Pop Culture: On Scene with Game of Thrones

By Jennifer Bain

With Game of Thrones launching its eighth and final season in 2019, writer Jennifer Bain indulges her fandom in Northern Ireland and Ireland.

People are looking at us funny, puzzled that we’re not dressed casually like everybody else who’s strolling, jogging and biking through Tollymore Forest Park on this fine spring day. It’s fun to stare back, expressionless, and wait for the moment they realize that there’s a method to this cloaked madness of 35 people.

We are paying homage to Jon Snow, the Starks and other Northerners by wearing fur-trimmed cloaks held in place with sturdy leather straps. We are on an immersive Game of Thrones tour exploring filming locations across Northern Ireland.

BATTLE OF OXCROSS

Meandering down one of the state park’s official walking trails, we pass through a spooky forest of impossibly tall trees to the wildling pit from season one, episode one.

The pit is just a clearing in the woods, so our lanky, bearded tour guide, Eric Nolan, holds up screen grabs from the TV show to bring the scene to life. He’s actually a wildling on this hit series and laces the day with tidbits that don’t break confidentiality rules.

We get a little silly at a nearby stump, posing where the dashing Kit Harington once sat as Jon Snow. On a riverbank beside a bridge, we reminisce about the scene when six orphaned dire wolf pups are discovered. One woman proudly pulls out a white stuffy of Snow’s albino dire wolf Ghost.

DOTHRAKI SLAVE MASTER ©JENNIFER BAIN

You don’t have to be hopelessly devoted to the HBO fantasy drama, inspired by the George R. R. Martin books, to enjoy looking at a country through a pop culture lens. In our global group, I’m somewhere between the superfans and the woman who hasn’t watched a single episode. I’ve seen all seven seasons and can’t wait for the final one in 2019 but flame out during a “Brain of Thrones” quiz on the tour coach that picked me up in Dublin for a 12-hour Winterfell Locations Trek.

The last time I was here was 1992 when driving into Northern Ireland involved military checkpoints. Now the only sign we’ve crossed a border is that speed limits switch from miles to kilometres, and the currency switches from euros to the Pound sterling.

DIRE WOLVES WITH BAIN ©JENNIFER BAIN

Pound sterling buys me “cider in King Robert’s horn” at the Lobster Pot in Strangford, where others get beer in a “Winterfell wooden tankard.” I inhale fish and chips to dash outside to meet two “dire wolves” – Summer (Odin) and Grey Wind (Thor), Northern Inuit dogs bred to resemble wolves. The brothers that own them have been show extras and their dad, who plays the Dothraki slave master, makes me pull his long, grey beard.

Game of Thrones has shot in Iceland and Croatia (which have capitalized on the connection), plus Morocco, Malta, Spain, the United States and Canada, but most filming is in Northern Ireland. “Screen tourism” has had a huge impact on the economy and everyone hopes that Thrones fans, like Star Wars fans, will keep coming.

GIANTS CAUSEWAY

On another day trip out of Dublin, this time to Belfast and the geological wonder Giant’s Causeway, I race through a Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge experience to a nearby quarry/parking lot. This is where we first met Brienne of Tarth, a photo plaque reveals.

CARRICK-A-REDE ROPE BRIDGE

Even though the show hasn’t filmed in the Republic of Ireland, I have a Game of Thrones moment near the Battle of the Boyne Visitor Centre outside Drogheda.

Ross Kenny rows me down a canal in a currach, a basket-shaped boat with a wooden frame traditionally covered in cowhide. He had been building and restoring currachs when he got a call asking to rent one for a TV show he had never heard of. Kenny has since made many custom boats for Game of Thrones, and become an extra and a fan.

TOUR GUIDE ERIC SPEAKS ©JENNIFER BAIN

My fantasy day on that bus tour around Northern Ireland continues from the dire wolves to Castle Ward estate (aka Winterfell) and ends at Inch Abbey, officially monastic ruins but also the place where Robb Stark was proclaimed “King in the North.”

We don our cloaks one last time, brandish replica swords and anoint the Brain of Thorns quiz winner “Queen in the North.” This time onlookers clearly get what we’re doing. One plucky child even photobombs our group shot celebrating the best television show ever made.

GOT GROUP SHOT ©GAME OF THRONES TOURS