ABSTRACT
The Skellig islands – Skellig Michael and Small Skellig – lie off County Kerry. Skellig Michael is a UNESCO world heritage centre and houses a well-preserved monastic outpost of the Early Christian period. Both islands are important bird sanctuaries and home to gannets, puffins, the Arctic tern, the black guillemot, the black-legged kittiwake and other Atlantic birds. This chapter looks at the intersection between tourism and the location chosen for this final sequence. It focuses on the negotiations between the Star Wars production team, the Irish Film Board (IFB) and the Office of Public Works over the use of Skellig Michael as a location and the immediate responses to it. The chapter takes discourses of Celticism, spirituality and peripherality that informed the decision to shoot in this remote location and the ensuing responses to it. Emails from Naoise Barry, then Film Commissioner of the IFB, indicate that he was pushing for access to the islands for the location scouts from 2013.
