Aran Islands, Ireland
An Antipodean travel company serving world travellers since 1983
Aran Islands, Ireland
The Aran Isles Ireland ( – not to be confused with the Isle of Arran in Scotland – are a rugged archipelago in ’s wild , the of the are visible from the west coast of County and County Clare on . An easy from the mainland by the Aran , the have long drawn visitors for their stark beauty and strong preservation of Irish traditions, including language, and the ways of life from another era and of course the Aran sweater!
The Aran Islands (Aran Isles Ireland) form part of the same limestone escarpment as the Burren in County Clare, with small amounts of grass, flowers, and other fauna dotting the rocky terrain. It is unknown what brought the first people across the sea to the islands – only that it is likely they were fleeing attack – but the ancient collection here are among the earliest structures in Ireland. Dún Aonghasa, on the largest island Inishmore (Irish: Inis Mór) is Ireland’s best preserved ancient fort, dating back to the 10th century BC. Nearby Dún Dúchathair – meaning ‘Black Fort’ – is believed to date back to the Iron Age or Early Middle Ages.
In the early Christian Era, the remoteness of the three islands brought monks and other mystics, who sought to remove themselves from the broader world of sin and wealth. Saint Enda established the first monastery in Ireland on Inishmore in the 5th century AD. Later in the Middle Ages there were over ten monasteries on Inishmore alone, while most of Ireland’s early saints had a connection with the islands. Among the most atmospheric ruins are those at Na Seacht dTeampaill, with two churches and several high crosses, and Teampall Bheanáin, a tiny hermitage believed to be from the 11th to 13th centuries.
Historians believed that the () became more populous in the 17th century, when in the aftermath of the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell confiscated the lands of Irish Catholics east of the Shannon River – an incident that went down in Ireland’s history as Cromwell telling the Irish to go ‘to hell or Connaught’. The newcomers adapted to their harsh lands and wild landscape, building developing a system of agriculture in which they mixed sand and seaweed on top of rocks to create fertile soil, a technique used to grow potatoes and other vegetables and graze sheep and cows.
The isolation of the three islands meant that the Irish language and ancient Irish traditions held on here in a time in which the majority of the country was speaking English. Even in the late 20th century, a number of older islanders were monolingual in Irish, and the Aran isle remain an official Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) region today.
In the late 19th century, the west coast islands attracted Irish nationalists and cultural figures associated with the Gaelic Revival, who sought an unbroken heritage of Irish language, beliefs, and culture. Patrick Pearce, one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Uprising that proclaimed the Republic of Ireland, lived on the islands in order to learn Irish. The islands were also visited by writers such as W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and J.M. Synge, and inspired many of their Celtic Revival works. Like the similar Blasket Islands in County Kerry, a number of the most acclaimed Irish-language writers come from the Aran Islands, including Liam O’Flaherty and Máirtín Ó Direáin.
In 1933, the filmmaker Robert Flaherty aimed to record the Aran island vanishing way of life in his film Man of Aran, though it was later revealed that his documentary distorted many facts in order to portray a romantic, ‘primitive’ way of life, that even then was disappearing.
Inishmore, the largest island, attracts the majority of tourists, but the other two islands are equally interesting. Inishmaan (Inis Meáin), the middle island, is the most traditional and the most thoroughly Irish-speaking, while the smallest island Inisheer (Inis Oírr) is home to some pretty beaches.
The Aran Islands also gave their name to the intricately woven woolen Aran sweater. Traditionally knitted by hand in order to keep fishermen warm in the harsh winds of the Atlantic, the Aran sweater has since become a symbol of Ireland, worn around the world.