The Burren, Ireland

I don’t know why… maybe it’s my peasant Northern Irish, potato-famine heritage, but I love bleak and barren. Easy to love when I don’t have to subsist on same landscape, when I can come, admire and leave. But the Burren in County Clare stole my heart with its romantic and forbidding beauty. It’s almost impossible to describe The Burren to those who haven’t been there, so allow some pictures to speak a few thousand words before I go on.

 

A close-up of that rock hill

me on the Burren

 

 

 

life between the rocks

 

 

 

From the emerald fields and farms abutting Galway Bay, rises the scraped bones of the Burren. Glaciers from the most recent ice age have eroded topsoil and weak bedrock leaving bare limestone exposed to the elements. Small cracks (grikes) between the rocks caused by the glacier have widened over time as bare limestone itself has been worn down by wind and water. What remains is this amazing landscape of stone jigsaw pieces haphazardly left by a frustrated puzzle maker.

Visitors are warned against walking alone on the Burren. It’s easy to get lost or injured. Not surprising. The footing can be difficult, there are few landmarks and the region is huge.

For an apparently barren place, there is an amazing amount of flora. Growing side by side in the clefts between rocks are species that should never have known each other. Plants native to the sub-arctic like the Mountain Avens*

 

 

 

grow beside the Dense Flowered Orchid * – usually found in Mediterranean climates.

It was impossible to walk across this landscape without constantly bending down to get a closer look at what was under my feet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In North America, people pay thousands to have rock walls constructed. Rock walls are everywhere in the Burren. There’s certainly no shortage of material and the landowners’ artistry is amazing. Imagine yourself hand-building these walls!

 

 

 

 

 

Until our trip to Ireland, my window into the ancient world had always been through Greek and Roman history. I’ve loved these worlds since my mother read Greek myths to us as kids. But my fascination soared when my grade 11 History teacher, Mrs. Bixley told us stories about and showed us slides she had taken on an archeological dig. She brought ancient civilizations to life. We’ve been fortunate to see (and touch) remnants of these cultures in Britain, Italy, France and Turkey.

It was, however, as we were traveling through Ireland I realized I knew little about the pre-Roman ancient civilizations of the British Isles. I became fascinated with hill forts and Dolmens- couldn’t get enough of them. We even started planning our itineraries based on where we could see these wonderful monuments.

The Burren is home to one particularly impressive site:  the Poulnabrone Dolmen. This dolmen is exceedingly popular. Every bus tour in the area stops there. However, on an early, rainy, cold May morning, there were few hearty souls who shared our fascination with this ancient place.

Dolmens are also called Portal Tombs. Some dolmens appear to have been burial sites, while others, monuments and gathering places. The following photos are the Poulnabrone dolmen from all sides.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Ann Lynch and her team excavated under the Poulnabrone dolmen in the 1980’s, remains from 22 people were found. These remains were not buried here all at the same time but over about 600 years. Carbon dating places the dolmen’s use between 3800 and 3200 BCE. If those few people were buried over that length of time, clearly this tomb was reserved for special people. No one seems to know who they were or why they were allowed to be buried there.

What amazes me about this dolmen and others we saw is how they were constructed. Generally there are two portal stones and a back stone supporting a massive roof  or cap stone. The roof stone of the Brownshill Dolmen – which we also saw – is 100 tonnes! The Poulnabrone cap stone is much smaller, but that these early people managed to place it on the supporting stones is astounding. We have cranes to do our heavy lifting. They had some fast-thinking engineers who figured out by building a ramp, using wooden rollers, ropes and (maybe) animals they could drag those roof stones into position. At least that’s one theory.

Seeing the dolmen rise from the limestone on this grey, rainy day reinforced the difficulty the ancients and not so ancients had eking out a living on this formidable landscape.

*photos of the Mountain Avens and Dense Flowered Orchid are not my own.

Further reading: 

http://www.burrennationalpark.ie/Flora.html

http://www.geoneed.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2011/06/Burren-Non-technical-geological-review.pdf

http://www.burrengeopark.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Burren_Geoscientific_Guide_NEED.pdf

http://www.docbrown.info/docspics/irishscenes/ispage36.htm

http://www.ancientireland.org/poulnabrone/

http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/06/poulnabrone-tomb-life-and-death-in-the-burren/