Staffa

Staffa is a small island in the Inner Hebrides, about ten kilometres west of Mull in Argyll and Bute. Its name comes from the Old Norse word for pillar, after the island’s columnar basalt cliffs that reminded Viking sailors of the wooden posts in their houses. The island covers thirty-three hectares and reaches forty-two metres above sea level at its highest point. Staffa was little known until the late eighteenth century, when Sir Joseph Banks visited and praised its natural beauty. His account drew other prominent figures, including John Keats, Queen Victoria and Felix Mendelssohn. By the nineteenth century the island had become celebrated, though it has never been permanently inhabited. The island’s geology tells a story of ancient volcanoes and ice sheets. During the Pleistocene ice age Staffa lay beneath ice sheets that extended far into the Atlantic. About twenty thousand years ago the ice retreated and sea levels rose, isolating the volcanic island. The basalt columns formed as lava cooled slowly, creating hexagonal shapes divided by horizontal joints. Similar formations appear at the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland and on nearby Mull. Fingal’s Cave, the island’s most famous feature, is a sea cavern lined with these columns and stretches seventy-five metres into the cliffs. Visitors step onto a rugged coastline where caves and rock stacks shape the shore. Goat Cave and Clamshell Cave lie on the east side, the latter showing ribs of basalt like a ship’s hull. Nearby Am Buachaille is a tall stack of columns visible only at low tide. On the south-west side Mackinnon’s Cave runs 107 metres inland, linked by a tunnel to Cormorant Cave. Fingal’s Cave itself stands near the southern tip, its sixty-metre-high entrance framed by towering basalt columns. The waves echo through the cave, creating the natural music that inspired Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture.