Dublin Musuems

 WARNING: The last photo of this blog is a slightly disturbing picture of the preserved remains of a human found in an Irish bog. There is a space before this picture at the end of the blog for those who don't want to see it.


 Since we finally had a free day recently I organized a trip to Dublin for the morning and afternoon to see several of the many museums in Dublin.  We set out on the 9:30 DART and our first start after a long walk and many consultations with the map was Dublinia.

I guess to understand this you'll need some background. When the Vikings started raiding the coast of Ireland, it wasn't long before they started making fortified villages and spending the winters and eventually the rest of their lives in Ireland. They sailed down the River Liffey and founded Dublin in 841. So Dublinia is a fantastic museum dedicated to the history of Dublin during the Viking and Medieval times.  It was my favorite one of the day, and we spent about three hours in it.

The street toward Dublinia. Although you can't see it, those markings on the ground are an in scale outline of a typical Viking house in Dublin. The beautiful building in the background is Christ Church Cathedral. 

Oh. There it is.

Runes! We got to write our names with runes.

They had period clothing we could try on. So here is Viking me.

 The museum was filled with life-size models of people going about their daily life. It put you into the world of Dublin hundreds of years ago.

Viking Burial

Blacksmith's shop

Viking house what we could walk into.

 The statues below depict an interesting story where an eight-year-old boy is crowned kings paraded through the streets but is later captured by the British and becomes a slave.

Medieval me

A medieval street view

Beautiful staircase to the next level

The view of the city of Dublin from St. Micheal's tower. That was a long staircase.

 When we finally dragged ourselves out of Dublinia, we got lunch then hiked to the eastern end of Dublin south of the Liffey, to the Natural History Museum. I took a lot of pictures. The stuffed animals were portrayed as if they were going about daily life.

Hoo are you and what do you want?

I fell in love with this Zebra foal.

 From there, we decided we had a few minutes to spend in the Archeology museum before we had to catch the DART back home. I wish we'd had more time to be there because there was so much neat stuff to see, and we didn't even get to the Ancient Egyptian exhibition.

Irish Sun discs from the Bronze age

Irish torc from the Bronze age

More Gold from the Bronze age.

 Much of Ireland is full of bog, and since there is little to no oxygen in a bog, they preserve thing very well. The pagan Irish participated in human sacrifice, and some of the remains to these sacrifices have been found well preserved in the bogs. Due to the rather graphic content of these remains, I'm giving a space before the picture. If you don't want to see the picture, this is the end of the post.
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Bog man