Fingal’s Cave is located on the uninhabited Isle of Staffa off the west coast of Scotland.
The cave is a geological wonder that has fascinated visitors and geologists alike for centuries. You’ll note immediately the unusual shapes of the rock formations are very similar to that of the more well known ‘Giants Causeway’ in Northern Ireland.
These hexagonal columns of basalt are the result of lava cooling and contracting in a specific way, and can be found in various places worldwide – the Giants Causeway is perhaps the most famous of these but examples of the form have been found on most continents, and interestingly, on Mars!
The process occurs when lava begins to cool from above and below, resulting in a series of contractions and fractures, which form a rough tetragonal pattern and can eventually form into a hexagonal fracture pattern – no straight lines in nature, eh?
This is actually quite similar to the process in which cracks start to form in dry mud, but the mud doesn’t tend to form quite so evenly! The basalt is not always hexagonal, either, and the number of sides can vary.
Fingal’s Cave has an interesting history, both geologically and in the way humans have interacted with it.
The cave formed in the Paleocene, between 66 and 56 million years ago.
It was ‘discovered’ in 1772, by the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, on an expedition to Iceland. Of course, he was not the first person to discover the cave; this information is simply lost to time, and the discoverer is counted as the person who brought the cave to the wider attention of the scientific community.
On the discovery of the cave, he wrote “Compared to this what are the cathedrals or the palaces built by men! Mere models or playthings, imitations as diminuitive as his works will always be when compared to those of nature.“
From here, the story becomes a little bit more confusing – timeline wise, at least.
The cave was not always called Fingal’s Cave, its name in Scots Gaelic is Uamh-Binn, which means ‘The Cave of Melody’. I am not able to find information on the first time these names were used, unfortunately.
Irish mythology says the last leader of the Fianna people of Ireland was Fionn mac Cumhail, sometimes also known as “Finn McCool”. Fionn was meant to have created the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland as a set of stepping stones to Scotland, so he could cross the sea without getting his feet wet.
The cave became known as Fingal’s Cave after the ‘Ossian’ writings by the poet James Macpherson, which claimed to be based on collected written evidence from ancient Scottish Gaelic poems. These poems were somewhat based on legend, with a great deal of the authors own fictional content. This was controversial at the time, and has been argued about ever since – ultimately the work is now believed to be largely fiction.
The Ossian poems were written and published between 1760 and 1765, and became extremely popular, leading to the cave becoming much more widely known. The cave was visited by many famous people, including John Keats, Felix Mendelssohn, William Wordsworth, Queen Victoria, and Jules Verne.
The composer Mendelssohn wrote an overture, said to be inspired by the unusual echoes in the cave. If you’d like to listen, it is known as ‘The Hebrides, Op. 26’. The caves were also mentioned in Jules Verne novels, and it was painted by JMW Turner.
Sir Walter Scott described it as “one of the most extraordinary places I ever beheld. It exceeded, in my mind, every description I had heard of it… composed entirely of basaltic pillars as high as the roof of a cathedral, and running deep into the rock, eternally swept by a deep and swelling sea, and paved, as it were, with ruddy marble, [it] baffles all description.”
All in all, a very famous sea cave!
You can book a trip to Staffa, as there are numerous tour companies operating wildlife tours in the area, with the opportunity to see puffins, dolphins, whales and more – and possibly a large folk hero?
Image credits:
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walkway_to_Fingal%27s_Cave_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2586452.jpg
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fingal%27s_Cave_-_geograph.org.uk_-_5362823.jpg
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FingalsCave02LB.jpg
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Staffa_09.jpg
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Staffa_05.jpg
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Staffa_06.jpg
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Staffa_top_14693k.jpg
