Fingal's Cave
A sea cave on a tiny Hebridean island inspired a famous overture, a Turner painting and a Giant's Causeway legend, and its walls are naturally tiled in hexagons.
Published
Quick Facts
- Location
- Isle of Staffa, Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of Mull, Argyll and Bute
- Built or opened
- Natural; formed from lava about 60 million years ago
- Height or size
- Roughly 69 metres deep, with an arched entrance around 20 metres above the sea
- Gaelic name
- An Uamh Bhinn, usually translated as the melodious cave
- Made of
- Hexagonal basalt columns
- Famous visitors
- Joseph Banks (1772), Walter Scott (1810), Felix Mendelssohn (1829), Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (1847)
- Named after
- Fingal, hero of the Ossian poems, based on the Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill
- Cared for by
- National Trust for Scotland
The cave that sings back
Fingal's Cave is a sea cave, and the sea never stops working inside it. Waves roll into the long, narrow chamber and boom back out again, and the echoes give the place its Gaelic name, An Uamh Bhinn, the melodious cave. The walls are the real showstopper. They are made of hundreds of tall, six-sided basalt columns, packed together so neatly that they look as if a giant mason laid them. The roof is rougher, a tangle of broken column ends, and the whole cave is shaped like a gothic arch. The cave runs about 69 metres into the rock. Look at the floor and you'll see the sea sloshing where a floor should be.
Cooled by accident, not built by anyone
Nobody built Fingal's Cave. About 60 million years ago, lava poured across this part of what is now western Scotland. As a thick sheet of it cooled, it shrank and cracked into regular columns, most of them six-sided. Geologists call this columnar jointing. The same volcanic province produced the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, which is why the two places look so alike. Over the millennia, the Atlantic attacked weak spots in the columns and carved the cave out. The island's name comes from the Vikings. Staffa is thought to derive from the Norse for a stave island, because the columns reminded them of upright wooden poles in a log building.
The scientist who put it on the map
For centuries the cave was known only to locals. Then, in 1772, the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks anchored off Staffa while on his way to Iceland. He was amazed, and his account made the island famous in London. It was Banks's party who linked the cave with Fingal, the hero of the Ossian poems that James Macpherson had published in the 1760s. Fingal is a version of the Gaelic hero Fionn mac Cumhaill, so the name stuck, and the old Gaelic name faded from use outside the islands.
Mendelssohn, Turner and a royal boat trip
In August 1829 the young German composer Felix Mendelssohn sailed out to Staffa. By most accounts the sea was rough and he suffered for it, but the visit inspired him. He sent his sister Fanny the opening theme of what became The Hebrides Overture, also known as Fingal's Cave. It was performed in London in 1832 and is still a concert favourite. The same year, JMW Turner exhibited his painting Staffa, Fingal's Cave. Walter Scott had visited in 1810, and the poet John Keats came in 1818. In 1847 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert arrived by boat and looked into the cave from the water. Staffa had become a stop on the Victorian Romantic tour.
Fionn, Benandonner and the missing causeway
The legends link Staffa to Ireland. In the best-known tale, Fionn mac Cumhaill built a causeway of stone columns across the sea to reach his Scottish rival, the giant Benandonner. The Giant's Causeway is the Irish end. Staffa's columns are said to be the Scottish end, and the rest lies under the waves. The geology tells a different story, but it does explain the match. Both sets of columns formed from separate basalt lava flows linked to the same North Atlantic volcanic province. The myth just supplies a giant to blame. In the Ossian tradition, Fingal is a great warrior, so the cave carries a hero's name rather than a giant's. That association belongs to the eighteenth-century enthusiasm for Macpherson's Ossian poems.
What to look for when you land
Boat trips run to Staffa from Mull, Iona and Oban in the summer months, and the sea decides whether you can land. If you do get ashore, a path and handrail lead along the tops of the columns to the cave mouth, so you can walk right up to the water's edge. Look closely at the column tops under your feet, which look like giant paving stones. Then look up at the cliffs above the cave, where the columns curve and splay like a frozen fountain. In summer, puffins nest on the grassy top of the island. Many boat trips give visitors time to see them. Take a moment inside the cave to listen to the waves booming back at you.
Notable people
- Sir Joseph Banks
- Felix Mendelssohn
- JMW Turner
- Queen Victoria
- Prince Albert
- Walter Scott
- John Keats
- James Macpherson
- Fionn mac Cumhaill
Test yourself
Play the UK quizMore to see nearby
Loch Lomond
Published
Vikings dragged longships overland to reach it, a cold snap in Ice Age science is named after it, and wallabies once hopped about on one of its islands.