Celebrations took place in the Blasket centre in Dunquin, Co Kerry, over the weekend to mark the island's contribution to Irish literary history and the Irish language.
Audiences at the Dunquin Heritage Centre heard that the Great Blasket Island was a busy place in the 1920s with the coming and going of scholars, writers and students of the Irish language.
Islander Mr Micheál Ó Cearna, (83), who left the island in 1936 for the US, said that often America, and especially Massachusetts, was considered the real mainland, closer to the islanders than Tralee. Mr Ó Cearna and his brother Mairtín (80) returned from Springfield for the weekend celebrations.
When Mr Ó Cearna left the island, his father's advice was "keep your eyes open at all times and your mouth closed most of the time.
"But I talk quite a bit. I'm a humorous man," remarked Mr Ó Cearna, who still speaks Irish fluently. He was glad to see plans to conserve the island because "when you lose your heritage, you lose yourself", he said.
Some €8.5 million government funding has been set aside to develop the Great Blasket Island as a UNESCO world heritage site.