Giant's Causeway in Ireland. Irish Giant's Causeway. The Legend of Mac Quill and Fingal

Mysterious Northern Ireland contains many miracles. One of them is the amazing Causeway of the Giants. It seems as if an unknown sculptor worked for thousands of years, erecting a road of stone columns. This unique natural attraction was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, and it is impossible to argue with this decision.

In our article.

Tens of thousands of skillfully hewn basalt columns create a unique landscape. Most of them have six corners, but an attentive traveler can find those with four, five, seven or eight. All together they really resemble a giant road. It goes around the cliffs and goes into the sea, and the differences in the height of the columns from 6 to 12 meters give the feeling of a staircase carelessly hewn by giants.

When looking at the Giant's Causeway, it is impossible to believe that its origin can be explained by the most ordinary natural processes, so for romantics and myth lovers there is a legend about this place.

In time immemorial, these harsh lands were inhabited by giants. The gigantic warrior Finn Mac Kumalo had a difficult temperament, and strong rivals did not frighten him. On the contrary, they made me want to compete. The one-eyed giant who lived overseas was just such a rival. The distance did not stop Finn and he decided to build a bridge, not just a simple one, but a stone one. With his sword, the tireless giant carved out giant columns from basalt and drove them into the ground.

Further, folklore differs in opinion. Some say that Finn got tired and fell asleep, and the one-eyed warrior himself came to him. Others believe that upon seeing a powerful rival, the main character was overcome by fear and ran away. But in the end of both versions, Finn's wife becomes the savior.

As is usual in legends, she defeated the one-eyed warrior not by force, but by cunning and ingenuity. The smart woman swaddled her husband like a child, and greeted her opponent with open arms and treats - flatbreads with frying pans baked in them. She herself sat down to lull her baby to sleep and fed him the same delicacy, only without the filling. The uninvited guest, suspecting nothing, saw a giant baby tirelessly chewing iron, asking for more, and realized that it was definitely not worth messing with the father of this child. The frightened opponent ran away headlong. Running away, he destroyed the bridge, and since then the stone columns have been going under water.

Origin

In fact, the origin of the Giant's Causeway has a scientific explanation. This area became famous only at the end of the 17th century, and tourists large quantities began to appear here more than a hundred years later. Except unique landscape Visitors also like this place because their movement here is completely unrestricted. Even though the Giant's Causeway is nature reserve, there are no closed areas here.

Curious tourists can discover similar formations in other parts of the world, but this is where their largest concentration is located. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Giant’s Causeway is of interest not only to amateurs, but also to scientists. For several centuries they tried to come to a common opinion, putting forward different hypotheses. Some believed that the pillars were crystals that had been growing under the waters of ancient oceans for thousands of years. Others believed that the columns were nothing more than petrified bamboo forest.

Most modern scientists have taken a different point of view. According to their version, millions of years ago, the eruption of an ancient volcano formed a vast lava plain here, the basis of which was basalt. Gradually hardening, it cracked, forming an amazing pattern. As the magma solidified, the cracks gradually deepened and subsequently formed regular hexagonal columns. This is how scientists explained the origin of the Giant's Causeway. But, who knows, maybe a frightened one-eyed giant is still sitting alone on an island in the middle of the cold sea...

Attractions

The columns of the Giant's Causeway form three platforms. The first of them is called the Great Trail and originates from rocky mountains. This platform is a monumental staircase, the steps of which reach a height of six meters. Going down to the sea, the path becomes flatter and looks like a road for giants. The second site is the Middle and Small trails.

The columns from this group are located near the main path, but they no longer resemble a path, but separate mounds. By taking precautions, you can examine them by moving from one pillar to another. The third site is the most mysterious and least visited. This desert island Staffa, which is located 130 km from the coast. Its name translates as “Island of Pillars”. Between the columns the island hides its main attraction - Fingal's Cave, which is about 80 meters long.

The giants laid the beginning of their path along the cliffs. Later people appreciated them weird shape and gave them original names. There are musical instruments here - the Harp and the Organ, and stone accessories forgotten by the giants - the Loom, Cannons and even the Giant's Coffin. The unknown giant also forgot his shoe here. This is exactly what one of the cobblestones looks like. Curious visitors calculated that the owner of these shoes was at least 16 meters tall.

Separate pillars of the Giant's Causeway are not just towering, but look like from the sea to chimneys harsh northern castle. A curious incident in the history of the country is connected with this. The “invincible armada” of the Spaniards, having approached the shores, decided to shell the threatened territory and attacked. The only losses suffered were the basalt columns, because there was no castle on the shore. The Spaniards' ship crashed on the rocks, and the army suffered considerable losses in the cold waters. The sunken treasures were raised from the bottom and are still kept in one of the museums in Ireland.

The Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland is a unique sight. Harsh northern nature captivates with its steadfastness and dispassion. The gigantic road is imbued with the spirit of antiquity. Legends are made about it; tourists around the world never tire of admiring it. This place is definitely worth a visit.

The Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland is a unique natural phenomenon: interconnected basalt hexagonal columns create amazing landscapes reminiscent of a natural pavement. The trail is the result of the activity of an ancient volcano; the ledges were formed when a lava flow cooled. There is another version of the appearance of a bizarre trails: the road was built by the hero of Celtic myths, Finn Mac Cumal.

The Causeway of Giants could indeed serve as a road: the columns of different heights (from 6 to 12 meters) seem like a staircase, and the cracks are the result of a sloppy layout of the nature trail.

In 1986, the Causeway of Giants was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

To visit the Giant's Causeway, you should choose comfortable clothes and shoes, preferably with rubberized soles.

It is better to plan a trip to the Causeway of Giants from late spring to autumn. There are no tours along the Giant's Causeway in winter. Be careful: the weather in the north of Ireland is quite changeable. In strong winds and rain, approaching the cliff can be dangerous.

Tourist office where you can get detailed information o Giant's Causeway and buy souvenirs, located at 44 Causeway Road. When purchasing a ticket, tourists receive an audio guide in Russian (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Japanese and Mandarin are also available).

How to get there

The Giant's Causeway is located in the north-east of Northern Ireland, 100 km from Belfast. Bus service connects the Giant's Causeway and Belfast: tourist buses run (mainly in summer time), can also be reached by bus 252, which has a circular route along the beautiful Antrim coast.

From late spring to early autumn, you can get to the Giant's Causeway by tourist buses from Bushmills, as well as from another attraction in Northern Ireland - . In summer, minibuses also run from the tourist office.

You can also travel from Belfast and Londonderry by Translink trains (www.translink.co.uk). Closest to the Giant's Causeway railway stations- Portrush and Coleraine, from where regular buses run to the coast.

Steam Railway connects Bushmills and the Giant's Causeway; The station is located 200 meters from the main entrance to the natural park.

Travel time from Belfast by car is about one and a half hours. Follow the M2 until the junction with the A26. Turn right and follow until you turn onto the M2. Once past Ballymena, continue along the A26 to Ballymoney. Turn right and follow Ballybogy Road until it meets Priestland Road. Turn right again and continue to Causeway Road.

Location

Giant's Causeway is located in County Antrim.

The Giant's Causeway is an impressive rock formation on the Antrim coast of Northern Ireland. The site consists of approximately 40,000 basalt columns rising from the sea. The Giant's Causeway is the only UNESCO World Heritage Site in Northern Ireland.

The unusual formation arose as a result of natural processes during the Paleogene (65-23 million years ago), when Northern Ireland was subject to powerful volcanic activity. During this period, molten basalt came into contact with chalk layers, forming a lava plateau. As the lava quickly cooled, the plateau shrunk and cracked, forming 40,000 hexagonal columns of varying heights that look like giant steps. The height of the largest of them is almost 11 meters.

Legend

Popular mythology attributes the creation of the dam to an Irish giant named Fionn mac Cumhaill (or Finn MacCool). To prove his superior strength and status, Fionn decided to fight a rival, a Scottish giant named Benandonner. Since there was no boat large enough to carry the huge Finn across the sea to confront Bennandonner, he built his own path of steps from Ireland to Scotland.

However, when he crossed the sea, he saw how big Bennandonner was. He ran back to Ireland before Bennandonner saw him, but the dam was built and Bennandonner came to fight. Fionn climbed into the crib and when Bennandonner came to the door to confront him, his wife told him not to wake the baby. Seeing how big "baby" Fiona was, Bennandonner became frightened and ran back to Scotland.

Although the phenomenon of basalt columns is relatively rare, there are several examples of such rock formations found around the world, including in Scotland, Los Prismas Basalticos in Mexico and Devil's Postpile in California.

About 40 thousand huge stone columns are so closely adjacent to each other that it seems that some giant - a hero of Irish myths and legends - installed them here. The diameter of these pillars is from 30 to 50 centimeters, they have smooth tops and several edges (the quarter has five, the rest have four, seven and even nine corners). The Giant's Causeway (or as it is also called - the Giant's Causeway) is located in Northern Ireland near small town Bushmills. It encircles the cliffs that are located on the Causeway Coast, and then gradually goes under water towards Scotland.

The scale of this amazing place is amazing. If you look at the Giant's Causeway from above, it really looks extremely similar to a stone-paved road that stretches along the coast for 275 meters and goes into the Atlantic for another hundred and fifty meters.

The average height of the pillars is approximately six meters, although it is not uncommon to see columns twelve meters high. If you look at them from above, they are somewhat reminiscent of a honeycomb, since they organize hexagons between themselves that are so close to each other that it is quite difficult to insert even a thin knife between them.

Absolutely all the pillars are dark in color and incredibly hard - scientists explain this natural phenomenon by the fact that they consist mainly of basalt rich in magnesium and iron, which also has a small amount of quartz. Thanks to this composition, the columns are able to successfully withstand the destructive effects of winds and stormy waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

The columns of the Giant's Causeway in Ireland form three groups of sites:

1. Big trail. The columns of this group are the largest and begin near the rocky mountains. At first they look like a cluster of huge stone steps, some of which reach up to six meters in height. Closer to the water, the steps gradually level out until they begin to form a stone-covered path, which is 20 to 30 meters wide.
2. Middle and Small trails. The pillars of these groups are located near the Great Path and are shaped more like mounds than a road. Since each of these pillars has a flat top, it is possible to carefully (especially near water, because they are extremely wet and slippery) move from one pillar to another.
3. Staffa Island. 130 km from the coast there is a small uninhabited island of Staffa (translated as “island of pillars”), on which there is a continuation of these columns. Between these pillars is the main attraction of the island - the huge Fingal Cave, which is about 80 meters long.

Cliffs

The columns themselves on the Causeway Coast are located around cliffs, to which people later gave rather original names. For example, two of them were named after the Harp (the columns from this cliff descend in a curved line to the coast) and the Organ (the straight and tall pillars that are located near it are very reminiscent of this musical instrument).

There are cliffs with such interesting names as the Giant's Loom, the Giant's Coffin, the Giant's Guns, the Giant's Eyes. Here you can also look at the Giant's Shoe - a two-meter cobblestone that resembles this shoe (it was even calculated that the giant who wore such a product must have been at least 16 meters tall).

Chimneys of the Giant's Causeway

There's one more thing interesting place on the Giant's Causeway - chimneys, which several centuries ago frightened the already defeated "Invincible Armada".

This happened for a banal reason. Some pillars of the Giant's Causeway in Ireland not only tower on the coast, but also from the sea look like the chimneys of a huge castle. The Spaniards confused him with him and fired cannons at “enemy territory” - that is, absolutely deserted territory.

This story ended in tears for the Spaniards: their ship crashed on the rocks, and many people died. The treasures found from the ship, after they were raised from the bottom of the sea, can now be seen in the Ulster Museum, which is located in Belfast.

Legend

It is not surprising that the Giant's Causeway has its own legends and myths that explain its appearance and formation.

The ancient Irish believed that the Giant's Causeway was built Irish giant Finn McCool in order to get to his sworn enemy, a Scotsman who lived on Hebrides, and fight him in order to decide which of them is stronger.

Further versions are slightly different from each other. According to one of them, seeing that his opponent was larger and more powerful than him, Finn ran away. And when he saw that the Scot was pursuing him, he persuaded his wife to swaddle him like a child and leave him to sleep on the shore. According to another version, while the Irishman was building a road, he was so tired that he fell asleep on the coast, and his wife, seeing that his rival was approaching, swaddled him and passed him off as a child.

In any case, having seen the huge “baby”, the Scottish giant decided that it was better not to mess with his father and ran away, and so that the Irishman would not catch up with him, he destroyed the path.

Studying

Interestingly, the Giant's Causeway became widely known only at the end of the 17th century, when the Bishop of Derry began to intensively advertise it amazing place. And at the beginning of the 19th century, tourists began to appear here en masse.

Despite the fact that this area by the Department environment Northern Ireland declared national reserve, there are absolutely no areas closed to the public, and tourists can walk wherever they want and wherever they can get to. Tourists in this country quite like this fact.

The Giant's Causeway is unique in that, despite the fact that something similar exists in other parts of the globe, it is here that the largest concentration of such pillars is located. It is not surprising that for many centuries scientists have debated how exactly the Trail arose.

Some of them claimed that the giant pillars were actually huge crystals that arose a long time ago at the bottom of the ancient sea. Others said the pillars were actually petrified bamboo forest.

Nowadays, most scientists agree that the largest lava plain in Europe once existed here. It was formed thanks to a huge layer of limestone, which is located under the territory of Northern Ireland. In ancient times, molten lava flowed out through its faults during volcanic eruptions, which covered the earth with a layer of 180 meters, after which it began to cool and harden. But it did not become a shapeless mass because it was based on basalt.

After some time, during cooling, the lava began to slowly decrease in volume, and thanks to the basalt, hexagonal cracks formed on its surface. As the inner layers of magma began to cool, these cracks began to deepen and formed hexagonal columns.

This theory was confirmed by a group of scientists from Toronto who, after conducting experiments, were able to prove that the slower the magma cools, the larger the columns are. Thus, the secret of the appearance of such an amazing natural phenomenon How Ireland's Giant's Causeway Was Revealed... Or Not?

And again nature shows us one of its phenomenal tricks. On the coast of the northern part of Northern Ireland (forgive the tautology, but that’s exactly what it is) is the Giant’s Causeway. This unique natural phenomenon looks like unusual pillars, the cross-section of which is very similar to a honeycomb.

The pillars (or columns) are pressed so tightly against each other that you can’t even stick a knife between them. Large stones in the walls are fitted in approximately the same way. ancient city Sacsayhuaman, with the only difference that people did it there, and here it’s nature.

Giant's Causeway on the map

• Geographic coordinates 55.240684, -6.511417
• The distance from the capital of Northern Ireland, Belfast is approximately 80 km
• The distance to the nearest airport is Derry about 50 km

It should be noted that Northern Ireland is an administrative part of Great Britain, and not a separate state.

The Giant's Causeway is located 3 kilometers north of the town of Bushmills.

This attraction has about 40,000 basalt columns interconnected. Most pillars are hexagonal, but there are also four, five, seven and octagonal specimens. Their height reaches 12 meters. The diameter of the pillars is from 30 to 50 cm.

Looking at this unusual natural structure, it’s hard to believe that it appeared by accident. According to the official version of scientists, such extraordinary columns arose after a volcanic eruption in ancient times. 50-60 million years ago active volcanic phenomena occurred here. Flows of molten basalt formed huge lava fields. With rapid cooling, the volume of the substance decreased, and horizontal compression contributed to the appearance of such geometrically regular structures.

There is also a hypothesis according to which the Giant's Causeway was formed as a result of convection of a viscous substance under conditions of cooling of the upper layers.

Local residents, of course, associate the appearance of this structure with an ancient legend.
It says that the hero of Celtic myths, warrior, sage and seer Finn Mac Cumal decided to measure his strength with a huge one-eyed monster named Goll, who lived in Scotland. But by some freak accident or accidental absurdity, the heroic hero... was afraid to get his feet wet. Finn had to drive a whole lot of columns into the bottom of the sea - it turned out to be a kind of bridge on neighboring island. He was very tired and decided to get some sleep before the battle. While our hero was peacefully dreaming, Goll, without waiting for his opponent, himself came to visit him across the already built bridge. He was met by Uma, Finn's wife. Judging by her name, the lady was not stupid. She cheated a little: pointing to her sleeping husband, she said that he was her child. As you understand, this fellow was not at all like a child in size. Uma seated the giant at the table and began to treat him to flatbreads, in which she had previously baked iron frying pans. She set aside the other flatbreads (without frying pans inside) for her husband. When Goll began to break his teeth eating his treat, the awakened Finn calmly devoured his cakes “on both cheeks.” Realizing that if the baby is like this!!!, then his dad will be completely invincible, Goll runs away in panic and destroys the bridge along the way, cutting off the path for pursuit.

Whether the Giant's Causeway appeared as stated in the myth or as scientists suggest is no longer so important. The main thing is that now we have another unsolved and therefore very attractive natural attraction.

The Giant's Causeway runs more than 270 meters along the coast and about 150 meters along the seabed. All the columns are very hard and dark in color. This is due to the high content of magnesium and iron in their composition. This mixture of substances is practically not subject to the destructive effects of sea waves and wind.

Near the Giant's Causeway there are cliffs with original names. Harp Cliff - its columns are curved and descend to the shore. Organ Rock, whose pillars are straight and very similar to this huge musical instrument.
There are also the cliffs of the Giant's Loom, the Coffin and the Giant's Eyes. You can still see the Giant's Shoe here. This is a huge cobblestone in the shape of a shoe and 2 meters high.

• in 1986, Unesco declared the Giant's Causeway and the Causeway Coast where it is located world heritage, and only a year later, the Department of Environmental Protection awarded this place the status of a National Nature Reserve
• Despite the fact that the Giant's Causeway has been here for thousands, and possibly millions of years, it became widely known only in the 17th century from the stories of the Bishop of Derry. And only at the beginning of the 19th century the first tourists came here
• access for tourists here is not limited anywhere
• in Scotland, on the island of Staffa there is a unique one, the walls of which (like the coast of the island itself) consist of the same hexagonal basalt columns. Perhaps this is also part of the Giant's Causeway

Giant's Causeway photo