Giant's Causeway

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For other uses, see Giant's Causeway (disambiguation).

**Giant's Causeway and Causeway Coast**^a
**UNESCO World Heritage Site**

State Party	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Type	Natural
Criteria	vii, viii
Identification	#369
Region^b	Europe and North America
Inscription History
Formal Inscription:	1986 10th Session
a Name as officially inscribed on the WH List b As classified officially by UNESCO

The Giant's Causeway is an area of 40,000 interlocking basalt columns resulting from a volcanic eruption. It is located on the North East coast about 2 miles (3 km) north of the town of Bushmills in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986, and a National Nature Reserve in 1987 (by the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland). In a 2005 poll of Radio Times readers, Giant's Causeway was named as the fourth greatest natural wonder in the United Kingdom. The Giant's Causeway is owned and managed by the National Trust. The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the cliff foot and disappear under the sea. Most of the columns are hexagonal, however there are some with four, five, seven and eight sides. The tallest are about 12 metres (36 ft) high, and the solidified lava in the cliffs is 28 metres thick in places.

1 Legend
2 History
3 Similar structures
4 Notable features, flora and fauna
5 Trivia
6 See also
7 Notes
8 References
9 External links

[edit] Legend

Legend has it that the Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) built the causeway to walk to Scotland to fight his Scottish counterpart Benandonner. One version of the legend tells that Finn McCool fell asleep before he got to Scotland. When he didn't arrive, the much larger Benandonner crossed the bridge looking for him. To protect Fionn, his wife Oonagh laid a blanket over Fionn and pretended he was actually Fionn's baby son (in a variation, Fionn fled after seeing Benandonner's great bulk, and asked his wife to disguise him as the baby.) In both versions, when Benandonner saw the size of the 'infant', he assumed the alleged father, Fionn, must be gigantic indeed. Therefore, Benandonner fled home in terror, ripping up the Causeway in case he was followed by Fionn.

The Scottish side of the causeway on the isle of Staffa has similar basalt formations at the site of Fingal's Cave that are part of the same ancient lava flow.

[edit] History

Engraving of Susanna Drury's A View of the Giant's Causeway: East Prospect

During the Paleogene period, Antrim was subject to intense volcanic activity, when highly fluid molten basalt intruded through chalk beds to form an extensive lava plateau. As the lava cooled rapidly, contraction occurred. While contraction in the vertical direction reduced the flow thickness (without fracturing), horizontal contraction could only be accommodated by cracking throughout the flow. The extensive fracture network produced the distinctive columns seen today.

The "discovery" of the Giant's Causeway was announced to the world in 1693 by the presentation of a paper to the Royal Society from Sir Richard Bulkeley, a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, although the "discoverer" had, in fact, been the Bishop of Derry who had visited the site a year earlier. The site received international attention when Dublin artist Susanna Drury made watercolor paintings of it in 1739; they won Drury the first award presented by the Royal Dublin Society in 1740 and were engraved in 1743.^[1]In 1765 an entry on the Causeway appeared in volume 12 of the French Encyclopédie, which was informed by the engravings of Drury's work; the engraving of the "East Prospect" itself appeared in a 1768 volume of plates published for the Encyclopédie.^[2] In the caption to the plates French geologist Nicolas Desmarest suggested, for the first time in print, that such structures were volcanic in origin.

[edit] Similar structures

Although the basaltic columns of the Giant's Causeway are impressive, they are not unique. Basalt columns are a common volcanic feature, and they occur on many scales (faster cooling produces smaller columns). Other notable sites include Fingal's Cave in Scotland, the Garni gorge in Armenia, the Cyclopean Isles near Sicily, Devils Postpile National Monument in California, Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, Basalt Prisms in Hidalgo, Mexico, the "Organ Pipes" formation on Mount Cargill in New Zealand and the "Columnar Cape" (Russian: Mis Stolbchaty) on Kunashir, the southernmost of the Kurile Islands in Russia.

[edit] Notable features, flora and fauna

Some of the structures in the area, having been subject to several million years of weathering, resemble objects, such as the Organ and Giant's Boot structures pictured here. Other features include many reddish, weathered low columns known as Giants Eyes, created by the displacement of basalt boulders; the Shepherd's Steps; the Honeycomb; the Giant's Harp; the Chimney Stacks; Fingal in Northern NSW (Australia); the Giant's Gate and the Camel's Hump. The area is a haven for sea birds such as fulmar, petrel, cormorant, shag, redshank guillemot and razorbill, while the weathered rock formations host a number of rare and unusual plants including sea spleenwort, hare's foot trefoil, vernal squill, sea fescue and frog orchid.

Giant's Causeway cliffs.	The "pipe organ".	A plain of columns.	The Giant's Boot.
Basalt columns.	The shore.	The Causeway Coast.	A small "island" of basalt columns

[edit] Trivia

The Causeway appears in many photos, notably the cover of the Led Zeppelin album Houses of the Holy.
UK rock band Marillion also used the causeway as the backdrop for their video "Easter".
BBC Two Northern Ireland used the Causeway as part of an exclusive ident that only aired in that region during the 2001-2007 "personality 2" phase.
The Causeway figures promimentaly in Matthew Barney's The Cremaster Cylce at the conclusion of the third movie.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

^ Arnold, Irish Art, p. 62.
^ "Susanna Drury, the Causeway, and the Encyclopédie, 1768". Lindahall.org. Retrieved March 14, 2007.

[edit] References

Official Causeway Guide: Geology page
Arnold, Bruce (2002). Irish Art: A Concise History. New York: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-20148-X
Jagla, E. A., Rojo, A. G. Sequential fragmentation: the origin of columnar quasihexagonal patterns. Physical Review E, 65, 026203, (2002) (webpage)
Philip S. Watson (2000). The Giant's Causeway. O'Brien: Printing Press. ISBN 0-86278-675-4.