KIWIPULSE // ROCK YOUR WORLD

Ireland: Giant’s Causeway

September 26, 2007 – 8:52 pm | Written by KiwiPulse

I remember when I first saw those rocks, it appeared on the cover of the Led Zeppelin album “Houses of the Holy“. I can’t believe such hexagonal shaped rocks could exist in this world. The Giant’s Causeway is the results of volcanic eruption formed 60 million years ago. Today you can see approximately 40,000 columns of basalt rocks on this land. It’s one of the fourth greatest natural wonders in the United Kingdom. The Causeway become widely known as the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’ in the 1700s when large numbers of visitors came to view this amazing array of basalt columns. The Causeway came into public ownership in 1963 when it was bought by the National Trust.

Mythology
“Long ago, an Irish giant named Finn MacCool roamed the north coast, where he could look across the narrow sea of Moyle to Scotland. A Scottish giant, Benandonner, was Finn’s greatest rival, challenging his strength and reputation.

As the two giants had never met, Finn decided to invite Benandonner to Ireland, to engage in a decisive battle. There was no boat large enough to carry giants, so Finn built a causeway of huge stones across the water so that the Scottish giant could travel on dry land; thus he would have no excuse to avoid the confrontation.”

Source: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25]