‘What are peatlands? It sounds like a simple question, but the answer is anything but straightforward. Peatlands are as diverse and complex as they are sublime and enchanting.’
Peatlands – bogs, fens and heaths – are part of the Irish soul.
Neither water nor land and yet both, they were once considered gateways to the otherworld. Bleak and beautiful, they are time capsules that hold a record of history going back thousands of years. They supported Irish life for generations, providing fuel and employment, and are home to flora and fauna found nowhere else.
Carsten Krieger, the author and photographer behind Wild Ireland, Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way and many other books, celebrates the magic and mystery of our peatlands. He looks at the origin of these habitats, the often dark traditions associated with the Irish peatlands, and how we can maintain the delicate balance between man and nature into the future.
A sumptuous photographic journey through Ireland’s peatlands, exploring the landscapes, history and abundant beauty.
Carsten’s latest book will be published on October 6th.
‘They cover more than one million hectares of Ireland’s land mass. They can be found at the coast and in the mountains. They have helped to shape the country’s history and heritage, and they are the most intriguing habitat there is – for me, at least. They are our peatlands. I spent my first year in Ireland in an old cottage in the middle of Shragh Bog near Doonbeg in County Clare. A few steps out the back door would bring me onto the bog road.
In spring and summer, the skylark would sing high above, interrupted from time to time by the call of the cuckoo and the ghostly drumming of the snipe. In April and May, turf sods would appear, laid out neatly to dry on top of the turf banks and beside the road. Later, these sods would be footed into stacks and the common cotton grass, better known as bog cotton, would grow around them, creating a sea of fluffy, snow-white heads bopping in the breeze. In places, heathers, marsh orchids and bog asphodel would thrive, and dragonflies and damselflies would show off their air acrobatics over the pools that had formed beside the turf banks.
In late summer, tractors and trailers would turn up to bring home the turf, and in autumn, the rich green of summer would be replaced by a variety of warm brown tones, glowing in the light of the rising and setting sun. Then the bog would turn eerily quiet. Heavy rain would leave the remains of grasses, sedges and heathers covered in a glistening film of water, which would turn into a sparkling frost during the coldest of the winter nights.
Ever since these days, more than twenty years ago, I have tried to learn as much as I can about Ireland’s peatlands; to explore them, and to understand them.’ Carsten Krieger
Carsten Krieger is a photographer, author and environmentalist based on the west coast of Ireland. He has published numerous books on Ireland’s landscape, nature and heritage including Ireland’s Islands, Ireland’s Coast, The River Shannon and Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way among others. His book Wild Ireland: A Nature Journey from Shore to Peak was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award.
*Carsten featured on Clare FM’s Atlantic Tales series earlier this year.
