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The British journalist and author, Frederic Whyte, reminisced fondly about his childhood trips to County Tipperary, presenting an idealistic image of Mary Frances Power Lalor, one of the most active of Irish landowners during the later Victorian period. peerReviewed

In February 1864, Danish newspapers reported the formation in Cork of an Irish volunteer brigade – the Alexandra Cent Gardes– which was being prepared for action in the Schleswig War. It was the proposal of Goodwin Richard Purcell O'Leary, a professor at Queen's College, Cork, and self-appointed "chief" of the O'Learys. Intervening on behalf of the Danes appealed to O'Leary for three key reasons: he was the grandson of Art O'Leary, the renowned soldier who served Empress Maria Theresa; he had a strong sense of Scandinavian identity, tracing the "O'Leary" line back to the Vikings; and he was somewhat enamored of the Princess Alexandra, daughter of the Danish King Christian IX, who had married the Prince of Wales in 1863. Unlike other Irish brigades in the 1840s-1860s, in Mexico, Italy, or the USA, the Alexandra Cent Gardes was intended as a cavalry unit, composed of members of Cork's fox-hunting fraternity, travelling at their own expense on a romantic errand to "save" little Denmark from Prussian aggression. This article examines the motivations and reactions to the plan, discusses why it never actually took place, and why O'Leary's name was not destined to go down in history as a Scandinavian hero.

Editor: Jackie Uí Chionna

This article provides an interim report, and gazetteer, on the enumeration and categorisation of memorials to Finland’s Great Famine Years, an element of the Academy of Finland’s 2012-17 project, “‘The Terrible Visitation’: Famine in Finland and Ireland ca. 1845-68 – Transnational, Comparative and Long-Term Perspectives”. To outside observers, it can sometimes seen as though Finland’s famine of the 1860s has been “forgotten”, particularly in comparison with catastrophes in Ireland (1845-51) and Ukraine (1932-3). In the latter cases, political circumstances have influenced historic narratives, and placed the Great Famines at the centre of a national narrative that emphasises the baleful role of an external other. In Finland, which was responsible for its own economic and political administration by the 1860s, commemoration has been more local in focus. The memorials nevertheless highlight the existence of an idealised national autostereotype, which stresses stoicism and forbearance, along with a persistent belief that the nation could be crystallised by shared suffering.