The Titanic Museum, Viking Surnames and Some Relish To Top It Off

Céad míle fáilte, welcome to your Letter from Ireland “Shorts”.  Each Tuesday we’ll bring you a quick-read of some of our favourite and interesting Irish things for this week.

---

FAVOURITE PLACES IN IRELAND 
Titanic Museum, Belfast. (see it on a map here)

Belfast is a small city with an extraordinary range of cultural, heritage and historical sites, such as the Titanic Museum, pictured above. We visited one of our Green Room members from Belfast a while back who tells us all about the “Peace Walls” of Belfast. Click here to watch the video.

For Letter from Ireland Plus members: Also check out our County Belfast City & County Antrim Homelands Feature here for much more.

---

FEATURED IRISH NAMES – Viking Surnames

This week we’re going to look at Viking surnames. Many given names of Norse origin worked their way into a number of surnames that we consider Irish today. Find out if your surname is one of them here.

---

BOOK I’M READING NOW

“Long Island” by Colm Tóibín. Last week, we featured Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín. This week, we bring you the much-awaited sequel, Long Island, as recommended by a Green Room member. She says, “I bought the book this morning in hard cover: 288 pages of which I read 230 today–couldn’t put it down.” Click here to see the book on amazon.

---

IRISH WORD OR PROVERB

“Níl neart go teacht le chéile“

Which translates to “Strength in unity”.

Click here to listen to how a native Irish speaker would say it

---

IRISH CRAFT/PRODUCT WE LOVE

Anytime we travel to England to visit family, we make sure we bring over some Ballymaloe relish, which is a staple in our house and goes great on some soda bread with grilled cheese! Ballymaloe House in Cork also does some amazing food and we’ve been there many times for a great local meal.

---

RIDDLE OF THE WEEK

We’ll leave you this week with a new feature — a riddle or a brain teaser to test your thinking skills!

“What has eyes but can never see?“

Click here to see the answer.

---

That’s it for this week. Send us an email with any of your own favourites for inclusion in future emails, or if you’re a plus member leave a comment below.

Slán for now,
Mike & Carina.

*Note: The above article may contain some affiliate links (for example Amazon) which means we get paid a small amount should you choose to purchase, at no extra cost to you. This helps us keep the show on the road!