Newgrange and Bru Na Boine

This last Friday the Early Irish History Class traveled to Newgrange and Loughcrew. We were unable to visit Knowth, which is the coolest of the three sites (that is, Newgrange, Knowth, and Dowth, the three largest Neolithic cemetaries in Europe) as the excavation of the site has just recently been completed and the site has not yet gone through the same preservation techniques that Newgrange has. Because of this, Knowth is closed from Halloween weekend on to preserve it from the cold weather.

So what is Newgrange? Newgrange (what you see above) is a humongous man-made

mound that features a passage tomb inside (The passage ways inside make a "t" shape). It is built with hundreds, if not thousands of large stones placed on top of each other that are slowly moved inward to create a peaked roof (see picture below for the inside of a DIFFERENT passage tomb). The stone was then covered with layers of turf to protect the rocks from elements, and possibly to make it blend in with the landscape/hide it. As thousands of years went by, the soil layer got higher and many of these passage tombs/mounds were hidden. This one was stumbled upon by accident.

Inside, each of the dead end cubby-like areas in the "t" shape had a large bowl (one of these was still featured in the Newgrange site but no pictures are allowed inside) which, when excavated, was filled with the cremated remains of what they estimate was around 100 bodies.

(Most passage tombs don't have these grates on top. This is also a picture from the passage tomb at Loughcrew, not Newgrange, but it gives you an idea as to how they were built).

Loughcrew is a series of passage tombs, many of them collapsed. However, one of them still remains intact.

Many of these passage tombs are also covered in rock art, carvings that were handmade. Here are some examples of rock art from Loughcrew!

Off to Spain, Italy, and Berlin!!!

Ancient Crypts, Mummified Dead... and a Little Bit of Normalcy

Yes, I do realize that the words featured in my title should not go together.

The question of the day is: Have you ever smelled eight hundred year old dead?

This weekend, eight of us traveled with Tom and his wife to St Michan's, a nearby church just across the liffey. The church was built on top of six 900 year old crypts, two of which are open to to the public. In the first crypt, we saw family "plots" piled high with coffins. Because the families could still be buried in these plots today, they are still considered sacred places and can neither be lit nor can the coffins be opened (and, of course, you can't take pictures).
However (there is ALWAYS a catch), over the 900 years that have passed, many of the sarcophagi located on the bottom of the piles have collapsed. This allowed the church to extract the mummified remains of the dead inside, and four of the least damaged corpses are now on display. Since the crypt is underground and built with limestone, the temperature stays constant, therefore preserving the bodies.

Also in the first crypt, there are two sarcophagi containing the bodies of two rebel brothers (a.ka. the Sheare Brothers) who tried to imitate the French Revolution here in Ireland to break from British rule, as well as the death mask of Wolfe Tone - who tried to do the same thing. The neat thing about these two rebels is that the church owns the original documentation from their execution note which was written after the brothers had been captured at a meeting of doomed rebel leaders who had a spy amongst their ranks.
The document is very legible, and visitors can clearly make out the death sentence for the rebels which went something like this:

*WARNING: The following is not suitable for children*

"...shall be hanged, not until they are dead, but rather, whilst they are still alive, they are to be eviscerated and, whilst still alive their insides are to be burned in front of their faces...."
They were hanged, eviscerated, had their entrails burned, and then their heads were chopped off and they were drawn and quartered before being thrown in their coffins....0.o wow



In the second crypt were the four mummies, three in the front and one in the back. The mummy in the back was the most special of the four as the way he was buried (with his thigh bones crossed) suggested he was a crusader, and the corpse dates back almost 800 years. Many people who read this may know that the burial symbol to mark you as a crusader would be to cross skeletons at their ankles. This is indeed the case, but because this man was so tall, his legs had been chopped off at the knees and placed underneath him. His broken pointer finger on his right hand was longer than my longest finger, and it had been broken off below the knuckle. The man had to have been at least six and a half feet tall - a giant in medieval times.
The big tourist attraction to St. Michan's is that you are allowed to touch the corpse of the dead Crusader - shaking the hand of a crusader was supposed to bring good luck, but today they suggest rubbing the crusaders finger to protect the skeleton from damage.

Did I do it? Yes
Did I wash my hands after? Heck yes!

Pictures were not allowed to be taken in the tombs, but they have been allowed in the past (or people snuck pictures) and you can view the crypts I entered here:
http://atlasobscura.com/places/st-michans-church-dt
Note: These are not my pictures and I have no rights to them.
These pictures show the crypt *exactly* how I saw it. Note: If you watch the videos available on the site, they're a little touristy, but the first man that speaks is the Caretaker - who acted as our tour guide. He was *absolutely* *incredible*. If you have time in Dublin, go to St. Michan's! It's only a E2.50 entrance fee, but I would easily pay three times that.

And lastly - a sense of Normalcy has returned to my life. For those of you who are writers you know (or perhaps, should know!) that November marks the beginning of NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month, a self-challenge that pushes writers to set aside time for their long-forgotten novels and write 50,000 words in a month. I participate in the competition every year, and going back to my writing has reconnected me with the idea of home. On saturday, I met up with a bunch of local Dubliners who are also participating and had an incredible chat with them about novel ideas, plots, characters, twists, and other such crazy writer stuff.

For those of you who like statistics, in order to accomplish 50,000 words in the month of November, a writer must write 1,667 words a day. However, since I'm traveling for 9 days at the end of the month and probably won't have time to write, I must accomplish a minimum of 2,380 a day. It's going to be crazy, hectic, and chaotic - but that's normal - hence a sense of normality returning to me! This weekend, I broke 20,000 words!

For anyone who wants to participate (jumping in 9 days late just means nine days less of procrastinating)
NaNoWriMo

And for those who asked, here's an excerpt from my new novel - The Awakened:


On December 21st, 2012, Earth was not destroyed. And the human race breathed a sigh of relief.

But it was never meant to end.
It was meant... to change.
It came as a trickle at first. For the fifteen percent of the population that survived the weight of that day, at 2:47 pm Greenwich time, the dam in their minds broke and with it came an incredible sense of relief and freedom. They felt revitalized, refreshed, renewed, and different. Like flowers in the winter, their minds had felt closed and dark, cut off from some unknown knowledge, but now a light shone through and they blossomed with unrefined talent.
They had become the Awakened.


^---Copyrighted 2009 - Heather Ryder

Cheers!

Wales and Halloween

So, this last weekend, I planned a trip to Stonehenge, Salisbury and the southern half of Wales. As is my usual, these plans got completely borked - and I had to throw Stonehenge and Salisbury out of the equation (Don't worry - I'm already in the process of making plans to head back there in December. I will stand in front of the awe that is Stonehenge before I leave Europe for the semester).
On Saturday, I traveled out to Cardiff and visited the castle (if you've read any of my previous blogs, I'm sure that you know by now that this is my ultimate obsession). Cardiff Castle houses a Norse tower in the center of its grounds, which we only got halfway up before having to run back down for the "exclusive" tour in the living quarters of the Castle.
If I remember correctly, the Castle was privately owned up until the late 19th century, whereas the Lord of the home gave the castle to the city of Cardiff (his family only lived there six weeks of the year anyway), so the house is completely maintained with all of its original furniture, books, etc.
Although my greatest pleasure it terms of castles is crawling around the ruins looking for buried treasure, the living quarters of Cardiff Castle was absolutely amazing. The family had the money to design their home any way they wanted (again, even though they only lived in it for six weeks of the year - four in the summer and two for Christmas) and some of the ceilings are literally worth more than I make in a year. One of my favorite rooms, other than the one featured above with the gold plated ceiling which was the Lord's wife's personal room, was the one featured below. It was the Lord's personal garden and thinking room on the very top of the Castle. The Lord believed you could only find God in Nature, so the fountain in the middle of the room is sculpted with dozens of animals, and the walls are painted with them. The room also featured a Madonna with child sculpture - it is one of the few in the world where the Madonna is smiling - and in the evenings, as the sun was setting, the light would shine through the back window to perfectly illuminate the statue.

To be honest, I spent more time relaxing in Wales than I did site-seeing. I did get a chance to see the outside of the Millenium Stadium, where all the World-Cup games are hosted, and go to the Cardiff Musuem, but all in all I spent more time just hanging out with a fiend of mine who lives in Southern Wales learning about the Welsh culture.
One of the reasons I chose to study abroad was to immerse myself in cultures that were different from my own, whether that be in social gatherings, language, history, or whatever. In Wales, I felt slightly uncomfortable because I had placed myself in a culture whose social gatherings most often occurred in bars, or where alcohol was located. It took me the better part of the weekend to realize that while the consumption of alcohol was almost a requirement for their social gatherings, being drunk was not. It was part of their daily lives simply because they had grown up with it as part of their daily lives.
While this seemed strange to me, as much of the drinking that I've seen and heard about in the States is revolved around getting completely plastered, it was also refreshing. Although I'm not an avid fan of alcohol, it was nice to see it used in a responsible way in social gatherings. Of course, this was made much more interesting considering I was out on Halloween night - and it seemed to be a pretty big deal out in Wales. About 85% of the people I saw were dressed up in costume!
All in all, it was an incredible trip, but mostly because I was able to do what I set out to do when I came to study abroad - immerse myself in another culture. If you're looking to visit Wales for a weekend, I would suggest doing a tour of Salisbury, Stonehenge, Bath, and Cardiff, if you're going to be in the area.

More soon!
~Heather~