I feel like Northern Ireland, as a nationality, is not understood in America at all. Most people either seem to assume it’s outright part of Britain culturally, like exactly like England but stuck in Ireland; or that it’s exactly the same as the “regular Irish” culture except they are Protestant and not Catholic. Certainly nobody could name anyone famous from Northern Ireland, but they could rattle off famous people from Ireland.
Arguably the best known entertainer from Northern Ireland is Van Morrison (and granted, he’s so talented that he basically counts as 5 guys), but other than that, nothing? Could the average American name a single individual known to them to originate from Northern Ireland and come from the Ulster Scots culture?
People will talk your head off about the “Scots-Irish”, hell I learned about them in high school history class, they’re very well known as an ancestral group of many Americans, but going back too far for them to really understand the connection between that demographic and its emigrants, and the one that is NOW currently residing in Northern Ireland and has been for the past century.
Probably even most Americans could tell you who the IRA are, whether they’d call them “terrorists” or they’re sympathetic to their cause; how many people could tell you who similar paramilitary groups from Ulster are? How many of them would even know what Ulster is or where it is?
Given that it’s a country that’s been influential in many ways - the production of ships, for instance, including the Titanic and many other of the largest and most complex British ocean liners - I’d think they’d be better known in the public consciousness. Maybe half of Americans could even tell you where Belfast is…maybe. Why is this?
So…Northern Ireland has slightly less than 2 million people living there. Together, so do the US states of New Hampshire and Vermont, which are neighboring states ftr. Could the average person from Northern Ireland name a single individual known to them to originate from New Hampshire or Vermont?
It’s been over 20 years since the Good Friday Agreement. When The Troubles were ongoing (such as when I was growing up in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s), violence in Northern Ireland, and the IRA’s role in it, were a fairly regular staple in the news here, and at that time, I’d guess that many (not sure about “most”) Americans would have had at least a passing familiarity with the IRA.
Given that many Americans today weren’t old enough to be aware of those events when they were happening, and for many of those who were, it’s now ancient history, I’d honestly be surprised if a majority of Americans know much of anything about the IRA, or The Troubles.
Along the lines of what **elfkin **says - you may put too much weight on northern Ireland’s importance which you know but others wouldn’t know of. Going by the ship-manufacturing analogy - perhaps billions of people in the world have flown on a Boeing airplane at some point or other, by analogy, but how many know off the top of their head that they are made in Washington State?
So never heard of U2, Clannad or Thin Lizzy? (rather famous bands from Ireland!)
Very much of the Irish tradition in music is acoustic played in small venues like pubs or houses. No stadium rock.
Certainly away from the cities music is an everyday part of peoples lives.
Liam Neeson: "Neeson’s interest in acting and decision to become an actor were also influenced by Ian Paisley, founder of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), into whose Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster Neeson would sneak. Neeson has said of Paisley: “He had a magnificent presence and it was incredible to watch him just Bible-thumping away… it was acting, but it was also great acting and stirring too”. Interesting, especially since Neeson was raised Catholic and Paisley represented staunch Protestant and Ulster Unionist culture.
I wonder if, in Van Morrison’s stirring, if cryptic, ballad Madame George, he is referring to feeling like an outsider, with the line “you know you’ve to go to, on that train from Dublin up to Sandy Row.”
The reason Northern Ireland has such a small footprint in popular culture is that for many years, the entire area was considered “controversial”, and other than on the rare occasion when the controversy was the actual subject, the people who produced pop culture didn’t want to touch it. As an Israeli, I know exactly how that feels. You’'ll very rarely have the characters on a TV series just happen to make a business trip, or go on vacation, to Belfast, just as you rarely see them go to Tel Aviv. Too much of a hot-button subject.
I don’t know about her heritage, but I believe Susan McConnell from the Lost Skeleton movies (and other Larry Blamire films) is from Belfast.
I went to Belfast and across the NI coast over to Londonderry 3 or 4 years ago.
The trouble is, of course, The Troubles; a lot of people in American, if they think of Northern Ireland, have a vague idea that that’s still going on. My mother was worried when I told her I was going to Belfast. But I had a great time.
The Titanic Experience was wonderful, and walking around the old shipyard where it and its sister ships were built was interesting. It was pouring rain all the time I was in Londonderry and that tended to put a damper on walking around the town. There is an Ulster American Folk Park, which is a sort of historical village built around the Mellon farm and is also a genealogical resource if you had family that came from Ulster; it was pouring that day too. But it was sunny and beautiful the day I went climbing around the Giant’s Causeway.
In Londonderry and Belfast, they talk frankly about the Troubles as part of their recent historical background and offer walking or driving tours on the subject.
Everywhere I went, they seemed eager to have more people come to it. So whenever I speak of that trip, I do my bit for NI tourism and encourage people to go there. Go there. One of the best ways to get to know a country, its people, and its culture is to visit. Even on tour-bus terms, you become less of a stranger.
You yourself are displaying an ignorance of Northern Ireland, by assuming that the Ulster Scots are the entirety of the population. My first thought on “name a person from Northern Ireland”, as well as on “Northern Ireland in American culture”, was Tommy Makem. An Ulster man he is proud to be, but he’s most emphatically not an Ulster Scot.
Chronos, good point (I know that was directed at the OP), but it’s also good to remind ourselves that not all of Ulster is in Northern Ireland. Reminds me of a Donegal girl I once knew…
Come to think of it, even this does sort of support some of the OP’s complaint, in that I felt a little disappointed when I found out that Van the Man wasn’t “real” Irish (!). (It was when I gave my mother one of his 1990s LPs, with a song that mentioned the Church of Ireland — NI’s version of the Church of England).
It even seems to have less cultural impact within the UK than you’d expect- certainly less than half that of Wales, despite having over half the population of Wales. Obviously we’re all aware of it, but the first thing to spring to mind is ‘the troubles’ especially for those of us old enough to remember the bomb threats and when it was a constant news item. I’ve been to Belfast, including a few months after the Good Friday agreement even, but I’m hard pressed to name more than a handful of Northern Irish celebs.
I’m pretty sure there are many people I’ve heard of who are from there, but though the Welsh and Scots celebrities will be very obviously known as such, Northern Irish singers, comedians and authors are often lumped together as ‘Irish’, without specifying Northern Ireland or Eire, or just don’t have their nationalities mentioned much in mainland Britain. I had a quick look at the Wikipedia Northern Irish celebrity list, and I’d actually thought a few on there were English as well.
That may be an attempt by some celebrities to distance themselves from the politics, especially if they’re personally not political or what they’re known for isn’t (a pop star might well not want to talk politics in interviews if whatever they say might lose them fans). A lot of English people are wary about Northern Ireland, it’s very easy as an English person to accidentally offend people from there if they are politically minded. Even the place ‘Londonderry’ is strictly ‘Derry’ to some people, and if you call it the wrong name to the wrong person, that’s a political statement, especially if you’re saying it while English.
I also don’t get the sense that it has a very strong national identity in some ways; people from there often either identify as Irish or British first, Northern Irish second. Maybe that will change as the kids who don’t remember the troubles first-hand reach adulthood. I hope so. Or maybe Brexit will screw it up again…
Couldn’t you say something similar about other parts of the UK? What do you really know about Brummies? Which actors or musicians are from there? The West Midlands, whatever that is?
How about New Zealand? I think there are more people there than NI, but I know, uh, that Lorde is from there(?), they filmed the orc movies there and they are good at rugby.
OP, I don’t really understand what you mean about NI as a “nationality” – wasn’t the problem that there were really two nationalities in conflict?
If I’m following the OP, I think that to Americans that have no personal Irish heritage, Ireland is a single place. (For the most part.) Yes, Northern Ireland has been in the news, but it may be seen as Ireland, The North Side. For example, Rory Gallagher had no problem playing Belfast while things were erupting outside. But American Rory Gallagher fans might have looked at Belfast as simply an Irish city.
On one of my previous trips to Ireland, there was a American man on a tour with me who didn’t know that the Republic was not a part of the UK, and hadn’t been for quite a few decades now. The guide got kind of a blank look before she very gently explained to him that it was a separate country.
It didn’t come up at that time, but I have known one or two people who think that Northern Ireland is simply the northern part of Ireland. Like people who think that New Mexico is part of Mexico.