Fingal's Cave

Fingal 's Cave

Fingal 's Cave ( Scottish Gaelic: Uamh - Binn ) is a 85 -meter-long cave on the uninhabited Scottish island of Staffa. It is surrounded mostly by hexagonal basalt columns that have arisen during the Tertiary. In addition to the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland it is one of the most famous basalt formations of the United Kingdom.

History

Fingal 's Cave was discovered by Joseph Banks, an English naturalist, on the way to an expedition to Iceland in August 1772.

The cave is named after the alleged legendary hero Fingal, who was in actual fact invented by the Scottish writer James Macpherson. Macpherson was in his Fragments of Ancient Poetry fictional poet Ossian - based on the mythical Irish poet Oisín - report of the exploits of King Fingal, whose model of the Irish warrior Fionn mac Cumhaill was the word.

Tourism

In the 19th century was Fingal 's Cave as a tourist attraction; it landed up to 300 tourists a day on Staffa to visit the cave. Famous visitors were Queen Victoria, Walter Scott, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, John Keats, Theodor Fontane and William Wordsworth. The lively boat traffic to the island is nowadays largely stopped.

Martin Mills of the Grampian Speleological Group refers to the cave as most famous but least visited cave in the world ( "the most famous but least visited cave in the world "). He plays here that although pass many ships and boats with tourists on board Staffa, but only a few actually go there at anchor. Only a few smaller boats of Mull and Iona, the neighboring islands, Staffa drive today still on.

Fingal 's Cave in art

On August 8, 1829 visited Fingal 's Cave, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Inspired by the stay, he composed the overture The Hebrides.

The romantic painter William Turner painted in 1832 the entrance of the cave; he called the finished paintings Staffa, Fingal 's Cave (see " links "). It was described by the Royal Academy of Arts in London as one of the most perfect expressions of the romanticism style of art ( " one of the most perfect works of Romanticism"). Today, the painting is in the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven. The German physician, naturalist and romantic Carl Gustav Carus painted the view from the Fingal's Cave in the moonlight about 1851 ( Prints and Drawings Dresden, inv C 1963-4 ).

Pictures

Detail of the cave entrance

Fingal 's Cave on a Photochrom print ( 1900)