By Michael Gibbons The recently published Coastal atlas of Ireland suggests that the Lisbon earthquake and subsequent tsunami on All Saints’ Day, 1 November 1755, caused significant changes to the shape and geomorphology of many south-western areas of the Irish coast, including at Rosscarbery, Owenahincha, Longstrand, Kinsale Harbour, Cape Clear Island and the neighbouring areas … Read more
By Martin Green In Finnegans Wake, the main ingredient in Shaun’s ‘stockpot dinner’ is a ‘round steak, very rare, Blong’s best from Portarlington’s Butchery’. The reference is to a butchery operated by a Blong family at the Huguenot settlement in Portarlington in the early 1700s; the Blongs were among the Huguenots (French Protestants) admitted to … Read more
By Gonzalo Franco-Ordovás On 16 March 1545, the Valladolid court of justice resolved a dispute between the inhabitants of the Castilian coastal village of Castro de Urdiales. The conflict had its origins in a disagreement over the granting of commissions to trade with the ruler of the Beara Peninsula in Ireland, Domhnall Ó Súilleabháin. Rather … Read more
By Meredith Cutrer The 7th of September 1170 marked a momentous occasion in Bergen, Norway: the relics of the Irish martyr-queen Sunniva were transferred from the island of Selja, off Norway’s western coast, to Bergen’s Cathedral of Christ Church. Sunniva’s cult played a consequential role in the ambitions of Norwegian kings and clerics and was … Read more