40,000 evenly shaped basalt columns form the Giant’s Causeway on the coast of Northern Ireland. It extends for three miles along the coast and then reappears on the Scottish side at Fingal’s Cave.
According to the legends, a giant is said to have gathered the stones and piled them up into the sea so that he could march to Scotland without getting his feet wet. There are different versions of the giant’s reasons: one version says that he wanted to marry the daughter of the giant living there. Another says that he wanted to challenge the adversary living there.
In fact, the basalt rampart was formed by a volcanic eruption 60 million years ago. The magma cooled, and the resulting basalt solidified into columns. The bizarre thing about the scenery is that most of the columns of the Giant’s Causeway have a hexagonal base, but there are also columns with four, five, seven or eight corners.
Such vertical column formations can arise when the lava cools very slowly and evenly. Tension cracks then form in the lava columns. The volcano that created the ‘Giant’s Causeway’ has since eroded – that is, disappeared. The basalt dam has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986.
Photo: Regularly formed basalt columns ‘pave’ the Giant’s Causeway. Credits: Unsplash/Dimitry Anikin.
