Showing off the treasures of Ireland from the Stone Age to modern times, this branch of the National Museum is itself a national treasure. The soggy marshes and peat bogs of Ireland have proven perfect for preserving old objects. You’ll see 4,000-year-old gold jewelry, 2,000-year-old bog mummies, 1,000-year-old Viking swords, and the collection’s superstar – the exquisitely wrought Tara Brooch. We visit here to get an introduction to the rest of Ireland’s historic attractions: We find a reconstructed passage tomb like the one at Newgrange, Celtic art like the Book of Kells, Viking objects from Dublin, a model of the Hill of Tara, and a sacred cross from the Cong Abbey.
Stone Age Tools: Glass cases hold flint and stone ax-heads and arrowheads (7,000 BC). Ireland’s first inhabitants – hunters and fishers who came from Scotland – used these tools. These early people also left behind standing stones (dolmens) and passage tombs.
Reconstructed Passage Tomb: A typical tomb circa 3,000 BC – a mound-shaped, heavy stone structure, covered with smaller rocks, with a passage leading into a central burial chamber where the deceased’s ashes were interred. The vast passage tombs at Newgrange and Knowth are similar but many times bigger.
Hill of Tara: The famous passage-tomb burial site at Tara, known as the Mount of the Hostages, was used for more than 1,500 years as a place to inter human remains. The cases in this side gallery display some of the many exceptional Neolithic and Bronze Age finds uncovered at the site.
Over the millennia, the mound became the very symbol of Irish heritage. This is where Ireland’s kings claimed their power, where St. Patrick preached his deal-clinching sermon, and where, in 1843, Daniel O’Connell rallied Irish patriots to demand their independence from Britain.
The Evolution of Metalworking: Around 2500 BC, Ireland discovered how to make metal – mining ore, smelting it in furnaces, and casting or hammering it into shapes. The rest of prehistory. We travel through the Bronze Age (ax-heads from 2000 BC) and Iron Age (500 BC) as you examine assorted spears, shields, swords, and war horns. The cauldrons made for everyday cooking were also used ceremonially to prepare elaborate ritual feasts for friends and symbolic offerings for the gods.
Ireland’s Gold: Ireland had only modest gold deposits, mainly gathered by prehistoric people panning for small nuggets and dust in the rivers. but the jewelry they left, some of it more than 4,000 years old, is exquisite. The earliest fashion choice was a broad necklace hammered flat (a lunula, so called for its crescent-moon shape). This might be worn with accompanying earrings and sun-disc brooches.
The Gleninsheen Collar (c. 700 BC) was found in 1932 by a farmer in one of the characteristic limestone crevices of the Burren region of Country Clare. It’s thought that this valuable status symbol was hidden there during a time of conflict, then forgotten (or its owner killed); an offering to a pagan god would more likely have been left in a body of water (the portal to the underworld). Later Bronze Age jewelry was cast from clay molds into bracelets and unique “dress fasteners” that you’d slip into buttonholes to secure a cloak. Some of these gold objects may have been gifts to fertility gods, offered by burying them in marshy bogs.
Tullydonnell Hoard: Discovered in Donegal in 2018, the four heavy gold rings, from about 1000 BC, weigh about two pounds each and are very plain. They likely were just a way to store one’s wealth in the days before someone thought of coins and banks.
Bog Bodies: When the Celts arrived in Ireland (c. 500 BC – AD 500), they brought with them a mysterious practice: They brutally murdered sacrificial slaves or prisoners and buried them in bogs. Four bodies (each in its own tiny theater with a description outside) – shriveled and leathery, but remarkably preserved – have been dug up from around the Celtic world.
Clonycavan Man is from Ireland. One summer day around 200 BC, this twenty-something man was hacked to death with an ax and disemboweled. In his time, he stood up 5’9″ and had a Mohwak-style haircut, poofed up with pine-resin hair product imported from France. Today you can still see traces of his hair. Only his upper body survived; the lower part may have been lost in the threshing machine that unearthed him in 2003.
Why were these people killed? It appears to have been a form of ritual human sacrifice of high-status people. Some may have been enemy chiefs or political rivals. The sacrifices could have been offerings to the gods to ensure rich harvests and good luck. Other items were buried along with them – gold bracelets, royal cloaks, finely wrought cauldrons, and leather garments.
Treasury: Irish metalworking is legendary, and this room holds 1,500 years of exquisite treasures. Working from one end of the long room to the other, you’ll journey from the world of the pagan Celts to the coming of Christianity, explore the stylistic impact of the Viking invasions (9th – 12th century), and consider the resurgence of ecclesiastical metalworking 11th-12th century.)
Pagan Era Art – The carved stone head of a mysterious pagan god greets you (circa AD 100). The god’s three faces express the different aspects of his stony personality. This abstract style – typical of Celtic art – would be at home in a modern art museum.
A bronze horn (first century) is the kind of curved war trumpet that Celts blasted to freak out the Roman legions on the Continent (the Romans never invaded Ireland).
The fine objects of the Broighter Hoard (first century BC) include a king’s golden collar decorated in textbook Celtic style, with interlaced vines inhabited by stylized faces. The tiny boat was an offering to the sea god. The coconut-shell-shaped bowl symbolized a cauldron. By custom, the cauldron held food as a constant offering to Danu, the Celtic mother goddess, whose mythical palace was at Bru’ na Boinne.
Early Christian Objects – Christianity officially entered Ireland in the 5th century (when St. Patrick converted the pagan king), but Celtic legends and art continued well into the Christian era. You’ll see various crosses, portable shrines (reliquaries) containing holy relics, and chalices decorated with Celtic motifs. The Belt Shrine – a circular metal casing that held a saint’s leather belt – was thought to have magical properties. When placed around someone’s waist, it could heal the wearer or force him or her to tell the truth.
The Ardagh Chalice and the nearby Silver Paten were used during Communion to hold blessed wine and bread. One can only admire the elaborate workmanship. The main bowl of the chalice is gilded bronze, with a contrasting band of intricately patterned gold filigree. It’s studded with colorful glass, amber, and enamels.
Mirrors below the display case show that even the underside of the chalice was decorated. When the priest grabbed the chalice by its two handles and tipped it to his lips, the base could be admired by God.
Tara Brooch – A wealthy eighth-century Celtic man fastened his cloak at the shoulder with this elaborate ring-shaped brooch, its seven-inch stickpin tilted rakishly upward. Made of cast and gilded silver, it’s ornamented with fine, exquisitely filigreed gold panels and studded with amber, enamel, and colored glass. The motifs include Celtic spirals, snakes, and stylized faces, but the symbolism is neither overtly pagan nor Christian – it’s art of art’s sake. Despite its name, the brooch probably has no connection to the Hill of Tara. In display cases nearby, you’ll see other similar (but less impressive) brooches from the same period – some iron, some bronze, and one in pure gold. In the designs of this elaborate metalwork you can see the Celtic aesthetics that inspired the illuminations of the Book of Kells.
Viking Art Styles – Vikings invaded Dublin around AD 840. As Vikings did, they raped and pillaged. But they also opened Ireland to a vast and cosmopolitan trading empire, from which they imported hordes of silver. Viking influence shows up in the decorative style of reliquaries like the Lismore Crozier (in the shape of a bishop’s ceremonial shepherd’s crook) and the Shrine of St. Lachtin’s arm (raised in an Irish-power salute).
The impressive Bell of St. Patrick was supposedly owned by Ireland’s patron saint. After his death, it was encased within a beautifully worked shrine and kept safe by a single family, who passed it down form generation to generation for 800 years.
Cross of Cong – “By this cross is covered the cross on which the Creator of the world suffered.” Running along the sides of the cross, a Latin inscription tells us that it once held a sacred relic, a tiny splinter of the True Cross on which Jesus was crucified. That piece of wood (now lost) had been given in 1123 to the Irish high king, who commissioned this reliquary to preserve the splinter (it would have been placed right in the center, visible through the large piece of rock crystal). Every Christmas and Easter, the cross was fitted onto a staff and paraded through the abbey at Cong, then placed on the altar for High Mass. The extraordinarily detailed decoration features gold filigree interspersed with colored glass, enamel, and (now missing) precious stones. Though fully Christian, the cross has celtic-style filigree patterning and Viking-style animal heads (notice how they grip the cross in their jaws.
Faddan More Psalter – a pretty beat up manuscript of the Book of Psalms from the same era as the Book of Kells.
Viking Ireland (c. 800 – 1150): Dublin was born as a Viking town. Sometime in the 9th century, Scandinavian warriors rowed their longships up the River Liffey and made camp on the south bank, around the location of today’s Dublin Castle and Christ Church Cathedral. Over the next two centuries, they built “Dubh linn” (“black pool” in Irish) into an important trading post, slave market, metalworking center, and the first true city in Ireland.
The state-of-the-art Viking boats worked equally well in the open ocean and shallow rivers, and were perfect for stealth invasions and far-ranging trading. Soon, provincial Dublin was connected with the wider world – Scotland, England, northern Europe, even Asia.
The museum’s displays of swords and spears make it clear that, yes, the Vikings were fierce warriors. But we also see that they were respected merchants (standarized weights and coins), herders and craftsmen (leather shoes and bags), fashion conscious (bone combs and jewelry), fun loving (board games), and literate (runic alphabet).
What we won’t see are horned helmets, which, despite the stereotype, are not Viking. By 1050, the pagan Vikings had intermarried with the locals, became Christian, and were melting into Irish society.
