Nora Barnacle
The date the whole world celebrates as Bloomsday, 16 June, is the day a Galway girl first walked out with James Joyce. Nora Barnacle was born in the city's workhouse on 21 March 1884, registered a day later as Norah, the daughter of Thomas Barnacle, an illiterate baker from Connemara, and Annie Healy, a dressmaker. The strange surname is a translation: Ó Cadhain means wild goose, and some families rendered it as Barnacle after the barnacle goose.
Checked against the source on 2026-09-19.
Eoin Gardiner, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Eyre Square on the 3D model; tap a pin for its page and directions.
A Swedish sailor
She met Joyce on 10 June 1904 while she was working in Dublin and mistook him at first for a Swedish sailor, with his electric blue eyes, yachting cap and plimsolls. Their first meeting six days later gave Ulysses its date. They lived together across Europe, married in 1931 and stayed together until his death in Zurich in 1941; their personalities, tastes and cultural interests were very different, and their relationship has fascinated readers ever since. An erotic letter from Joyce to Nora sold at Sotheby's in 2004 for 240,800 pounds, a record for a modern letter.
After Joyce
Nora stayed in Zurich and died there of kidney failure in 1951, aged 67; she is buried beside her husband in Fluntern Cemetery, and their son Giorgio joined them in 1976. Maureen Charlton's play Nora Barnacle opened at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1980 and the Washington Post called it the finest piece of theatre at the festival since 1968; Brenda Maddox's biography of 1988 became Pat Murphy's film Nora in 2000. The model on this page pins Bowling Green, where her family lived, and the streets she walked before Dublin.
Questions people ask
Where was Nora Barnacle born?
Why is 16 June Bloomsday?
Where is Nora Barnacle buried?
Written from Wikipedia, "Nora Barnacle" (CC BY-SA 4.0), read on 2026-09-19, and from the OpenStreetMap places on the model. Nothing has been added from memory; follow the source for its footnotes.