With this collection first published in 1975 Heaney located a myth which allowed him to articulate a vision of Irel&--its people history & landscape--and which gave his poems direction cohesion & cumulative power. In North " the Irish experience is refracted through images drawn from different parts of the Northern European experience & the idea of the north allows the poet to contemplate the violence on his home ground in relation to memories of the Scandinavian & English invasions which have marked Irish history so indelibly."