The summer I was, like almost every summer, in Ireland.
The reason for that is simple. The island is almost three times the size of the Netherlands, the population is only a quarter of ours. The Netherlands is the fifth busiest country in Europe, Ireland the thirty-sixth. And my idea of vacation is: rest. Of work, yes, but especially of people.
Ireland, the island, consists of two parts. I am not talking about the political separation between the Republic of Ireland, an EU country, and Northern Ireland, a country that is part of the United Kingdom, but about the geological, more loving marriage of Laurentia and Godwana.
The soil of a country stores the history of that soil – and gives it back: ecclesiastical chalices from five centuries ago, a prince who died two thousand years ago, strata that tell how a country moved.
Hundreds of millions of years ago, the continents of Laurentia and Godwana were separated from each other by an ocean called Iapetus, the size of, at the very least, the Atlantic Ocean. The now northern part of Ireland was then still on the continent of Laurentia, which is part of modern North America, among other things. The southern part of Ireland was located on Gondwana, preserved as large parts of Africa, Europe and Australia.
Nearly 500 million years ago, the continents collided and the ocean closed. Where the continents collided, hills and mountains piled up. In Ireland, this collision can be seen in the way the now-rounded clumps run across much of the island, from southwest to northeast – the weld starts at Dingle on the west coast of the island and ends at Clogherhead on the east.