A giant's kettle and a tafone
The giant's kettle at Öjberget.
On the southern hillside of Öjberget close to the 3 km skiing slope you can find a giant's kettle. It is situated close to the place where the 3 km slope turns off from the 5 km slope.
Control number 6 on the Nature Trail at Öjberget.
During the last ice age a fast waterstream or a rapid made stones whirl around on the place. By the time the whirling stones ground a deep hole in the rock, which is a giant's kettle. Sometime one of the walls was pressed out of the hole by water or ice. De grinded stones were also washed away with the wall. Matts Andersén found this giant's kettle on Öjberget in 1984.
"Kukkosteinin" may be a tafone Until these days the cave has been interpreted as a small giant's kettle, that had developed before the erratic block was moved by the inland ice to its present position. Since the inner surface of the kettle is rather uneven and the cave goes into the vertical wall of the block, it might be a tafone. That is a weathering cave or a cavity originating from a small pit in a vertical rock wall or erratic block.
In English and Swedish it is called a "tafone" , which originate from the Italian word for a hollow block. In the Kuckosteinin the tafone has began to grow from a small crack before the Ice Age and it has slowly grown larger and deeper as a result of a continuous weathering process.
According to an article in the magazine Suomen Luonto (August 2000) you can find about 300 tafoni in some fifty places around Finland, many in Lapland. Tafoni are also common around the Mediterranean. In any case is the Kuckosteinin a rare stone with a unusual cave.
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