When was the moment Ireland became cool? Was it in December 2018, when Derry Girls hit Netflix, introducing a global audience to Northern Ireland’s ’90s pop-culture ephemera? Or was it a few months later, when Sally Rooney’s Normal People arrived in the U.S., occasioning multiple glowing New York Times reviews and spurring the first wave of trend pieces about “the cult of Sally Rooney”? Either way, by the time The Banshees of Inisherin was released in 2022, a full-on Irish cultural invasion was underway. Call them the Craic Pack: Authors such as Anna Burns and Paul Lynch won major prizes. Actors Colin Farrell and Cillian Murphy and singer-songwriter Hozier stepped back into the spotlight. Barry Keoghan went from art-film weirdo to pop-star boyfriend. Even brands got swept up in it: You couldn’t call yourself an Instagram baker without extolling the virtues of Kerrygold butter.
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