Ireland and the North: (91 Reimagining Ireland)

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.

CONTENTS: 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 – 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 – 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 – David Gray/John Foster: Freedom and the North: Constance Malleson’s Lifelong Pursuit.

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 (PhD) 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 in Centre for Resolution of International Conflicts at Political Science University of Copenhagen.