Heaney calls North "The book of mine that came most intensely out of the first shock of the Troubles" (Interview, Stepping Stones, Dennis O'Driscoll, p.448) In part, North was prompted by Irish playwright Brian Friel's 1975 play Volunteers, which is set on a construction site in Dublin where an archaeological dig is in progress, exposing layers of Irish history and the violence embedded therein. Heaney said: "when I read the play, I immediately started typing out all the bog 'Singing School'/St Columb's poems and so on, and by the end of a weekend I found I had a manuscript that I could send to Faber as well as to Brian. That's how North got assembled"