I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the People of the Stones who walk through my stories of ancient Ireland and its neighboring lands. I’m working on a new novel, a sequel to the one I hope to have published next. Always a time for the stirring of the mind.
This past weekend was the annual Fort Umpqua Days celebration in nearby Elkton, Oregon, so I was there with my booth selling my pioneer stories. I had a notebook on display with photos of pioneers as well as ancient settings and my new business cards illustrating my work “From Pioneers to People of the Stones.”
A boy stopped by and saw a picture of the stone circle at the center of my ancient stories, the Bohonagh Stone Circle in Ireland.
“Stonehenge,” he said, then shook his head when he realized it didn’t look quite like Stonehenge.
I turned the page to show him I did have this picture of the circle he knew. We had quite a conversation, maybe a half hour or so.
He had some imaginative ideas about how the ancient people stood those big stones up there. He knew quite a bit about the site.
He’s ten. I told him he should think about being a writer someday. He smiled. “I write comic strips already.” A budding author. And a delight.
So that night when I was looking for an hour’s entertainment before going to bed I searched my recordings on the DVR and saw OPB’s NOVA presentation on Stonehenge. I’d seen it, but I watched again with keen interest. They showed how the first stones of Stonehenge were the smaller bluestones, not the giant Sarsens. A single ring. Dated at about 3000 B.C. Then the giants went up in 2500 B.C., with their lintels on the top, and the bluestones were moved into the interior. I wanted to argue against those bluestones coming all the way from Wales, some 150 miles away, but the guide I talked to at the site convinced me. Archaeologists had found quarries in the Preseli Hills of Wales with the same kind of stone, and there were no such stones around Stonehenge. They had to have come from Wales.
The smaller bluestones show clearly in this photo, lined up inside the taller sarsens.
Then last night I again wanted an hour’s entertainment. And what should I find but another, newer show about Stonehenge. This one showed the same archaeologist who finally found the exact quarry in Wales these bluestones came out of. Problem was, dating on the site indicated that the quarrying for the bluestones happened in 3300 B.C. The stones went up on the Salisbury plain in 3000 B.C. There was a 300-year gap. Where were these stones during those 300 years?
It wasn’t an easy question to answer, but the archaeologist came to believe the stones had been used for a circle near the quarry, then removed to the location on the Salisbury plain where Stonehenge stands today. Many megaliths stand yet today in the vicinity of the quarry. But how to find where this circle of bluestones stood in that interim? This was a needle-in-a-haystack effort for sure. How do you find something that isn’t there anymore? They had to look for the holes left behind, long since covered over by new soil. With many disappointing tries and the use of overhead imagery they finally found where the stones once stood. They could even see the odd shape of one impression that matched a bluestone now at Stonehenge.
For confirmation they used a dating method I’d never heard of where they dig down to see when the sediment last saw the sun, keeping carefully under cover to avoid any current light. The test showed a date of 3300 B.C. as the construction date on the abandoned site. So the stones went directly from the quarry to this site in Wales and 300 years later were moved to the current site.
Why would they move them? And how? Each stone weighs more than a ton. To show how it was possible they built sledges and had 30 children, 13 years old, try to pull the loaded sledge with ropes. The children managed with apparent ease, drawing the heavy stone uphill. Surely ancient adults could do it. As for the why, we can’t really know. There was no sign of battle to suggest they were escaping attack.
Stonehenge looking southward.
One thought was that the site on the Salisbury plain at that time lay on a swath of glacial channels that aligned with the sun on winter solstice. To these ancient People of the Stones this may have appeared to be an auspicious site.
Moving into the minds of ancients who left no writing behind? Well, that’s the kind of thing we fiction writers do.
Yesterday was Winter Solstice and I went outside to try to capture a moment of the new morning light. Clouds covered much of the sky but left a few thinner spots where a bit more light promised to shine through. I kept thinking I had the most light I was going to get for a picture of this gnarly oak above my house who’s seen many a solstice morning in its long life. And I took one picture after another that wasn’t quite there.
I almost gave up on a full sun until this happened.
A sudden full spray of sunlight brightened the green moss on the sunny side of the leaning trunk, the two larger branches seeming to reach for the warmth. I let out a cry of joy and snapped this photo. Even in the distance you can see firs and plains caught in the broadening light.
Earlier that morning people at Newgrange in Ireland had waited with great hope as the sun hid behind a low bank of clouds. From my researches I knew what an important day Winter Solstice was for them. Some 5,200 years ago Neolithic people with little more than stone tools had built the stone passage tomb of Newgrange with such precision that on Winter Solstice morning the sun would enter through a small doorway and shine all the way down a narrow passage to an inner chamber and touch waiting ashes and bones of the dead.
You can see the square hole for the sun’s entry just above the people’s heads in my photo of the great tomb. And it still works!
On this solstice morning I watched Irish Central’s livestream of the event at Newgrange. It was a replay of course. They’re eight hours ahead of us, but I still felt the excitement of the moment. Great crowds had arrived for the occasion this year, and a few lucky people were finally allowed to enter the passage, winners of a raffle that had drawn hundreds of thousands of hopefuls. Each winner was allowed to choose one person to experience this phenomenon with them.
Like Oregon where I live, Ireland has its share of rainy mornings so the sun doesn’t enter that passage every year. Would it break through this time? I felt the excitement and optimism shared by the commentators. Then, with sudden splendor, the sun lifted above that dark bank of cloud and shone down the passageway to the inner chamber.
With a thrill I recalled that I had been in that very chamber myself just this year. Back in April. That’s the sun’s doorway into Newgrange behind me in my profile photo. I traipsed past the great carved kerbstone with its mysterious designs cut deep in the surface. I drew in my shoulders to walk through the long, narrow passage where more designs were carved in the stone uprights that hemmed us in. Once in the chamber I gazed up at the corbelled roof to the capstone on top, so meticulously constructed it still doesn’t leak after 5,200 years. We didn’t see the sun come down the passage, but the event was simulated. Our guides struck all the interior lights, leaving us in darkness, and then sent a stream of artificial light down the narrow way to fill the inner chamber.
What amazing symbolism! How important it must have been to the builders to create such a monument. We cannot know the minds of these builders. Yet I think it was the commentators who said, “Nothing ends with darkness and death. New light always follows.” This must have been a powerful belief in the people all those years ago.
Today, in our own way, we can take comfort in longer days and in the light that must follow the darkness. After I got my picture of bright sun on the old oak, I turned and strode down the hill into the sunshine.
Here on a lonely hill, where silence echoes and all is near forgotten, a memory whispers. Here the center of my Éireann world lives.
~ ~ ~
If Ireland holds the place as the heart of my stories, and it does, then Rosscarbery on Ireland’s south coast must be the heart of the heart. Just up the hill above that charming town lies this ancient circle of stones, sacred center of the clan of my protagonist. I have named her people the Clan of the Golden Eagle, and this land has been their ancestral home for generations.
These mysterious circles of stone dating back thousands of years can be found up and down the Atlantic seaboard–across Ireland, Britain, France, Portugal, and Africa. The most famous would be Stonehenge in England. To my knowledge no others bear the horizontal lintels like Stonehenge. The circles range in size. I visited one in Portugal, the Cromlech of Almendres, with almost 100 stones, dating from about 4000 to 6000 B.C. Another, the Castlerigg Circle in northern England set among a ring of mountains, dates from about 3000 B.C.
But this circle of stone caught my heart in ways I can’t explain. It has stood on this hill overlooking the south coast of Ireland since about 1500 B.C., now called Bohonagh Circle. Why these rings of raw stone stand where they do no one today really knows. Scholars believe they marked the passing seasons of the sun. Others suggest they were places of celebration, for dancing and connecting with the gods and goddesses the people revered, perhaps places that drew together the powers of earth and sky.
Catherine and Finbarr O’Sullivan, my wonderful hosts at the Rosalithir B&B in Rosscarbery, wished me well when I set off to see the circle on my first day this trip. A bright sunny morning. Catherine made sure I took a snack of her delicious soda bread and some fruit, which would tide me over until dinner. This was my third visit with Catherine and Finbarr. They weren’t just hosts. They were friends now.
It’s a fair walk over pleasant back roads. Then the familiar track up the hill, the stones beyond my sight until at last I began to see the tops like fingers lifted to the sky. Remembrance flooded me. Not only my own former visits. But the many scenes in my stories as my characters approached this sacred place. I left the track for the green field as the stones came into full view. They seemed to draw me. I barely felt the grass beneath my feet. Once there, I honored the tall portals, both higher than my reach, and stepped inside.
Turning, I looked out through the portal stones and felt a sense that I had come home again. A little breathless still, I was looking for better pictures than I’d taken on earlier visits and nature gave me that. The clouds on this day! Oh my! The clouds!
I stayed and wandered in and out, soaking in the feel of the circle, the surroundings. I especially like the way one stone sits in line with a slope of the vee that opens to the blue sea in the distance. I don’t think that was by accident. Clouds kept boiling in, adding to a sense of awe. After touching each stone with the reverence such a place evokes, I finally walked away, my heart full. On the way downhill I stopped to look back, wondering if I would ever see them again.
The sight of them beneath the towering clouds nearly took my breath.
~ ~ ~
Another day I went down to the bay below the circle, called by my protagonist’s clan their Golden Eagle Bay. Today’s Rosscarbery Bay. I still had questions about the beach. And what’s more, this visit revealed answers to questions I didn’t even know to ask. That made my return particularly important. On my first trip I had traipsed around the shoreline but memory and tiny photos didn’t offer a good sense of the lay of the land there. The few minutes I had on that beach last visit only confused me further. This time I spent a full day exploring the shore.
I had a fairly good sense of the western headland, but I was unsure of the east side of the bay. When I stepped out on a rocky point at the east side of a strand where I thought the bay ended, the point felt way too small for some of the scenes I had written.
There were some good rocky outlying islands to crack up a ship, but there was no room for a battle scene. It wasn’t until I climbed partway up the newly improved Cliff Walk over the western headland that I could look back and see it clearly.
The photo above shows it. That little rocky point jutting into the bay wasn’t big enough to call a headland at all. It did break up two strands, which have separate names today, Owenahincha Strand on the near side from where I took the picture and Little Island Strand on the other. But the photo also shows the only point that could reasonably be called a headland on the east side, a long and bold promontory reaching deep into the bay–beyond the second strand. It’s called today Cloghna Head. Together with the headland where I stood, these are the arms that embrace the full bay.
I continued my stroll over the Cliff Walk to the next beach, mulling all this over. It’s a beautiful walk, with nice new wooden railing and some paving, overlooking broad stretches of water and a small woodland full of bluebells.
I had planned to call Finbarr to pick me up on that next beach when I was done with the Cliff Walk, as he’d suggested. He and Catherine insisted they drive me to and from the beach because they didn’t want me to walk across the dangerous highway that separated it from the B&B. But now I knew I had to go back to where I started and check out the bold promontory of Cloghna Head, which I now saw was the eastern headland of the full bay.
As I trekked over the grass above the bayshore toward that eastern headland I became aware of something quite unfamiliar. I had walked along sandy trails cut through the grass but I happened to step onto the grass itself. My foot didn’t sink deep into the thick grass as expected but teetered on a thick spongy mass of interlaced grasses. I had never experienced anything quite like it. Because I couldn’t maintain a solid stride I quickly moved back onto one of the sand trails people had cut into that thick mass.
I later mentioned this to Finbarr and he said that’s the way beach grass grows there. It helps prevent erosion along the beaches. I told him on the Oregon coast we had tall grasses along the sandy shore. He said that those tall grasses perform the same function. And I, knowing tall grasses, had written such shores into my Irish beaches. I would need to take out that tall grass in my stories in many places. You need to get it right for the locals. And I almost didn’t.
I walked close to Cloghna Head to get a better sense of it but didn’t walk onto the top. I was particularly interested in those sheer cliffs down to the jagged rocks below and how they might work into a dramatic scene. I didn’t think about the grass on that promontory until later. But Finbarr assured me that the broad grassy top there also has the thick spongy beach grass. Other grass, away from the shore, he called pasture grass. As a farmer, raising cattle, he knew these things. I was so glad he cleared that up for me.
~ ~ ~
I would take more walks during my visit, got lost once on a rainy walk, then came upon the B&B quite by surprise. Irish luck again. And I explored several back roads, meeting horses and dogs and friendly people, including Tara and her beautiful Irish Cob mare with the distinctive feathering above the hooves–named Sootie for her black coat, Tara said.
With each walk, each day, I got a better sense of the place that I knew would show up in my descriptions. And my memories. Helping my Éireann world live. A wondrous visit to a wonderful place.
So where did Ireland get all that gold found in the hoards in the bogs and waters now displayed so beautifully in the national museum? Ireland doesn’t have a lot of gold deposits today, but one place stands out as a possibility. The Wicklow Mountains. It’s the largest mountain range in Ireland, and they did have a gold rush in the 18th century. That’s A.D.
In my story I call them the Gold Mountains because scholars believe there may have been more gold in those hills in the ancient times I write about. On my last full day in Dublin I joined a tour there.
This is the upper lake of Glendalough (glendalough means two lakes) in the Wicklow Mountains. A fair walk to get there, but a pleasant walk, and the goal proved worth it.
The protagonist in my story charts a course between the Gold Mountains and the sea, with hopes they’ll keep her from getting lost.
I got lost in these mountains myself on a previous trip when my friend Tilly and I rented a car and I drove us up this way in search of our B&B we’d reserved. Somehow I got off a roundabout in the wrong place and got us into the back country where roads wound every which way and signs were scarce. We saw a couple of men working on some machinery near the road and stopped to ask directions. They explained it all in great detail. I listened intently, trying to follow what they were saying. The Irish tend to talk fast and they put a little different twist on the English language than we do, but this was more than I’d encountered. After we thanked them and drove off, I asked Tilly, “Did you understand what they said?”
She gave me a wry smile. “Not a word.”
A little farther along I saw a sign to Roundwood. I remembered the name as a town somewhere near the B&B and followed the route in that direction. We could go to Roundwood and ask somebody there how to find the B&B. As we made our way over narrow roads I glanced to my left and saw a building that looked very much like pictures of our B&B. Then a sign with its name. Irish luck. We were there. That evening we drove on to Roundwood for dinner. I told our server where we were staying. She had never heard of it.
Part of our destination on my Glendalough tour this year was the monastery founded by a Saint Kevin in the sixth century A.D., practically modern compared with other sites on my itinerary. The ruins were interesting, the setting gorgeous.
When the tour bus passed through the town of Roundwood I believe I saw the restaurant where Tilly and I had dinner on that night those many years ago. I smiled, the memory warming my heart. Those memories are pure gold.
The upper lake was the best of the tour, but I did enjoy seeing the mountains again while the bus driver drove.
Back in Dublin the driver recommended we visit Saint Stephen’s Green on our own, a jewel in the center of the city. I did that. I remembered the serene beauty in the midst of the bustling city. I had seen it on previous trips. It wasn’t a sunny day this time but the park was beautiful anyway. Green gold, you might say.
And I had to add a photo of typical Dublin townhouse doors.
And back to the now-familiar O’Connell Street with its landmark Spire behind the statue.
Note the bird on the statue’s head. The next day I would be checking out of my wonderful Castle Hotel, which is just up that street, then onto my next base, the city of Limerick, which I’m told has nothing to do with those rollicking poems.
I would not forget the golden memories of my Dublin visit–from Newgrange to Bray to the ancient gold of the museum, to Glendalough, and to the best of Dublin itself.
It’s in Dublin! And I needed to see it! Gold has a place at the heart of my new Irish story. So I set aside a day for this. Welcome to my traipse through Ireland’s glorious golden past.
This intricate gold neck ornament, made in Ireland, comes from the Late Bronze Age, somewhere between 1000 and 500 B.C., during the period of my story.
So much brilliant ancient goldwork has been found in Irish bogs and waters, hoards of it. And the National Museum of Ireland–Archaeology has a dazzling display, including the samples shown in this post. I would spend hours there, stepping into Ireland’s ancient glory.
The lunula goes back to 2300-2000 B.C., named for its crescent moon shape.The museum has many on display, this one showing a good example of the intricate incised markings.
The lunula, like the one above, appears in my story on the necks of clan mothers and future clan mothers in ancient Éire. A lovely ornament made from thin hammered sheets of gold with the incised designs.
When I proceeded to write my newest novel, I first had to decide where to set it. Where did I want to spend the next months, maybe years–at least in story if not in person? The answer came quickly. Ireland.
The next question. When?
I pulled out books and notebooks I’d gathered for other work and began poring through them for intriguing periods in Ireland. One thing jumped out at me. Gold! Historians describe the period around 800 B.C. as a time of a sudden uptick in rich production of gold in Ireland, a veritable revolution in goldwork. This was also a period when the early proto-Celtic culture was thriving in faraway Hallstatt, Austria. I knew how the Irish love their Celts. They wouldn’t be in Ireland in 800 B.C., but could I find a way to bring them into the story?
My decision was soon made. My new book would open during this explosion of fine goldwork, and my protagonist would be a goldsmith–a rare thing for a girl.
So this spring in Dublin I stepped down into the center of the museum where a glittering world of gold surrounded me to learn what goldsmiths were doing in those momentous days.
Gold dress fasteners c. 800-700 B.C.Gold bracelets and dress fastener c. 800-700 B.C.Gold foil-covered sunflower pins c. 800-700 B.C.Gold foil-covered bulla probably worn on a cord around the neck c. 800-700 B.C.Part of a gold bobbin-shaped ear spool possibly to be worn decoratively over the ears c. 800-700 B.C.Lock rings, hair ornaments that appear to be incised, but the lines are made of tiny wires soldered on. c. 800-700 B.C.
The soldered wires in the lock rings are so tiny they barely show in my photos. The enlarged one from the upper left of the photo above it may show the lines better, the curve. Such delicate, intricate work illustrates the fine skill of goldsmiths in this period. If they did this as Levaen did, they hammered the gold into a thin sheet, then rolled from the edge to create the wires and bonded them in place with soldering particles.
This small sample of the museum’s 800-700 B.C. goldwork that fits into my story’s timeline shows no brooch like the one my protagonist Levaen makes in the book, nor did I find anything like it. I began to worry about that, but Carisa, my daughter and beta reader, pointed out that there was no reason Levaen’s fictional goldwork should show up in the Dublin museum, and I remembered that the story presents Levaen’s brooch pattern as special in her own time. What the museum exhibits showed, especially the lock rings with their thin wires, was that the actual goldsmiths of that era were familiar with techniques like the thin wires and soldering Levaen uses to create her brooches.
Going farther back to 1200-1000 B.C. are three twisted gold bracelets and two gold grooved bands.And a gold torc with ribbed rings and bracelets from 1200-1000 B.C.
One exhibit offered a portrayal of how some of these golden objects might have been worn. This illustration features goldwork from the Late Bronze Age, roughly 1000 to 500 B.C., a neck ornament like the one in the photo at the top of the post, along with ear spools of sheet gold, and arm and wrist bracelets pictured above.
Of course these items could have been worn by either men or women or both. There might have been chiefs or chieftainesses. Or perhaps the general public would have donned such brilliance for special occasions. We can only wonder and imagine.
There was so much more gold in the museum’s collection, but some bronze too, that caught my eye.
Swords from 900-500 B.C. Some look like leaf-shaped Hallstatt swords but they’re not labeled as such.
No one knows when the Celts came to Ireland. We only know the language came, so they must have come. But they would not have been in Ireland in any numbers at the time of my story. A few Hallstatt swords possibly came earlier, by trade or other means. Enough to tantalize but not to prove anything.
There’s no intrinsic method of dating metal, so dating depends on surrounding materials that can be dated. In fact, on at least one occasion they found a lunula in a wooden box, which identified the time of its use by testing the wood. Surely a precious object. Dating offered with the museum exhibits of gold and bronze would have been confirmed by surrounding material, but they give a broad span as noted in captions here.
Many objects in the exhibits are labeled as parts of the hoards that included them, deposits placed into bogs or lakes or streams. Why the ancients deposited such hoards, no one knows. Bogs may well have been lakes at the time of the deposits and later dried up, so all deposits may have been placed into the waters. Or some dry or partly drained bogs may have been dug into and the items buried. Were the treasures cached in a time of escape from some crisis? Or were these offerings to their deities? All we can do is guess. We have no writing, no histories, to tell us.
The hoards weren’t all glorious gold. Many practical items were included. A lot of bronze. Practical axe heads, chisels, horns, cauldrons. And swords and spear heads.
Some items are just delightful objects like the one pictured below. I so enjoyed seeing it, I chose to share it here, even though it’s later than my story.
Miniature 7-inch-long gold ship with sailing mast and oars from the 1st century B.C.
It’s older than Stonehenge. Older than the pyramids of Egypt. Newgrange. More than 5,000 years ago Neolithic people with only stone tools built this mound with such precision that the rising sun on the morning of the winter solstice would stream down a long, narrow passage to the vaulted chamber of the interior and fill it with light. There beneath a meticulously corbelled roof the bones and ashes of their dead waited.
Two doors enter the passage. The one above receives the sunlight. The one below, partially hidden behind the carved kerbstone, receives the people. I was here with a tour group. I would soon go in.
No one knows what those carved symbols mean, and the guide told us the triple spirals have never been seen anywhere else. We offered our thoughts. I suggested life, death, and rebirth. The people in my stories of ancient Ireland would believe this.
The photo of the upper door was taken for me by a nice, very tall man in my group. I took the lower one. That’s as far in as we were allowed to take pictures. The way is narrow. Sometimes you have to scrunch your elbows in. Sometimes you have to duck under low stone before you enter the inner chamber once visited by the ancients.
I was like a child before Christmas. I barely slept the night before my tour to this amazing site. The tour would also take me to another passage tomb in the same area, Knowth, and to the Hill of Tara. A worrisome drizzle followed our bus as we rolled out of Dublin, first stay on my overseas trip this spring. When I planned the trip I knew I would not rent a car this time, so I chose bases from which I could take tours or just excursions on my own by local bus or train.
I gave myself a day for jet lag and to explore Dublin enough to find my way to the place the tour bus would pick us up the following morning. This was my first tour of the trip. And one of the more important. When I read online about the Newgrange Tours by Mary Gibbons, I knew I wanted to take her tour. It was the right one. No question. But who knew on the 22nd of December when I reserved it what the weather would be on the 19th of April. I just had to hope.
The drizzle let up when we reached the Hill of Tara, the first stop on our tour. But it was blustery out. I had to forego the hat and pull up my hood. I was glad for every layer I wore. I had chosen Tara as an important site in my new book, this place of myths and legends and making of kings. I’d visited Tara once before, some years ago, but I hadn’t retained a good sense of it. Pictures don’t do it justice. They don’t quite show how high it rests over the surrounding plains. I did remember the mound. It’s a passage tomb also, not as large or elaborate as Newgrange, but from the same era. The name “Tara” is apparently later than my story’s time but I use it, as I sometimes do when a place would be difficult to identify for readers without the familiar. I call it Tara Mound for the tomb there, not the Hill of Tara.
Our group trekked across the rich green grass, and over the henges, the circular ditches and rims on the ground where ancient deeds occurred. It was evidently a gathering place for many years, and I used it so in my story. I imagined my character trekking across it with me and heard our excellent guide, Mia Craig, mention to someone that scholars believe Newgrange was only in use for 600 years. That concerned me. I had my people using it much later. When our group began to meet up at the gift shop before moving on to our next stop I saw her standing alone and walked over to ask her about that. She reassured me. “They don’t really know,” she said, “and there’s an old Irish saying, ‘You don’t want to let facts get in the way of a good story.'”
We laughed together. I told her I tried to get things as right as I could, which was why I was back in Ireland. She didn’t think I should worry about using the site for my characters. Of course scholars can interpret the presence of objects. Not so easy to interpret the absence. That’s where I can fill in the gaps with my world-building.
The drizzle came back, windshield wipers on the bus working hard as our tour headed toward Knowth, another intriguing site along the River Boyne, this one with multiple passage tombs like chicks around a mother. But they can tell from its shape that the large mound in the center came after the others because its irregular shape accommodates them.
By the time we got to Knowth, again the rain stopped and we gathered around the local guide, a good-looking man with silver hair and bright blue eyes. He started by asking if anybody had been there before. I raised my hand and said I had been to Newgrange. Twice. He asked when, and I told him. With a twinkle in those blue eyes he suggested I could probably give this talk as well as he. I said only if I could follow an old Irish saying our tour guide just told me about, that you don’t want to let facts get in the way of a good story.
He chuckled and said, “Well, we try to keep to the facts here.”
One of his comments startled me when he told about recent DNA studies which showed that the early Neolithic people who built these tombs came out of Anatolia, people with tawny skin and dark-brown eyes, whereas those who followed came from the steppes of Russia with their pale skin and blue eyes, like his. From my own studies I understood that the early Anatolians were likely worshipers of a Mother Goddess and may have been matriarchal, while those from the northern steppes worshiped sky gods and were patriarchal. My ancient series draws together the worlds of Minoan Crete and Ireland, so when he mentioned Anatolia I recalled reading that DNA evidence shows that the Minoans also came out of Anatolia.
Whoa! Were these people kin? Would their oral histories reflect similarities? It was mythologist Joseph Campbell who inspired me to bring the two islands together when he wrote of a second hearth west of Crete where at the same time as the Minoans the early Irish showed through their myths a similar culture with strong women and the worship of a Mother Goddess. Now the DNA evidence in Ireland appeared to confirm that connection. A thrilling discovery for me.
Next stop on the tour was the Newgrange visitor center. We were getting close to the main show. Drizzle picked up again. The visitor center was wonderful, more elaborate than my last visit. I don’t think there was a center the first time. We just drove up to the site. Now they would take us from the center on special buses on a predetermined schedule. We wore pink bands on our wrists to indicate our time slot. The schedule gave us time for lunch in their pleasant lunch room and to visit the displays. I didn’t want a big meal so I opted for a scrumptious raspberry scone with raspberry jam. They even heated it for me. Wonderfully decadent.
After lunch I especially enjoyed a walk-through at the visitor center where shadowy deer and birds moved among silhouettes of forests. Nice illusion. Among the trees several screens showed films of the three significant passage tombs along the River Boyne–Newgrange, Knowth, and a third that isn’t open to the public, Dowth. The High Tombs of my ancient Irish stories. A drawing portrayed a dog, its appearance based on bones found there. He looked just like the dog in my new story that I imagine resembling an Irish Wolfhound, though the breed is much newer. There he was! My dog Tormey!
We crossed the River Boyne on our walk to the Newgrange buses that would carry us to the site, a skiff of mist in our faces, heavy skies overhead. I had scoured Google maps and online photos, trying to see how big a river this was. Could a person ford it on foot? Or would they need boats or rafts? On that bridge I got my answer. I would keep my character on a boat.
When our bus pulled in to Newgrange the clouds parted like an opening curtain and a bright sun came through. I climbed out of the bus, looked up and saw it, white quartz face aglitter. The marvel that is Newgrange.
This is the place where my Clan of the Grey Wolf lives, their clan mother a dear friend who’s like a second mother to my protagonist Levaen.
The local guide split our group to take half at a time in the passage into the interior of the mound, while the other half were free to wander the site. Just what I had hoped. I wanted to wander around and get the lay of the land. What about my description from a ridge above? Well! There isn’t a ridge above. The mound lies on the ridge itself and the encircling pillar stones are much lower in the back, the kerbstones at the mound’s edge following the downward slope until they are completely covered with turf. The river is visible, but distant. Revisions I’ll need to make.
The mound had long since collapsed when excavations in the 1960s and 70s brought it back to its original state as nearly as could be determined through meticulous study of what they discovered. From my reading it appears that the passage and vault with its corbelled roof were basically intact, although some of the uprights in the passage were leaning and had to be straightened. It’s a bit more complicated, but that seems to be the gist of it. Scholars still argue over the white quartz facing, but they found a pile of the quartz in front that must have been used somehow, and quartz facings from the period have been found on other sites. It certainly offers a dramatic impression.
Finally it was my turn to go in. My heart raced when I stepped inside the narrow passage, scrunched my shoulders, dipped my head. I’m a little claustrophobic, and we were warned about that. But I knew I could do it. I had done it before. Somehow memory slips away and the moment becomes new. I drew a full deep breath when I got through the passage and entered the spacious vault. I looked up at the intricate layers of perfect corbelled stones, each course of slabs partly resting on the one below, up to the capstone high above me. The interior is shaped like a cross with the elongated passage as the shaft, three extensions inside, one to the left, one to the right, one straight ahead, where stone basins held the bones or ashes.
For the tour they turned out the lights and shone a single light down the passageway to represent the rising sun on winter solstice that would fill the chamber with light. In my story that light embraces the spirits in the bones or ashes and carries them out the passage to lift them to the stars where they will await rebirth. Now I felt the wonder of it.
When the tour was over I exclaimed to Mia, our tour guide, “That was the best!”
Every place seems to have a certain personality, a character you can only know in its presence, so when I write a story and spend any amount of time in a particular place I want to reflect the sense of it. That’s why I want to go there, to know it, and thus better knowing it, let my reader know and feel what I felt there.
As my followers may remember I recently completed a historical novel set in ancient Ireland and surrounding lands. I had already visited many of these places when researching the series that’s related to this story, but happenings differ and characters may look at their world from different perspectives. Can she, for instance, see the river from there?
This is Newgrange, the ancient passage tomb built some 5,000 years ago by Neolithic people who walked there long before my characters. It’s older than Stonehenge, older than the pyramids of Egypt. My story opens in 750 BC. And yes, she can see the river from this spot outside the tomb. She won’t try to ford it, though. It’s much too deep and swift. I’ve seen that now. She’ll take a boat across, as I’d written it.
I have visited Newgrange twice before, in 1993 and in 2004, but not only was I working on different stories then, I did not have a digital camera that would allow me to share such a photo here on my website or on other social media. I carried my small Nikon digital camera I took on my 2018 trip and a newer iPhone than I had then. And I sought out better pictures as well as research photos to help me hone my descriptions.
Late last year I began contemplating this trip. I decided I would limit it to Ireland, home of my protagonist, and Hallstatt, Austria, homeland of the proto-Celts, where she spends a considerable amount of time. For quick stops I can take trips by Google Map, but for long stays I want to soak a place in. I had visited the charming village of Hallstatt once before in 2006 when I traveled there with my Austrian friend Tilly. But I was researching a different book then, one that fell by the wayside. Now I wanted to see Hallstatt with the new book in mind.
I had forgotten how steep the mountains, how stark the limestone cliffs, how sparkling the lake. Yes, the quaint houses will ever climb that bluff, the iconic church steeple pierce the sky. But as I wandered the single street, climbed the many steps, found the waterfall I knew was there and included in my story, I enjoyed a sense of it I did not have before.
I didn’t rent a car so in Ireland I picked bases from where I could take tours or just go on my own by bus or train. I started with eight nights in Dublin. Then to Limerick for five nights. And a five-night return to the heart of my story, Rosscarbery, staying at the Rosalithir B&B with my wonderful hosts Catherine and Finbarr O’Sullivan. My third visit with them. The last visit in 2018 had been much too short and left me with critical questions on the setting. The new visit would answer questions I didn’t even know I had. A vital visit for understanding the lay of the land. And the water. The beach.
This was the rugged eastern headland I needed for one of my stories. Golden Eagle Bay in the world of my characters was broader than I thought on my brief stop in 2018. It took me several walks, especially over the newly improved Cliff Walk on the western headland to figure it out. From there I looked back and the setting became quite clear, the revisions I would have to make.
It was moments like this that I confirmed my need for this trip. Yes, it was time to travel again. Yes, I wanted to revisit these special places, but with that discovery and more I found answers to questions I hadn’t thought to ask.
In the next several blog posts I’ll share the journey–from Dublin to Salzburg, Austria, where I stayed a couple of nights on either side of my Hallstatt excursion because of its access to an airport. A lovely spot itself where I stayed in an amazing 17th century seminary converted into a hotel. The adjoining church even had a domed roof.
I’ll add the posts to the new “Going There” list on the sidebar as I publish each one.
As a historical novelist I have my favorite eras, but I love history across time. I’ve always wondered. What was it like? How would it be to live in another time and place? So when I visited my kids in Kansas for Thanksgiving and my daughter Christiane had a faculty meeting right across the street from a museum, my grandkid Aspen and I opted to visit it while Christiane attended her meeting. Christiane is an Associate Professor of Animation at Kansas City Art Institute. I had no idea what an amazing exploration of history we were about to enter at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Knights in shining armor offered a show stopper right at the beginning. I should have asked Aspen to stand close by to give an indication of size. But the knights displayed are big men. The horse was massive, despite the appearance of dainty hooves. I grew up with a good-sized horse, but this horse would have towered over her. This was a model, of course, but illustrated the size required to function under all that metal.
From knights in armor we swept way back in time to this figurine, which may have represented the Mother Goddess worshiped across Europe and into Asia from the Paleolithic to the Bronze Age. This one, created in marble, is in the museum’s Greek collection from the Cyclades, mid-third millennium B.C. The museum literature suggests that due to the sexual emphasis the figure may have represented fertility. Since such figures are often found in tombs it might have been placed there to help the dead reach the next step in life’s continuing cycles, that of rebirth. I present similar beliefs in my upcoming stories of ancient Ireland and Crete. So I was excited to see this.
From the Cyclades of Greece we went to ancient Egypt to visit numerous sarcophagi and an actual mummy, with quite an amazing display of ancient Egyptian art.
And Asian art. See the Guardian Lion below. Another picture I should have taken with Aspen nearby to show its size. I’m guessing he’s about five-foot tall. He’s from the Tang Dynasty, probably around 681 A.D., made of gray limestone. He’s impressive. If you take a close look you may see the graffiti carved into his legs. Even back then.
There was so much more. Fine displays of Native American art. Exquisite paintings. Pottery. Chinaware. It was an afternoon well spent.
