Ireland

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Statistic:
Largest city and Capital: Dublin
Official language: Irish and English
Government: Republic
Population: 4 062 235 people
Area: 70,273 km²
National day: 17th of Mars (St Patrick’s Day)
Average lifetime: men – 81 women – 75
Ethnic groups: Celtics and British

History:
The first traces of settlement that you can be absolutely sure of, is dated 7000 – 7500 before Christ and during that time there was still a connection with Great Britain, and that connection was still there until 6700 before Christ. But when the first humans came, Ireland was filled with deciduous forest so the Stone Age people that lived in Ireland during that time lived as hunters and collectors until the knowledge about agriculture came around 4000 before Christ.

Around the year 700, there were five Kingdoms that, you could say, correspond to the modern provinces today; Ulster, Leinster, Munster, Connacht, Meath and Westmeath and within these there were 150 small kingdoms and they all had about the same amount of power.
The person who made the Irish people Christian was, according to the legend, St Patrick and people think he came to Ireland around 450 and died around 490. He is believed to have been born near Bristol in England and then captured by an Irish war procession at sixteen years old.
During six years, he was a shepherd, before he succeeded with escaping to England and became a priest. He returned to Ireland as a missionary and was the foundation for the Catholic Church.

Ireland’s history is very big and I can say there have been a lot of struggles between Ireland and England. At the beginning, both of the countries wanted whole Ireland and after a lot of battles Ireland won, but England refused to give away Northern Ireland. That’s why Northern Ireland still is a part of Great Britain which also contains both Wales and Scotland.

The climate on Ireland is mostly mild because it’s situated in the Atlantic, near the Golf stream. The average temperature is 10 degrees Celsius and it’s not that cold during the winter. Even the coldest months are on plus degrees and during the summer, it’s still not a big difference, around 15 – 20 degrees Celsius. And it’s also raining a lot.
The Irish landscape is also very fertile and it’s varying between bogs and small lakes to mountains and islands with very much of rocks and cliffs. Ireland is also the country in Europe with least wood. The highest mountains are in the south-western part of Ireland and the absolute highest mountain is Carrantuohil.

The capital of Ireland is Dublin. It was founded year 841 by Vikings from Denmark. For a long time it have had big influence and during the early 19th century which, for other European capitals, was good years, Dublin lost very much of its influence when the town slowly was becoming a slum. It all began when Ireland and Great Britain formed a Union and the “power of the state” was moved from the Parliament in Dublin to the Parliament in London. All the houses where it used to live a lot of rich people, was now for the poor people. They moved from the country to the city and when the potato plague came, even more people moved to Dublin.
One thing that Ireland is famous for is Guinness beer. It’s a stout beer and it also has “reputations “about it, such as “meal in a glass” and “liquid bread” and it’s one of Irelands biggest things. Probably the biggest thing in Ireland. You can see the production of Guinness at the Guinness storehouse that is situated in Dublin.

Other things worth seeing might be Dublin Castle which represents the “heart of Dublin”. It was functioning as the centre of the power of the British for 700 years. One more, pretty interesting thing to see, is the cliffs of Moher which is very beautiful and is located on the south-western side of Ireland towards the Atlantic. Of course, there is much more too see but there’s too much for me to point out here.

One last topic is the IRA, which is the Irish Republican Army, which fought for the cause of making Ireland a united and independent country under Catholic lead. During the end of 1960, they started to use more violent means and at the beginning of 1970, there were hundreds of people dying every year due to the explosions that were directed to wareho...