Why Is Ireland So Unlike The Rest Of Northern Europe?
I don't know if we're friendlier than our neighbours - but we're probably louder.
Northern Europe is a lovely part of the world (perhaps the loveliest, if you trust quality of life and happiness surveys). The tap water is clean, the roads are well-maintained, jobs are plentiful, extreme poverty is rare, and life ticks along nicely in general. Balancing all that out are the miserable weather and the equally joyless people. Northern Europeans are pragmatic, introverted and organized, but also dour, blunt and humourless.
And then you have the Irish — right up there in Northern Europe, but so different from their neighbours. Easygoing, extroverted, friendly, religious, welcoming, chaotic, fond of tall tales, rebellious, family-oriented … almost every stereotype of the Irish is the reverse of what we think of the Scandinavians, the Finns, the Dutch, the Germans, the English, and everyone else in Northern Europe.
I’m not here to convince you that the Irish are the friendliest people in the world, nor to insinuate that all of our neighbours are unbearably uptight, but I do think Ireland is an outlier in the region, both for better and for worse. Perhaps the Irish are not “the Mediterraneans of the North” or “the Balkans of the West” as we’ve been jokingly called on occasion, but we’ve had a very different experience to our neighbours over the past few centuries, and I think that uniqueness deserves some exploration.
Unless you’re counting Boston, Ireland has never really had colonies or an empire — an astonishing fact when you consider how ubiquitous the colonial game was for European states over the last few centuries. Even little Latvia briefly ruled over Tobago in the Caribbean! While everybody else in Northern Europe was busy plundering and pillaging, Ireland was instead being plundered and pillaged.
Ireland’s experience of being a colony was very unlike that of countries like Norway or Holland, which spent less time as subjects and were treated less oppressively. Ireland’s colonial exploitation and inability to benefit from trade and industry had an impact that has begun to fade only in recent decades — as of 1980, Ireland’s average annual income ($6,400) was about on par with Greece ($6,100) or Spain ($6,200), and significantly below its industrialised neighbours like Britain ($10,000), Belgium ($12,900), Holland ($13,800) or Sweden ($17,100).
I don’t know that being poor makes you more extroverted, but it seems rational that industrial development affects a nation’s character. For a factory to run smoothly, you need a workforce (and therefore population) that is disciplined, punctual, and focused. Perhaps if the Swedes and Germans never had to worry about supply chain bottlenecks, like the Irish, they would also be known for their easygoing charm.
Ireland is, by a large margin, the least urbanized country in Northern Europe, and also the one with the highest level of employment in agriculture. There are other countries where the population density is lower, like Sweden and Finland, but that’s because people tend to live in big towns and small cities while large areas of these countries resemble empty wilderness. Ireland is a country of hamlets and villages, and its culture is more rural than anywhere else in the region.
Obviously, country-folk and city-slickers tend to behave differently. In the country, you can afford to be friendlier because you know all of your neighbours; things move at a slower pace because you don’t need to rush when there’s no congestion; you have bigger families because frankly there’s fuck all else to do in the middle of nowhere.
Perhaps most significantly in Irish society, rural society tends to be the ultimate bastion of religion, and the Church has been a very powerful force in Irish history indeed. Homosexuality was only decriminalised in 1993; divorce only became legal in 1995, and abortion in 2018. All of those dates would be shocking to someone Dutch or Swedish.
I doubt there’s anything in the Irish genes which makes us behave much differently, but we’ve experienced a past that explains why we might. Now that Ireland is a rich, globalised and increasingly corporate nation, I suspect that we’ll end up a lot more like our boring neighbours in the decades to come.
Let’s think of alcohol. The Irish are known for being a nation of hard-drinking party people; the Swedes are known for being puritans with expensive, state-monopoly alcohol shops. Yet if you’d ever traveled with Swedes in a place like Thailand, you’d know that they drink like fish once the alcohol is a sensible price.
Irish alcohol consumption has been dropping for 20 years, thanks to taxes, minimum unit pricing, smoking bans, rising popularity of drugs, and an increase in teetotalers. Catholicism has been waning due to the pedophile priest and Magdalene laundry scandals. Rural Ireland is being hollowed out as the young move to Australia and Canada, or to Dublin’s booming tech sector. Just about the only thing staying the same is the public transport, which was shit 20 years ago and will probably remain so in 200 years.
Not all of this should be cause for panic; Ireland is more free, wealthy, and cosmopolitan today than it has ever been. It’s nice that we’re discovering new ways to eat potatoes other than boiling them, and that the door is left open when kids are alone with priests. Whatever you think of it, change is happening, and I don’t think we can stop it anymore than we can catch smoke in our hands.
All I wish for is that Ireland holds on to some of its more endearing traits — the conviviality, the knack for a good story, the endless patience reserved for local “characters”, the insistence on putting clothes outside on the drying line as a storm brews (“You’d be surprised how much drying you’d get done on a day like this!”), the tendency to give directions based on things that no longer exist (“You’ll be wanting to turn left at the shop that used to be a blue house!” ) …
We Irish might be a chaotic and absurd lot, but we’re a hell of a lot more fun than the Swedes (at least while sober)— that’s a tradeoff I’ll happily take.
Great article! I hope to visit Ireland one of these days. Seems like a really beautiful place.
With all of the issues about immigrants, I will hold off on visiting for a while yet. I read as much of the news from over there as I can and things are not looking so good right now. As bad as the U.S. is, I am a little better off waiting a while.
I will admit to the personableness of the Irish. We have a tendency to be exuberant when others are not and that is not a bad thing. We are passionate about the things we believe in and don't mind telling others, even when they would rather we didn't. Their loss, I say.
Good article.