July 10- Sacred Landscapes

Today we arrived in Dublin! As I’ve mentioned before, we have a field lab we have to attend for every one of our classes. Today, I had my Foundational Religions field lab. We had a guest speaker come aboard who is a bit eccentric (to say the least). His name is Andrew Steed, and he is a truly wonderful person! He’s extremely hippy wearing bright colorful clothing. He looks like someone you would find roaming downtown Missoula. Andrew is a professional storyteller. He lives in Scotland, but he travels all of the British Isles as a sort of tour guide and historian. And yes, Andrew believes in fairies. I’m not kidding you, he believes that fairies actually exist. He believes that the pagan gods and goddesses, the Tuatha Dé Danann, morphed into small, pixie-like figures that are now known as the Fay or the Faierie People.

So anyways, Andrew is certainly an interesting character! He led our field lab today and took us to some of the most important religious sites in Ireland. Our first stop was the Hill of Tara. This is the description of Tara that is in my syllabus, “In the morning, we will visit the Hill of Tara, coronation place of Ireland’s pre-Christian kings, and one of Ireland’s most famous sites.  The hill includes a number of ancient earthworks, including a small passage tomb, The Mound of the Hostages and the Rath of the Synods.  The Stone of Destiny, associated with the kingship is also found here.  Perhaps most striking is the view from the hill and this provides a perfect location for a storytelling session by British Bard, Andrew Steed who will demonstrate the cultural and religious importance of this traditional performance art.”

Tara Cemetery

Foundational Religions Field Lab

Professional Storyteller Andrew Steed

Sacred Tree

Story Time!

The Stone of Destiny
Yeah, I guess you could call me a Queen of Ireland now.

Beautiful Ireland!

Mound of Hostages at Tara

The Kings of Ireland would have to ride their chariots through these rocks to reach the Stone of Destiny.

Tara was a truly amazing place. We were able to walk around amongst the hills and try to feel the energy of the place. Andrew also took us down to a nearby forest where he found a sacred tree. We all gathered around him and he shared a very cool Celtic story with us. It was pretty amazing. He then pointed out that stories are important because they still connected with our lives today. We split into groups and discussed what parts of the story stuck out to us. We talked about how a certain aspect of the legend was relevant to our lives today. Then we were able to have some free time to walk around the area. I went to the Stone of Destiny where the Irish Kings would go for their coronation. Supposedly they all placed their hand on the Stone, and it sang them a song to celebrate their kingship. I also put my hand on the stone, but alas, I didn’t hear any music.

Next, we went to Newgrange. Now, I have no idea why Newgrange isn’t more widely recognized. I had never heard of it myself until this voyage, but in my opinion it’s a really incredible structure. Everyone knows about the Pyramids of Giza and Stonehenge, but Newgrange is even older than they are. And it’s just as amazing. My class syllabus says, “In the morning we will travel to Bru na Boinne Visitor Center which is the entry point for guided tours of Newgrange and Knowth passage graves and which houses an exhibit hall.  The Boyne Valley complex is one of the most important Neolithic constructions in Europe.  Newgrange is famous for its alignment with the rising sun, the light of which fills the chamber on the winter solstice. Both Newgrange and Knowth are inscribed with an enormous number of examples of Neolithic ritual art including  chevrons, circles, cups, and spirals, including the famous spiral kerbstone at Newgrange.”

I could probably ramble on and on about Newgrange for a long time, so for the sake of you time and your sanity, you can just read more about it here if you’re interested.

http://www.newgrange.com/index.htm

The River Boinne

Knowth

Newgrange

Incredible architecture from over 5,000 years ago!

Entrance to Newgrange
The light from the sunrise on the Winter Solstice enters Newgrange from the box on top of the entrance. It follows the tunnel precisely to the back of the corridor into the inner-tomb.

Replica of the Entrance Kerbstone

 I’ll only add a couple of things. During our time at Newgrange, our tour guide explained something that I found really incredible. She said, “These mounds would be as old to Christ as how old Christ is to us.” These structures were made around the year 3200 BC. So Jesus walked the earth 2000 years ago, but Newgrange was built 3200 years before that. Isn’t that incredible? We were able to actually go into Newgrange and experience the inner-tomb in complete silence and total darkness. They then had a mock light slowly shine up from the doorway to mimic the how the sunrise enters the structure on the Winter Solstice. It was pretty amazing.

That was the end of our field lab. All in all, it was a very good day and I learned a lot. I was really impressed with everything that we did, and I helped improve my understanding of pagan and Celtic religion. The only thing that wasn’t so great was that it rained most of the day. But hey, it wouldn’t be Ireland without grey skies!

This is Claire, the other girl from Montana.
MT girls represent!

After a long bus ride, we got back to the ship just in time for dinner. Arshia and I wanted to go out into Dublin, so we took a shuttle into the city and visited the Temple Bar area. So I was confused about this at first, but apparently the Temple Bar is an actual pub but it’s also the name of the downtown area. So when we wanted to go out, we went out to the Temple Bar area. And completely by coincidence we ended up at the Temple Bar pub.

 

Evening at Temple Bar

I should also mention that today is my boyfriend Zane’s birthday! Happy Birthday my love! So anyways, at the Temple Bar I decided to have a Guinness in honor of his 21^st birthday. I’m not going to lie, I’m definitely not a fan. I really don’t like beer, and Guinness is the beeriest beer of them all. At least I can say that I drank Guinness in the Temple Bar though. That’s pretty Irish.

I had a lovely time with this gal!

After a little while, Arshia and I went back to the bus stop so we could catch the last shuttle back to the ship. It was a good way to end a good day!