Latest news with #FinnMcCool
Daily Mirror
2 days ago
- Daily Mirror
Urgent warning to tourists at UK beauty spot over common ritual
The Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland has been damaged by tourists in recent years, with the National Trust now urging visitors not to take part in a common activity The National Trust has issued a fresh plea to visitors of Northern Ireland's Giant's Causeway, urging them to stop pushing coins into the cracks of the site's iconic basalt columns. What may seem like a harmless or symbolic gesture is actually contributing to the gradual deterioration of one of the UK's most treasured natural landmarks. The Giant's Causeway, located in County Antrim, attracts over half a million visitors each year and is recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its unique geological formations and rich cultural history. The site is made up of around 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, formed around 60 million years ago during intense volcanic activity. As the lava cooled rapidly, it contracted and cracked into the remarkable hexagonal shapes that visitors marvel at today. But in recent years, a growing number of tourists have been wedging coins into the joints between the columns - sometimes for luck, sometimes to mark a visit, and sometimes simply copying what they've seen others do. The practice, which has reportedly increased in the past decade, is now causing noticeable and costly damage. 'The coins quickly rust and expand,' explained Dr. Cliff Henry, who works for the National Trust at the site. 'This leads to flaking of the rock and leaves behind unsightly reddish-brown streaks. Worse still, people often pick up nearby stones to hammer coins into place. When they miss, they chip or break the basalt columns.' The damage is not merely cosmetic. These coins, some of which are pushed deep into the stone, compromise the integrity of the columns themselves. While basalt is a durable volcanic rock, it's not immune to persistent mechanical stress or chemical reactions caused by oxidising metals. Recognising the seriousness of the issue, the National Trust recently trialled a coin removal project. The results were positive, and they now plan to expand the clean-up operation across the site. However, the full cost of safely extracting the coins is estimated to exceed £30,000, a significant sum that highlights how seemingly minor acts by individual visitors can lead to large-scale consequences over time. To combat the trend, new signs will be installed throughout the site warning visitors against the practice. Tour guides will also be briefed to include the message in their presentations. The Trust is hoping education and awareness will help reverse the damage and preserve the Giant's Causeway for future generations. The natural wonder is not only a geological marvel but also steeped in folklore. According to legend, the Giant's Causeway was built by the Irish giant Finn McCool as a path across the sea to challenge a rival Scottish giant, Benandonner. The myth adds an enchanting layer to the site's already powerful appeal—but the National Trust is reminding visitors that respecting the site's natural beauty is more important than leaving a personal mark. 'Our job is to protect this place not just for today, but for decades and centuries to come,' said Dr. Henry. 'We know most people don't intend to do harm, but even small actions - like pushing in a coin - can have a lasting negative impact.' The Giant's Causeway has stood for millions of years, shaped by the forces of nature. Now, it faces a different kind of erosion - from well-meaning but damaging human interaction. As the National Trust continues its efforts to safeguard the site, it asks visitors to admire the stones, learn their history, and take only photographs - leaving the columns as untouched as they have stood for millennia.
Gizmodo
4 days ago
- General
- Gizmodo
Stop Shoving Coins Into the Giant's Causeway
From Parisian bridges to Rome's Trevi Fountain, tourists love leaving behind mementos—but in Northern Ireland, they're eroding a 60-million-year-old landmark. Almost 60 million years ago, a series of natural events—including volcanic eruptions, erosion, glacial movement, and sea level rise—created Northern Ireland's Giant's Causeway: a coastal area made of over 40,000 hexagonal basalt stone pillars. Today it is a world-renowned tourist destination, and the hundreds of thousands of yearly visitors are leaving their mark—but not in a good way. In a recent statement, the conservation charity National Trust is appealing to visitors to stop wedging coins between the Giant's Causeway's basalt rock columns. The coins are corroding and physically damaging the World Heritage Site, and as such, accelerating natural erosion processes, according to a report by the British Geological Survey. From countless padlocks on Parisian bridges to coins tossed into Rome's Trevi Fountain each year, tourists seem obsessed with the idea of leaving something behind at iconic landmarks. But while the Catholic charity Caritas collected $1.52 million in 2022 from the Trevi fountain, the National Trust and its partners will have to spend over $40,000 to remove coins from the Giant's Causeway. 'We know some may want to leave a token of their visit, but the coins are causing damage and we are urging people to stop the practice and to leave no trace so this natural wonder remains special for future generations,' Cliff Henry, National Trust Nature Engagement Officer at the Giant's Causeway, said in the statement. 'The coins are rusting, and expanding to three times their original thickness, which puts huge pressure on the surrounding rock causing it to crumble. Unsightly streaks of copper, nickel and iron oxides are also staining the stones where the coins are corroding.' The report found coins from around the world lodged in difficult-to-reach places, suggesting visitors put themselves at risk in the process. It also highlights, however, that people don't seem to be aware that their actions are damaging to the site. 'There is demonstrable evidence that the practice of inserting coins into the joints and other fractures of the Giant's Causeway is having a detrimental impact on the constituent basalt rock, both physically and aesthetically,' reads the British Geological Survey report. 'The processes associated with the degradation of the coins are seemingly accelerating the break-up of the Causeway rock mass that occurs naturally through physical and chemical weathering.' According to legend, an Irish giant named Finn McCool (yes, that was his last name) built a causeway across the Irish Sea in order to fight with a Scottish giant, who subsequently destroyed it as he fled back to his homeland. Another myth, however, has it that the Irish giant actually built the causeway to reach a woman he'd fallen in love with. Either way, I doubt McCool would have appreciated his masterpiece falling to ruins in the hands of tourists.
Canada Standard
4 days ago
- Sport
- Canada Standard
Hockey night in Belfast: How Canada's sport could be bridging longtime sectarian divides
In its simplest form, the protracted tensions in Northern Ireland have at their foundation two separate sectarian identities deeply divided over how, and by whom, they are governed - Protestant/Unionist populations wishing to maintain British rule and Catholic/Nationalists desiring a united Ireland. The 1998 Good Friday Peace Agreement brought an end to armed hostilities that devastated cities and towns through years of urban guerilla conflict. Yet divisions remain sewn into the everyday lives and patterns of the Northern Irish people - 90 per cent of students attend segregated schools and there are few friendships spanning the sectarian divide. One setting sits identifiably apart from these entrenched divisions: the ice hockey arena. Now in their 25th season, the Belfast Giants, Ireland's only professional hockey team, impressively draws an average of 6,480 spectators to their games. They've also built a large and enthusiastic fan base known as the "Teal Army." As a spectator sport with limited opportunity to play the game competitively and no significant history on either side of the conflict, the hockey arena has emerged as something of a neutral ground where fans from different backgrounds come together side-by-side. The arena is a place where symbols of division, so common across Northern Ireland via flags, murals and graffiti, are not allowed. The lack of a historical association with one side of the conflict, the fact that the sport is played predominantly by men from outside Northern Ireland - mostly from North America and Scandinavia - and a name and logo rooted in the shared regional lore of mythical giant Finn McCool has allowed the team to forge its own path post-peace agreement. In 2015, after years of planning, the Belfast Giants hosted the inaugural Friendship Four hockey tournament. Held over the American Thanksgiving weekend, the tournament has since become an annual event that sees four Division I hockey teams from American universities come to Belfast for a two-day experience that includes intercultural exchange, educational visits to local schools and a hockey tournament. Since the tournament began, it has hosted teams from the New England and Boston areas as a means of fostering stronger ties between the sister cities of Belfast and Boston. In 2024, the Friendship Four tournament notably included a school with a long association with Ireland, the University of Notre Dame. As a prominent American Catholic university with a team name - the Fighting Irish - that is directly connected to the island's divisive history, the team's inclusion in the Friendship Four had the potential to tarnish the neutrality of the event. As a researcher who has engaged significantly with supporters of the Belfast Giants, and as an alumnus of the University of Notre Dame, this tournament drew me to Belfast. Before the 2024 tournament in November, the Notre Dame Hockey account posted guidelines on X for their supporters in Belfast, including an image of what to wear, and what not to wear, around the city. It noted: "Just a reminder to avoid our Irish symbolism, that may be deemed offensive to some, while out around town." The post was deleted a few hours later, and an apology was issued acknowledging the tournament was meant to build bridges, not stoke division. Nonetheless, the original post drew significant attention and criticism. Belfast media and British news outlets picked up the story about the Notre Dame post. Many of the comments on social media about the story were situated in ethno-sectarian views or pointed fingers of blame. The outrage that greeted the Notre Dame X post demonstrates the tension and complexity of identity and symbols in Northern Ireland. But it thankfully wasn't replicated in the Belfast hockey arena because the groundwork of social capital among hockey fans in the city has been built over the last 25 years. On Nov. 29, 2024, the Notre Dame team took to the ice to play against Harvard without any extra fanfare. The afternoon game was filled with school groups carrying homemade signs and cheering for the teams whose players had visited their schools earlier in the week with overt hopes of seeing themselves on the jumbotrons. The game could have been in Saskatoon given the lack of any sectarian tensions. In an age of rising polarization and lack of human connection, the hockey arena in Belfast is worthy of attention. Hallmarks of post-conflict reconstruction include the development of a shared understanding of the truth about past events and directly engaging with contested acts and issues. Neither effort has been particularly well-executed in Northern Ireland. Nonetheless, as people wait for a more fulsome peace in the region, they have managed to live peacefully side by side in places like the Belfast hockey arena. As peace and conflict research continues its attempts to understand how those in conflict-affected communities navigate their everyday lives, the importance of non-traditional, non-partisan activities that can bridge divides should not be overlooked.
Canada Standard
4 days ago
- Sport
- Canada Standard
Hockey night in Belfast? How Canada's sport could be bridging longtime sectarian divides
In its simplest form, the protracted tensions in Northern Ireland have at their foundation two separate sectarian identities deeply divided over how, and by whom, they are governed - Protestant/Unionist populations wishing to maintain British rule and Catholic/Nationalists desiring a united Ireland. The 1998 Good Friday Peace Agreement brought an end to armed hostilities that devastated cities and towns through years of urban guerilla conflict. Yet divisions remain sewn into the everyday lives and patterns of the Northern Irish people - 90 per cent of students attend segregated schools and there are few friendships spanning the sectarian divide. One setting sits identifiably apart from these entrenched divisions: the ice hockey arena. Now in their 25th season, the Belfast Giants, Ireland's only professional hockey team, impressively draws an average of 6,480 spectators to their games. They've also built a large and enthusiastic fan base known as the "Teal Army." As a spectator sport with limited opportunity to play the game competitively and no significant history on either side of the conflict, the hockey arena has emerged as something of a neutral ground where fans from different backgrounds come together side-by-side. The arena is a place where symbols of division, so common across Northern Ireland via flags, murals and graffiti, are not allowed. The lack of a historical association with one side of the conflict, the fact that the sport is played predominantly by men from outside Northern Ireland - mostly from North America and Scandinavia - and a name and logo rooted in the shared regional lore of mythical giant Finn McCool has allowed the team to forge its own path post-peace agreement. In 2015, after years of planning, the Belfast Giants hosted the inaugural Friendship Four hockey tournament. Held over the American Thanksgiving weekend, the tournament has since become an annual event that sees four Division I hockey teams from American universities come to Belfast for a two-day experience that includes intercultural exchange, educational visits to local schools and a hockey tournament. Since the tournament began, it has hosted teams from the New England and Boston areas as a means of fostering stronger ties between the sister cities of Belfast and Boston. In 2024, the Friendship Four tournament notably included a school with a long association with Ireland, the University of Notre Dame. As a prominent American Catholic university with a team name - the Fighting Irish - that is directly connected to the island's divisive history, the team's inclusion in the Friendship Four had the potential to tarnish the neutrality of the event. As a researcher who has engaged significantly with supporters of the Belfast Giants, and as an alumnus of the University of Notre Dame, this tournament drew me to Belfast. Before the 2024 tournament in November, the Notre Dame Hockey account posted guidelines on X for their supporters in Belfast, including an image of what to wear, and what not to wear, around the city. It noted: "Just a reminder to avoid our Irish symbolism, that may be deemed offensive to some, while out around town." The post was deleted a few hours later, and an apology was issued acknowledging the tournament was meant to build bridges, not stoke division. Nonetheless, the original post drew significant attention and criticism. Belfast media and British news outlets picked up the story about the Notre Dame post. Many of the comments on social media about the story were situated in ethno-sectarian views or pointed fingers of blame. The outrage that greeted the Notre Dame X post demonstrates the tension and complexity of identity and symbols in Northern Ireland. But it thankfully wasn't replicated in the Belfast hockey arena because the groundwork of social capital among hockey fans in the city has been built over the last 25 years. On Nov. 29, 2024, the Notre Dame team took to the ice to play against Harvard without any extra fanfare. The afternoon game was filled with school groups carrying homemade signs and cheering for the teams whose players had visited their schools earlier in the week with overt hopes of seeing themselves on the jumbotrons. The game could have been in Saskatoon given the lack of any sectarian tensions. In an age of rising polarization and lack of human connection, the hockey arena in Belfast is worthy of attention. Hallmarks of post-conflict reconstruction include the development of a shared understanding of the truth about past events and directly engaging with contested acts and issues. Neither effort has been particularly well-executed in Northern Ireland. Nonetheless, as people wait for a more fulsome peace in the region, they have managed to live peacefully side by side in places like the Belfast hockey arena. As peace and conflict research continues its attempts to understand how those in conflict-affected communities navigate their everyday lives, the importance of non-traditional, non-partisan activities that can bridge divides should not be overlooked.
Irish Times
5 days ago
- General
- Irish Times
Giant's Causeway visitors causing damage to ancient landscape by wedging coins into cracks
Visitors are damaging the Giant's Causeway in Co Antrim by wedging coins into the cracks of the basalt columns, causing the rocks to stain and crumble. The coins rust and expand to three times their original thickness, corroding and fracturing the world heritage site, authorities said on Wednesday. They appealed to the public to end the tradition that has left coins from all over the world embedded in the world-famous landmark. 'We are urging people to stop the practice and to leave no trace so this natural wonder remains special for future generations,' said Cliff Henry, a National Trust nature engagement officer. The causeway's 40,000 near-perfect hexagonal columns drew 648,000 visitors last year, confirming it as one of Northern Ireland's most popular attractions. Legend says the columns were built by the Irish giant Finn McCool as a crossing to confront a Scottish rival, Benandonner. READ MORE But coins from the UK, Europe, the US and elsewhere that are wedged into joints and cracks as tokens of visits are harming the basalt rock aesthetically and physically, according to a British Geological Survey report. 'The coins are rusting and expanding to three times their original thickness, which puts huge pressure on the surrounding rock, causing it to crumble. Unsightly streaks of copper, nickel and iron oxides are also staining the stones where the coins are corroding,' said Mr Henry. 'The coins here also have accelerated corrosion because they are often soaked in saltwater spray and the mixture of metals means they break down faster.' The National Trust, in partnership with Causeway Coast and Glens Heritage Trust, hired stone conservation specialists to remove coins without causing further damage at 10 test locations. The trial was successful and it is hoped all the remaining coins will be removed, costing an estimated £30,000 (€35,700). The Giant's Causeway formed between 50 and 60 million years ago when molten basalt erupted through chalk beds and formed a lake of lava. As this cooled and contracted, cracks propagated across the plateau to form hexagonal stepping stones. Signs are to be erected urging visitors to keep coins in their pockets and not leave a legacy of additional cracks. 'We protect and care for places so people and nature can thrive,' said Mr Henry. Authorities in Paris made a similar appeal after a tradition of leaving padlocks on the Pont des Arts was blamed for a partial collapse in 2014. - Guardian
