ‘scroll and trumpet’ pattern. This, originally Irish piece, was found in Vendsyssel, Northern Jutland, Denmark by a metal detectorist (photo: M. P. Baastrup).

Figure 2.3. The so-called Witham Bowl is a well-known silver hanging bowl of Anglo-Saxon provenance. Note the three-dimensional animal figure at the base of←ix | x→ the bowl. It has traits in common with the fitting found at Tissø (see Figure 2.9) (illustration: The Society of Antiquaries).

Figure 2.4. A cat-like fitting of gilt silver found at the magnates’ residence at Tissø. This fitting may originally have been attached to the base of a bowl of the same type as the Witham Bowl (photo: M. Baastrup).

Figure 2.5. A fitting from an insular crozier found at Nørholm, Denmark. This is an example of a type of artefact that appears to have been used mainly as a symbol of ecclesiastical office (photo: M. Baastrup).

Figure 2.6. Circular gilded fitting of copper alloy found in Lejre, which was originally part of a house-shaped reliquary in Ireland. It has been reworked into a weight (photo: M. Baastrup).

Figure 2.7. The Lejre hoard. This hoard contains an insular silver hanging bowl (seen in the top right corner). Subsequently, it ended up in a Viking Age hoard along with Scandinavian artefacts (photo: National Museum of Denmark).

Figure 2.8. Decorative fitting of copper alloy reworked into a piece of jewellery. Found in a Viking woman’s grave at Vejleby on Lolland in southern Denmark. On the back are traces of a secondary pin mechanism made by the Vikings (marked by the arrow) (photo: Birgit Wilster Hansen).

Figure 2.9. Gilded fitting of copper alloy shaped like a man’s head, the eyes inlaid with amber. This fitting was reworked into a weight and was found at Øster Vandet in Jutland, Denmark. It dates to the 700s or 800s (photo: Pia Brejnholt, National Museum of Denmark).←x | xi→

Figure 2.10. The hoard from Fejø containing a large continental silver cup (photo: National Museum of Denmark).

Figure 3.1. Rita Duffy, Blue Antlers, 2011, oil on linen 45 x 56 cm. Courtesy of the Artist.

Figure 3.2. Joseph Robinson Kirk, Francis Crozier memorial, Banbridge. 1862, marble. Image courtesy of Creative Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 © Gina64.

Figure 3.3. Rita Duffy, Newfoundland Iceberg, 2003, charcoal on paper, 213 x 152 cm. Courtesy of the Artist.

Figure 3.4. Rita Duffy, Crossing, 2011, oil on linen, 36 x 44 cm. Courtesy of the Artist.

Figure 3.5. Rita Duffy, The Awakening Triptych III. 1996, charcoal on paper, 152 x 122 cm. Courtesy of the Artist.

Figure 3.6. Rita Duffy, Family Tied, 2011, oil on linen, 45 x 56 cm. Courtesy of the Artist.

Figure 3.7. Rita Duffy, Cold Night in Tromsø 1, 2011, oil on linen, 30 x 40 cm. Courtesy of the Artist.