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    Stories Inspired by Ireland - Films, TV Series, and Books

    Author: Dawn Rainbolt, PR Manager
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    Ireland On Screen: Films & TV Series

    In recent years, Ireland has appealed to location scouts looking for a brilliant backdrop for a variety of fantasy, sci-fi and adventure films and TV shows.

    Read on to learn a little more about a few of the movies and TV programmes filmed here in Ireland and learn how to visit the same landscapes you’ve seen on the screen.

    Star Wars - Films

    Location(s): Skellig Islands, Kerry coastlines, Malin Head – Donegal

    Science fiction giants have also been inspired by Ireland’s remote corners. The long-standing sci-fi classic Star Wars have chosen some of the world’s most exotic locations as stand-ins for alien planets—and Ireland is no exception!

    The 2015 and 2017 Star Wars films (The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, respectively) chose to use the iconic rock pinnacle islands, Skellig Michael and the Little Skellig, as Luke Skywalker’s secret hideout. Today a recognised UNESCO site, the Skelligs are two small rocky islands over 11 km off the coast of Kerry. Once home to monks looking to hide away from the world, the Star Wars films use the islands in much the same way, except they become a hiding place for Jedi!

    The small size, unpredictable weather and protected status of the Skellig Islands led Star Wars location scouts to search elsewhere for a place to film the up-close scenes of the Jedi hideout. They chose the similarly rugged headland (and also Ireland’s northernmost point), Malin Head in Co Donegal – rugged, isolated, and rocky, perfect to serve as an extension to Skellig Michael.

    Another challenge-turned-opportunity befitting Star Wars filmmakers was the island’s puffins, which kept wandering into the scenes! Since they were protected, filmmakers weren’t allowed to move them, so instead, they replaced them with an adorable alien of their own creation – the Porgs.

    Read more about Star Wars in Ireland in our guide below. 

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    The Banshees of Inisherin - Films

    The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), directed by Martin McDonagh, is a dark comedy set on a remote Irish island in the 1920s. The film follows the sudden and perplexing end of a friendship between two lifelong companions, Pádraic and Colm.

    When Colm abruptly decides to cut ties without explanation, Pádraic, bewildered and heartbroken, tries desperately to salvage their bond. This leads to a series of escalating confrontations and unintended consequences. Set against the rugged Irish landscape, the story explores themes of loneliness, pride, and the human need for connection, capturing both humour and heartbreak in a small community.

    Nominated for nine Oscars in 2023 and starring Irish talent such as Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin received worldwide acclaim. The film was shot mainly on Achill Island, Co. Mayo, and Inishmore (Inis Mor), Aran Islands, Co. Galway.

    Read more about the ruggedly beautiful Aran Islands in our travel guide.

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    Dún Aonghusa, Aran Islands

    The Vikings - TV Series

    Lovely views over Lough Tay.

    Location(s): Wicklow Mountains, such as Lough Tay (above)

    Leaving fantasy behind to delve into a (slightly hidden) history, the hit History Channel saga, Vikings, chose to use the lush, heather-covered hills and quiet harbours of the Wicklow Mountains as the filming backdrop for the Vikings show.

    In the show, beautiful Wicklow is the backdrop for the dramatic wilds of Norway, as well as the newly discovered coastal regions of England and France—just a few of the places that the Vikings explored and raided! For example, Lough Tay (pictured) stood in for Ragnar’s home of Kattegat, and places all over Wicklow stood in for various parts of Scandinavia, England, and beyond.

    Ireland has a lot to thank the real-life Vikings for. These sea-faring raiders of the Dark Ages may get a bad rep, but in truth, the Vikings brought several important things to Ireland, like the concept of cities and ports, maritime trade, boat-making technology, and knowledge of a wider world. They founded several important cities—Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Waterford, and Wexford, to name a few.

    The Vikings also lent their names to places like Wexford and Waterford (‘ford’ came from ‘fjord’) and to Dublin (to the Vikings, it was known as Dyflin, from the Irish Duiblinn or “Black Pool”, referring to a dark tidal pool).

    Viking enthusiasts should visit the southwest, in particular, Waterford’s Viking Triangle, where Viking history is told through stand-ins in museums, reconstructions of boats and longhouses, and even a Vikings 3D experience. Fans of the show Vikings should head to Wicklow to bask in the beauty of its hills, coasts, and inlets!

    Learn more about the Vikings – real and imagined – of Ireland in our guide below.

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    Game of Thrones - TV series

    Pollenagollum Cave & Waterfall

    Location(s): Various Northern Ireland locations, i.e. the Mourne Mountains, Causeway Coast, Pollnagollum Cave, Cushendall Caves, Castle Ward, Shane’s Castle and a Belfast studio

    The Seven Kingdoms are part of George R. R. Martin’s popular fantasy novels, brought to the screen by HBO in the remarkably popular series Game of Thrones. Westeros and Essos may be imaginary places, but many Game of Thrones filming locations are actually very real places in Northern Ireland.

    Whether you’re a fan or not, we can all agree that the series’ backdrop is breathtaking. Like C.S. Lewis over a century before, location scouts realised that there was something magical and fantastical about Northern Ireland.

    Throughout the show’s seven seasons, various interior and exterior locations and landscapes across the north of the island were converted into parts of the magical world of Westeros and beyond.

    Indoor shots were mainly handled at the studios in Belfast. The series transformed castles like Shane’s Castle and Castle Ward into magical strongholds.

    Dramatic landscapes like the sweeping slopes of the Mourne Mountains, the wild geology of the Causeway Coast, and the lesser-known mystical Pollnagollum Cave (pictured) became epic backdrops for scenes outside of the fantasy cites, among a variety of other locations. Walk the King’s Road (really the Dark Hedges), wander the beaches at Cushendun Caves or Downhill Strand, head out to the Iron Isles – we mean Ballintoy Harbour! – or the “Stormlands” coasts around Carrick-a-Rede, check out the “doors” all over Belfast commemorating the popular series, or try out activities like archery yourself at Castle Ward.

    Learn more about Westeros and Game of Thrones filming locations here in Ireland. 

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    Normal People - TV Series

    Location(s): Various locations across Sligo, Dublin and Wicklow

    Sally Rooney’s popular contemporary novel Normal People takes place mainly in the little-known region of Sligo on Ireland’s west coast and the famed Trinity College of Dublin.

    Turned into a juicy and addictive TV series, Normal People is the story of two Irish young adults from Sligo on the west coast of Ireland and late-night studying at Trinity College. Marianne is from a wealthy family but is socially ostracised, and Connell is working class but one of the “cool” kids.

    Both the book and TV series follow their tumultuous relationship while, according to the blurb, exploring “the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.” It has gone down a storm across the globe!

    Both the book and TV series are set in the fictional town of Carricklea in Co. Sligo in northwest Ireland, putting this little-visited region on the map.

    But beyond the story of the ‘normal people’ on screen, you might be curious about the locations in the show. Learn more about places seen on the show so you’ll be ready to hit the road and see them for yourself when you visit Ireland.

    Explore filming locations from Dublin cultural sights like Trinity College, the National College of Art and Design or the Hugh Lane Gallery to the remote corners of the west coast such as the stunning Streedagh Beach or Marianne’s historic Sligo home, filmed at Knockmore House in Wicklow.

    Our guide below explains more about the Normal People TV series, filming locations, and the book that inspired it. 

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    Derry Girls - TV Series

    The Derry Girls mural in Derry.

    The Derry Girls mural in Derry.

    The TV show Derry Girls is perhaps the most famous pop culture creation from Derry. The series follows the lives of five teenagers who live in Derry during the Troubles, combining normal teenage tribulations with real-life events. For example, the first episode opens with the characters battling nerves about their first day of school. This normal teenage worry is contrasted with news that the bus has to go the long way around town to avoid a bridge with a suspected IRA bomb on it.

    If you’re interested to know what everyday life was like for Derry citizens in the 1990s, you won’t find better than the award-winning series, Derry Girls. Many of the scenes were filmed on-site in Derry, so fans of the series will recognise things like the walls, some of the murals and signs, and the streets of Derry.

    Visit Derry on a hiking tour of Northern Ireland.

    View Trip

    Fantasy Novels Inspired by Ireland

    Ireland has a long history, a rich folklore, and a strong sense of storytelling. From Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Seamus Heaney, W.B. Yeats, C.S. Lewis and Jonathon Swift to more contemporary authors like Eoin Colfer, John Connolly, Colm Tóibín and Tana French (or Sally Rooney!), for a small island, Ireland has produced a large number of talented novelists, playwrights, poets and other writers. There’s simply something special about this rainy little island. Perhaps it is the epic landscapes of this magical place that have inspired locals and visitors alike, particularly those looking for inspiration to write fantasy stories set in otherworldly lands.

    Read on to discover some writers who found their wild inspiration in Ireland’s mystical shores and landscapes. 

    The Chronicles of Narnia

    Location(s): Counties Antrim and Down, notably Dunluce Castle, the Mourne Mountains, Carlingford Lough and the Causeway Coast

    Fantasy author C.S. Lewis was born and raised near Belfast and spent much of his childhood exploring the wilds of Counties Down and Antrim. When writing the Chronicles of Narnia, the few parts of the book series set in the real world are clearly influenced by Oxford (and England in general), where he was living at the time of writing his famous fantasy series, but the fantastical worlds of Narnia where most of the book series takes place were vastly influenced by the romantic landscapes of counties Antrim and Down in northeastern Ireland.

    The dramatic cliff-top ruins of Dunluce Castle, clinging to the wild landscapes of the Causeway Coast, are said to have inspired Lewis’ depiction of Cair Paravel, the series’ royal castle, thousands of years in the future when it, like the mighty Dunluce, is in ruins.

    Lewis has been quoted saying that the landscapes he grew up in felt very magical to him and that places like the Mourne Mountains and Carlingford Lough could be straight out of Narnia’s mystical lands.

    While many visitors comment on the feeling of magic in the air of the remote yet beautiful Mourne Mountains south of Belfast, Lewis captured this feeling of magic and used it to create the various realms of the fantastical Narnia, where the four Pevensie children and their friends have their adventures. Lewis has also cited Carlingford Lough, one of Ireland’s only three fjords, as a place of magical inspiration.

    Perhaps, too, the far-flung islands described in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader may have taken their influence on some of Ireland’s islands, most of which were remote and isolated communities, microcosms of island culture and stories until recently. Ireland’s rich folklore likely also had an impact on the creatures, good and bad, that inhabit the worlds of Narnia.

    Learn more about The Chronicles of Narnia and Northern Ireland in our guide below.

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    Lord of the Rings

    Location(s): The Burren National Park

    Further south, Ireland’s west coast is full of diverse and wild landscapes. One such place is the Burren National Park in County Clare, a wild place renowned for its lunar-like limestone landscapes. A stone’s throw from the famous Cliffs of Moher, fewer visitors venture into this wild and unusual landscape.

    One person who did visit this sparsely populated land is the original fantasy giant, J.R.R. Tolkien. A contemporary, acquaintance, and even Oxford colleague of C.S. Lewis, Tolkien is best known for writing The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which were later published in the early 1950s.

    While Tolkien was writing The Lord of the Rings, he visited Ireland—in particular, the region of the Burren National Park in western Ireland. The Burren’s unusual exposed limestone landscape is like something one might expect to find on the moon…or on Middle Earth, perhaps?

    The Lord of the Rings saga features some strange and memorable landscapes (the quaint Shire, the windswept fields of Rohan, the fiery Mt Doom, the creepy Fangorn Forest, the grand Gondor, the dark Mines of Moria…). It’s easy to imagine the bizarre panoramas of the Burren appearing amongst these fantastic Middle Earth landscapes.

    The Burren is brimming with caves, leftover from an ancient era of glacial movements. One such cave in the Burren is called Pol na Gollum – is this where the famous Lord of the Rings character of Gollum came from? The cave is known for its strange coughing-like gargle – similar to the iconic noise made by the character Gollum. Though Tolkien never admitted that his trip to the Burren inspired his descriptions of Middle Earth, it’s not hard to see how this unique karst landscape may have impacted his writings while creating the world of The Lord of the Rings.

    Learn more about the Burren National Park in our guide to what might be Ireland’s most unusual national park.

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    Bram Stoker's Dracula

    Location(s): Sligo, Derry, Dublin

    Though certainly not the original gothic vampire tale (another Irish writer, Sheridan LeFanu, wrote a less well-known vampire novel, Carmilla, twenty years before Dracula was published), Dracula is the preeminent source of the modern vampire story. Despite setting his famous gothic tale in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania, Irish author Bram Stoker never once stepped foot in Romania.

    Instead, Stoker’s Dracula inspirations seemingly came from Ireland and England (such as Highgate Cemetery). Born during the terrible Great Famine, this would have dramatically shaped Stoker’s childhood and worldview. During this time, he would’ve encountered spooky tales of dark creatures returning from the grave, feasting on human blood, and terrorising innocent villagers.

    Stories of people buried alive during the awful Famine years would’ve resonated with him, particularly tales told him by his mother, who was from the west coast region of Sligo. Those wealthy enough could install a bell and pulley system – just in case they woke up to find themselves buried alive in the most terrifying scenario imaginable. Still, the vast majority of people simply had to live with this fear.

    Folklore expert Bob Curran from the University of Ulster in Coleraine has argued that Stoker was heavily influenced by a Derry tale about an evil 5th-century Derry chieftain called Abhartach. Abhartach came back to life to feast on the blood of humans until he was finally killed and buried upside down with a wooden stake to the heart. Sound familiar, Count Dracula?

    Stoker lived in Dublin and spent considerable time researching traditions and faraway lands like the Carpathian Mountains at the beautiful Marsh’s Library. Today, it is still preserved as it looked during the 17th and 18th centuries and is home to many of the texts and maps he studied.

    The west coast of Ireland is still full of eerie crumbling sites that make for a perfect horror novel backdrop—crumbling abbeys and manors, abandoned Famine-era villages, famine roads and walls, hidden Neolithic-era tombs, and more. Could the ancient tales and haunting landscapes of Sligo, Derry, and beyond have influenced Stoker’s classic horror story more than a faraway land he never actually visited?

    Are you interested in Ireland’s spooky history? Or, read about Ireland’s spookiest spots. Visit Derry on our Northern Coast tour.

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    Find your own story in Ireland...

    Meet the Author: Dawn Rainbolt

    American by birth but European in spirit, Dawn has called the US, Costa Rica, Spain, England, Poland, France and now Ireland home over the years. While she has travelled to more than 30 countries, she has fallen in love with the rich Irish culture and sweeping landscapes of Ireland. Armed with a Masters Degree in Tourism Marketing and a love of writing and photography, she has been a part of Wilderness Ireland's marketing team since 2017.

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