If “Boldness be my friend” then Swedish native and blow-in to West Cork, Katarina Runske, 60, will surely never be lonely. One of West Cork’s most enduring entrepreneurs, who moved to Durrus from Stockholm as a young, single mother in 1989, Katarina has certainly never been shy of taking a risk writes Mary O’Brien.
A student of music and literature, Katarina’s path changed direction after she fell pregnant in her early twenties. The move to Durrus with her mother, younger brother and three-month-old son felt like “stepping into a black and white movie”. In those days in rural Ireland, a donkey and cart bringing milk to the creamery was a common sight and the village telephone box was a busy spot. Although a time of economic hardship and social change, there was something about the region that attracted people searching for an alternative way of life.
‘I’d never been to Ireland before but when I arrived I knew that I was in the right place,” she says.
Katarina settled in very quickly, getting acquainted with the West Cork turn of phrase while pulling pints in the village pub. “Ah sure look it, I was speaking like a local before I knew it!” she says smiling. Sweden didn’t join the European Union until 1995, so while legally Katarina wasn’t allowed to work in Ireland, people turned a blind eye. “I never claimed a penny off the State,” she says with pride.
A year later the family traded the Mizen peninsula for the Seven Heads, after Katarina’s mother, Catherine Noren, bought Dunworley Cottage with the intention of setting up a restaurant.
Around this time Katarina met who she thought was the man of her dreams. Unfortunately the relationship didn’t work out and shortly after the break-up she discovered she was expecting her second son.
With nothing in her pockets, the young Swede moved back in with her mother, helping to get the restaurant off the ground. “Mother loved to cook and she passed that passion on to both myself and my son Nico,” shares Katarina.
Determined to stand on her own two feet, Katerina found a small, rundown cottage without heating on a one-and-a-half acre site in Kilbrittain and approached the bank manager in Clonakilty for a mortgage.
“I sat in front of him and said I have one child in my hand and one in my belly and we need somewhere to live,” she recalls. “He took a chance on me and gave me a 100 per cent mortgage, which is something I’ll be forever grateful for.”
With just enough money to install a Stanley stove in the kitchen, everything else in the cottage was given a lick of paint.
To make ends meet, Katarina juggled jobs, giving piano lessons – sometimes seeing up to 60 students a week – and working front of house at two well-known restaurants in Kinsale.
“One local farmer regularly swapped 17 litres of milk a week for piano lessons,” she recalls. “and I was grateful for it, as we often had porridge for dinner.”
When the opportunity arose to go into an antiques and interiors business with a friend, Katerina didn’t blink. She spent the next ten years selling antiques and dressing people’s houses, opened a shoe shop in Kinsale “because every woman needs a pair of shoes” and continued giving music lessons. All the while she was growing her own veg, keeping chickens and ponies and raising her two children. “I’d bring them to Gurraneasig National School every morning on ponyback,” she remembers fondly.
“Ireland really was a different world back then and I’m so pleased I got to experience that.”
Later on Katarina made time to study, completing a course in Women’s Studies and two years of law at UCC.
She credits her paternal grandmother with her knack for business. “A widow and single mum to three boys, she was a business woman and a real grafter. She had to be. I’m like her in more ways than one.”
In 2005, after a conversation at a family wedding in Jamaica about opening a restaurant, and having secured a loan for a cool million euros, she made the snap decision to buy Grove House, an 18th century house overlooking the harbour in Schull. Once hosting the likes of George Bernard Shaw, Jack B Yeats and Edith Somerville, the heritage of this beautiful old villa appealed to Katarina.
After packing up her share of the stock from the antiques and interiors shop and shoe business, Katarina and her family moved west. “The front room at Grove House was turned into a shoe shop that first year,” she says laughing.
Grove House turned into a successful family affair, before long achieving a reputation as one of West Cork’s finest restaurants. Nico was just 12 when, guided by his mother and grandmother, he learned his way around the kitchen. By the age of 14, he had become the youngest ever participant on the prestigious Ballymaloe cookery course. Over time, the dynamic in the kitchen shifted with Nico naturally taking the lead. “I was happy to step into the role of his commis chef,” shares Katarina. Meanwhile, her eldest son Max managed the front of house before eventually pursuing a maritime career, working his way up from deckhand to sea captain. Today, Nico runs his own restaurant in Schull.
Katarina spent 17 years running Grove House as a restaurant and guesthouse, where she became known for the warmth of her welcome. “I wanted it to be the type of place where people would feel comfortable whether they turned up in an evening gown or t-shirt and shorts. The atmosphere was always as important as the food,” she explains. For six years she also ran a bookshop, Anna Bs, on the main street in Schull.
But after a few difficult years during the recession – coping with the loss of her mother, mounting pressure from the bank, and the demands of running the business – Katarina was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011. The day she received her diagnosis was the only time she ever cancelled a sitting at the restaurant. “They were a tough two years. Nico was here, so he shouldered much of the burden,” she recalls. Two years later, more cancer cells were discovered, and she had to undergo another major operation. “There’s always something sitting on your shoulder when you’ve had cancer,” she says.
Desperate for a change of pace, in 2016 she made the decision to prioritise her health and sell Grove House. “I couldn’t continue with that level of stress and work.”
Grove was still on the market when the pandemic hit, eventually selling for an undisclosed sum in 2021. Katarina moved to East Cork to be with family, but then again felt the call back west. “I went to housesit a friend’s house in Goleen, ended up buying the property, and never left,” she says.
Today life moves at a slower pace for Katarina. There was a time when she would never have refused a party invitation but she admits to now enjoying an early night more often than not. She still works – hosting dinner parties in people’s houses, running an airbnb on her property and teaching piano, but mostly she enjoys pottering around her charming little cottage and garden, swimming in Dunmanus Bay, or cooking dinner for friends.
Her dream however is to get back to her literary roots…she has written two novels, which are gathering dust in a drawer.
Is there another business in her? “Never say never,” she says smiling. “Who’s to say what will happen if opportunity knocks.”
