landscape

Earlier this year, a trailer for a film called Dear Erin appeared in cinemas featuring bloody-knuckled, flat-capped “Paddy” penning a letter on a table strewn with empty porter and whiskey glasses to Erin, his long-lost American flame. Much online brouhaha and frustration ensued at yet another Hollywood misrepresentation of modern day Ireland. The trailer was eventually revealed to be an elaborate ruse by Epic, the Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin, to call out the tired stereotypes and “to find out who the Irish really are”.

Ireland, and the Irish, are many things. The country’s economic and social structures have changed rapidly in recent decades but that doesn’t necessarily mean the culture has altered unrecognisably. What has changed is the increasing draw to connect with Ireland’s natural landscapes. Writers such as the late Tim Robinson, Manchán Magan and the popular podcaster Blindboyboatclub have been pivotal in mining the connection between the natural world and the country’s past. The Irish language has seen a renaissance in the past few years for the same reason. In his 2020 bestselling book Thirty-Two Words for Field, Magan writes: “Irish has a rich store of words that offers a more soulful and nature-connected way of seeing the world. It lets you live more deeply in your environment.”

To test Magan’s hypothesis, I travelled with my family to the Fanad peninsula in the Gaeltacht (Irish speaking) area of County Donegal this summer. The bilingual road sign that welcomed us to Fanad/Fánaid immediately delivered a geographical context, fána being the Irish word for sloping ground. Knockalla mountain (Cnoc Colbha – the hill of the edge) loomed to the east, calling to mind images of the ice sheets that carved the ridge along the twin peaks about 14,000 years ago.

The ice age also had an impact on Fanad’s coast. The rocks that still line the foreshores of its pristine beaches were left behind by retreating glaciers and pounded ever since by the North Atlantic to make sand. We sought out one of those white beaches at Ballyhiernan Bay (Bá Bhaile Uí Thiarnáin – the townland of Tiarnán). My phone offered no details of shadowy Tiarnán’s biography, but I wanted to find out more about why a whole bay was named after him – Robinson was right: “place names tell stories”. We were alone on the beach, our only company the swallows that surfed the air currents above the crashing waves. My 16-year-old son and I had spent the past year attending “pop-up Gaeltachts” in Dublin pubs in preparation for his stint working at an Irish college, a rite of passage for Irish teenagers, yet the Irish word for swallow eluded him. It is fáinleog, probably from fán meaning to wander or to leave, perfectly capturing the penchant of these summer visitors for travelling to Africa in the winter.

The process of anglicising Irish place names began in the early 19th century, following the 1800 Act of Union, with towns being renamed as part of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, which began in 1824. This act of cultural erasure was soon followed by the great famine, from 1845 to 1852, which decimated the Irish-speaking population. In 1980, decades before the recent resurgence of interest in Ireland’s linguistic past, the Donegal playwright Brian Friel mined this pivotal era for his 1833-set opus Translations. The play’s erudite schoolmaster Hugh, who refers to Irish as “a syntax opulent with tomorrows”, might have smiled warmly at the idea of musicians such as CMAT, Fontaines DC and Kneecap releasing songs in the language nearly two centuries later.

Settling in for our stay at a cottage within the grounds of Fanad lighthouse, the view from our sitting room looked west to the towering cliffs of Tory Island (Toraigh – place of steep rocky heights), another far-flung corner where the native language maintains a grip, and famous for having a king until 2018. Ascending the vertiginous steps to the lantern room afforded us an even better view, with Malin Head (Cionn Mhálanna – high headland), Ireland’s most northerly tip, clearly visible across Lough Swilly (Loch Súilí – lake of eyes or shadows). The enormous expanse of sea to the north created a sense of the earth’s curvature, and Scotland and Iceland seemed almost within reach, somewhere in the distance.

The next morning, while kayaking under the nearby cliffs and blowholes with knowledgable local guide Hugh Hunter, oystercatchers dived overhead, calling out angrily as we paddled by their nesting grounds. These black and white seabirds with orange, chisel-like beaks migrate here from the neighbouring Nordic countries every autumn. My son is none the wiser about the Irish for oystercatcher: Roilleach an Giolla Brighde, meaning the servant of Saint Brigid. The story goes that Ireland’s patroness saint was hidden from an angry mob by a flock of oystercatchers who covered her in seaweed.

That afternoon, we joined the throng in the Lighthouse Tavern to watch the All-Ireland football final between Donegal and Kerry. There was a loud cheer in a mixture of Irish and English each time the home team scored. At half-time we joined a group of local teenagers as they discussed their impending university courses in Dublin. I wondered how their lives would change and who among them might come back, like the swallows and oystercatchers, to this far-flung peninsula.

Later in the week, stopping for directions to Port Na Ling (harbour of the ships) beach, a local man engaged us in conversation, explaining he hadn’t spoken a word of English until he went to secondary school. He pointed out the house where he grew up with 11 siblings, among a constellation of white-washed bungalows on the hillside the other side of Mulroy Bay (An Mhaoil Rua – meaning the bare hill). Ireland’s pre-famine, largely rural population, peaked at about 8.2 million and a sense of how the country’s built environment looked back then is somehow still tangible in many coastal Donegal communities. Gweedore (Gaoth Dobhair – estuary of water), an hour away to the west, is described as one of Europe’s most densely populated rural areas. In the aftermath of the famine, people in Donegal largely survived by travelling to Scotland as potato pickers, and this seasonal work allowed the county’s population to remain relatively buoyant, with locals returning home in the winter months rather than emigrating permanently.

We finished our time in Fanad by following the Way of the Cross up Knockalla to an outdoor altar with three crosses looking out across the peninsula. Blindboyboatclub explains that “the Irish landscape itself acts as a storyteller, whispers tales of the past”. The pathway we had just ascended has been a place of spiritual significance for millennia, long before being co-opted by Christianity. The many standing stones and ancient sites strewn across the fields are signifiers of a secret history. We were the only people to climb the mountain that morning, and what a privilege to have this sacred site to ourselves.

Our time in Fanad had been a portal to viewing the landscape afresh. Magan was right: the Irish language is an extraordinary conduit to the past and offers us a better understanding of the present.

Two-night stays at Fanad lighthouse from €350. Kayak trips with Eco Atlantic Adventures from €35pp. Further information: tourismireland.com

A distinct farmyard smell lingers near the muddy Sheep Paintings. People walk slowly between two dense hedges of windfallen oak branches, or stand silently in a fragile cage of bulrush stems with light seeping through the mossy skylight overhead. I’m visiting the largest ever indoor exhibition of work by Andy Goldsworthy, one of Britain’s most influential nature artists. His recent installations have a visceral sense of rural landscape: hare’s blood on paper, sheep shit on canvas, rusty barbed wire, stained wool, cracked clay.

The show is a sensory celebration of earth – its textures and temperatures, colours, character. The seasons cycle through an ongoing multidecade series of photos featuring the same fallen elm. There are leaf patterns and delicate woven branches, crusts of snow, lines of summer foxglove flowers or autumn rosehips. Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years is a National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) exhibition in the neoclassical Royal Scottish Academy building.

After the exhibition, as a sort of cultural pilgrimage, I’m walking six miles across Edinburgh in search of works by the Dumfriesshire-based Goldsworthy and other artists who engage with the landscape. I start at the Royal Botanic Garden (free and open daily, rbge.org.uk), a short bus ride north of the National Gallery. Just inside the east gate, there’s a perforated sculpture by Barbara Hepworth with sunlight pouring through it.

“Art has made me look at the world … and engage with what’s around me,” Goldsworthy writes in the notes for Fifty Years. Walking up through shady beeches, blazing wildflowers and scented, bee-buzzing lavender, there’s a bronze girl in a waterlily pond, and a sundial by the Scottish artist and writer Ian Hamilton Finlay near the terrace cafe. Finlay’s best-known artwork is the garden he created with his wife, Sue, in the wild Pentland Hills (£15 over-16s, £10 for 10-15s, under-10s free, open Thursday to Sunday until 28 September, littlesparta.org.uk). He also built a stone temple in the rolling, wooded acres of Jupiter Artland, a few miles from Edinburgh, where Goldsworthy has put rocks in trees and trees in a stone-walled barn (£11.80 adults, £7.50 children). Celebrating both artists, Jupiter’s exhibition Work Begat Work runs until 28 September.

In the Royal Botanic Garden, Goldsworthy’s Slate Cone stands next to Inverleith House, where the gallery is showing feminist photomontages by Linder (free, until 19 October), who opened this year’s Edinburgh art festival (until 24 August). Enlarged images from her work (smiling mouths, bees, lilies) are dotted among ponds and flowerbeds.

Goldsworthy’s Slate, Hole, Wall, a round enclosure of stacked grey stones, stands in the gardens’ south-east corner, under a weeping silver lime tree sweet with honey-fragrant blossom. The Water of Leith Walkway runs close to the John Hope Gateway on Arboretum Place, and I follow it south-westwards. In Stockbridge, the Sunday market, shaded by whitebeam trees, offers loaves of artisanal bread, Perthshire strawberries and cakes made from insects. Almost hidden in branches under a bridge, a lifesize cast-iron figure stands in the river nearby, one of Antony Gormley’s 6 Times statues.

Another of the figures is buried chest-deep by the zebra crossing between National Galleries Scotland: Modern One and Two. Wandering past domed St Bernard’s Well, with its statue of the goddess of health, and picturesque Dean Village, crammed with fellow camera-wielding visitors, I detour to the Modern galleries up the riverside steps. Linking both museums is Charles Jencks’ huge Landform, with its grassy hills and curving pond. There are days’ worth of galleries, artists’ rooms and sculpture gardens to explore here, but the afternoon is passing and I have more miles and museums to cover.

Heading back along the leafy Water of Leith, I climb another steep flight of steps towards Haymarket. On the south lawn of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, a labyrinth winds through aromatic yarrow and knapweed. Around this flowering meadow, as part of an installation called On Sacred Ground, there are rough benches elegiacally listing threatened Scottish species: corncrake, hawfinch, wryneck, ring ouzel, capercaillie. I walk on through Princes Street Gardens, back past the Royal Academy building, and drop into the National Gallery (free) next door to see Van Gogh’s impasto Olive Trees and William McTaggart’s stormy seascapes.

Up more steps, pausing to look back at distant views of the firth, and then down again across photogenic Victoria Street. Finally, I stroll through Greyfriars Kirkyard to reach the National Museum of Scotland (free, nms.ac.uk). In 1998, Goldsworthy installed four sunset-coloured blocks of split sandstone on the museum roof, with its panoramic city views. But the blue skies have turned stormy. “Our roof terrace is closed today – the weather is too dreich!” says a red sign by the lift.

Instead, I head to the basement, where more late-1990s works by Goldsworthy complement a brilliant gallery about Scotland’s early inhabitants. There’s Hearth, a burned circle on a platform of salvaged wood from the museum’s construction site. Stacked Whalebones is a pale ball of interlocking bones, the whole skeleton of a five-metre pilot whale found beached in Northumberland. Around golden bronze age torcs and silver Viking arm-rings, Roman carvings and flint arrowheads, the artist also designed Enclosure, two curving walls of reworked Edinburgh slates. Another backdrop is of stained Dumfriesshire clay like the Red Wall in the Fifty Years exhibition.

Outside, the Edinburgh fringe is in full swing (until 25 August). Among the crowds are buskers, jugglers, unicyclists. With just one night to sample its anarchic offerings, I plunge into dodgy cabarets and sweaty comedies in tiny underventilated venues. At 9pm, I’m back at the National Museum for an accomplished Lloyd-Webber-esque musical about Van Gogh. Towards midnight, I head to Summerhall for a strange, polyphonic prequel to Hamlet by the Polish choral-theatre group Song of the Goat.

The next day, as I walk to Edinburgh’s Waverley station, there’s a prismatic haze caught between the misty drizzle and breezy summer sun. It reminds me of Goldsworthy’s 1980s photo series with titles like Rainbow Splash Hit Water With Heavy Stick Bright, Sunny, Windy. As the train speeds south, through Northumberland and North Yorkshire, I see with new eyes the wave-pounded cliffs and bale-studded headlands, the dry-stone walls and sheep-scattered patchwork dales.

The trip was provided by Visit Scotland, NGS and LNER, York to Edinburgh from £23 each way, London to Edinburgh from £52 Andy Goldsworthy 50 Years runs until 2 November, £19 adults, £5 children, nationalgalleries.org).

Marc Maron is not interested in being just another podcaster in a sea of mediocrity.

In a new interview, the comic — who recently announced the end of his popular and long-lived podcast “WTF” — criticized the current podcast landscape as awash in meh.

“Things were better before everyone had a voice,” Maron told the Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Wednesday. “Now there’s just hundreds of groups of two or three white guys, sitting behind mics, talking about the last time they s— their pants as adults. We live in a world of mediocre afternoon drive-time radio.”

“A lot of yammering in makeshift studios. It’s lowering the bar for everything,” he added.

Maron started “WTF” in 2009 out of his garage, where he interviews guests. Through the years, he has talked to comedians, actors, musicians and even a sitting president. During an episode with comedian John Mulaney in June, he announced the show will come to an end “sometime in the fall.”

Distaste for mediocrity has been a theme for the comic in recent weeks. “The world has changed a bit and, you know, the sort of uniqueness of whatever the hell’s happening,” Maron said during his appearance last week on the “Howie Mandel Does Stuff” podcast. “There’s enough people yammering in the world.”

In his latest comedy special, Maron pokes fun at how certain podcast hosts are, in his eyes, pandering to the far right.

“If Hitler were alive today, I think he’d probably appear on Theo Von’s podcast,” the comedian jokes in “Panicked,” which premiered Aug. 1 on HBO.

In his podcast, Von explores various topics, including his struggles with drug abuse and mental health, with different guests — who include politicians as well as comedians.

Maron continues by playing out a scene in which the comedian host of “This Past Weekend With Theo Von” questions Hitler about the amount of meth the Nazis consumed. At one point, Maron impersonates Von blaming the hate Hitler had on the amount of drugs he did.

“WTF” continues with episodes coming out Mondays and Thursdays until it ends in the fall. Maron did not respond to a request for a comment before publication.