Qualla: Beginish Island https://qualla.com/beginish-island en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/x/beginish-island-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Beginish Island https://qualla.com/beginish-island Beginish Island: Introduction https://qualla.com/beginish-island/ Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY 4.0. Two elderly brothers were the last people to live here permanently. They left Beginish in the 1990s, and the island has been technically uninhabited ever since - though sheep still graze it in summer, holiday homes still get a few weeks of use, and tourists land for the beaches. Sometime in the eleventh century, a different inhabitant of this same island carved a small cross and a line of runes into a sandstone lintel above his door. The inscription, when later scholars read it, said: "Verr erected this stone and Munulfr carved the runes." The lintel is now in the Cork Public Museum. Verr's house is still here, sunken into the ground, the shape of it still readable in the grass.

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Image: Podstawko | CC BY 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/x/beginish-island-wp/gc0x-beginish-island-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Beginish Island: A Viking Settlement on a Kerry Island https://qualla.com/beginish-island/ Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY 4.0. Between roughly the ninth and the twelfth centuries, Beginish hosted a small Norse-Irish community - eight houses, fifteen cairns, a network of low stone walls dividing tiny fields, and the inevitable middens, the rubbish heaps that archaeology depends on. The main dwelling still...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/x/beginish-island-wp/gc0x-beginish-island-a-viking-settlement-on-a-kerry-island.mp3 0:06 2 full Beginish Island: The Lintel With the Runes https://qualla.com/beginish-island/ Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY 4.0. The runic inscription is short - a single line of futhark above a small carved cross - but it is one of a very small number of runic inscriptions ever found in Ireland. Verr and Munulfr are Old Norse names. The fact that one of them carved an inscription in his own language above...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/x/beginish-island-wp/gc0x-beginish-island-the-lintel-with-the-runes.mp3 0:06 3 full Beginish Island: Columns Like the Causeway https://qualla.com/beginish-island/ Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY 4.0. On the northern edge of the island, a small section of cliff shows columnar basalt - the same hexagonal rock formations that have made the Giant's Causeway on the north coast of Northern Ireland a UNESCO World Heritage site. Beginish's columns are far less famous and far less dev...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/x/beginish-island-wp/gc0x-beginish-island-columns-like-the-causeway.mp3 0:06 4 full Beginish Island: Sheep, Seals, and a Footballer https://qualla.com/beginish-island/ Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY 4.0. Today Beginish is used mostly for summer sheep grazing, with a few holiday homes that see seasonal use and tourist landings from Valentia by small boat. A seal colony hauls out at Casey's Landing, on the southern shore - a cove named for one of the families who once farmed and fi...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/0/x/beginish-island-wp/gc0x-beginish-island-sheep-seals-and-a-footballer.mp3 0:06 5 full