What Do We Know About the Giant's Causeway?

What Do We Know About the Giant's Causeway?

On a November day in 2015, a video circulated in a small area of Northern Ireland. It appeared to be a breaking news report about a giant that had been seen roaming nearby. The speaker on the video explained that a tourist had used their phone to take some video footage showing an enormous cave door opening and then quickly shutting tight. He said that the giant that had been spotted earlier had probably entered the cave for his long winter hibernation. Tourists in the area that day were even said to have heard loud snoring coming from the cave. The video immediately caught the attention of people in this remote part of the country. They must have wondered if what they’d seen and heard could possibly be true. But how could they have even imagined that it would be?

About sixty miles northwest of Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, is County Antrim. It sits along the rugged, inhospitable, and sparsely populated coast of the North Atlantic Ocean. Yet, County Antrim is world famous. About seven hundred thousand people make the trip there each year to see one of the greatest wonders in the United Kingdom—an enormous collection of rocks and stones that are the stuff of history, wonder, and mystery.

At the edge of this area of Northern Ireland, where the rocky coast looks out over the icy waters, an enormous collection of thousands of dark brown uniform stone columns rises out of the cliffs and descends into the cold, choppy Atlantic. Most people’s first impression is that it looks like a gigantic staircase. Known today as the Giant’s Causeway, this magnificent place has captivated people’s imaginations for centuries. Its amazing beauty is one reason, of course. But just as remarkable are the stories of how it came to be in the first place.

Did a giant build a causeway here to get across the sea to an island in Scotland, eighty-two miles away? Ancient stories and folklore tell us just that. And its name—Giant’s Causeway—certainly suggests it. (A causeway is a raised rocky path or road built across a body of water or wet, marshy land. It is different from a bridge, which is built suspended above a gap, such as a river, valley, or another road, with open space below it.)

Or are there more natural causes for its origin, ones that maybe science can explain? To this day, nobody knows for sure if giants once lived among the rocks and towering cliffs that make up the Giant’s Causeway. Nor can we be sure if one might still live there today.

Could the video provide some proof that the stories people have told for centuries might be true? Or is the idea of a giant existing here impossible to believe?