Fingal’s Cave: Scotland’s ‘cave of melody’ where eerie echoes bounce off pillars of solidified lava

Fingal’s Cave is a sea cave in Scotland whose walls are made of hexagonally joined basalt columns. These structures may have formed within the same lava flow that shaped the Giant’s Causeway, a geological formation in Northern Ireland composed of more than 40,000 interlocking basalt pillars.

Fingal’s Cave extends 230 feet (70 meters) deep and 60 feet (18 m) high inside the small, uninhabited island of Staffa, located in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides. It was carved by a volcanic eruption sometime during the Paleocene epoch (66 million to 56 million years ago).

As giant lava flows from this eruption began to cool and solidify, their top and bottom parts contracted and fractured into hexagonal shapes similar to those formed by desiccation cracks in muddy sediments. Eventually, these fractures extended and combined in the center of the flow, forming hexagonal pillars whose sides were later revealed by waves eroding the margins of the flow, according to the National Trust for Scotland.

The cave gets its name from an Irish myth about a warrior called Fionn Mac Cumhaill. According to the legend, Fionn — whose full name was shortened to Fingal, meaning “white stranger” — built the Giant’s Causeway across the sea to Scotland to fight a rival called Benandonner, and Fingal’s Cave is what remains of Fionn’s path over the ocean on the Scottish side.