A giant's kettle formed when meltwater plunged through a crevasse onto the bedrock and spun stones in a whirlpool. The stones ground a hollow, the hollow strengthened the whirl, and after centuries there was a smooth-walled shaft in the rock. The Finnish name comes from before geology: a hiisi, a giant, churned butter in the rock.

The list has both ice-age kettles and "devil's nests", which are even older weathering pits. What they share is that the scale only makes sense at the edge. The whole theme has more than 20 kettles by region.

  1. Askola Giants kettles

    Askola

    Twenty kettles on one outcrop, the largest the 10.3-metre-deep, 4.2-metre-wide "Giant's Bathtub". No comparable cluster is known anywhere else in Finland; a 300-metre path marked with blue ribbons ends at the gate of the kettle area.

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  2. Aholanvaaran hiidenkirnut

    Salla

    The kettles of Aholanvaara in Salla lie on a hillside far from any present-day river – at the level where the ice-sheet meltwater once ran. Search statistics make them the most looked-for giant's kettles in Finland, and a nature trail passes them.

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  3. Jumalanhauta hiidenkirnu / Nähtävyys

    Pudasjärvi

    Jumalanhauta ("God's grave") in Pudasjärvi is about 30 metres across and 15 metres deep, one of the largest in Finland. Rock debris covers the bottom, and the name tells what the pit looked like to local eyes; signposting starts from Ruunakankaantie.

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  4. The Devil's Nest

    Kurikka

    The cavity gaping at the top of Isovuori in Kurikka is a weathering pit older than the ice age, which the glacier merely uncovered. Children were warned that the devil takes anyone who goes to the opening; today there is a 21-metre lookout tower and a summer café beside it.

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  5. Pihlajamäen hiidenkirnut

    Helsinki

    In Pihlajamäki, Helsinki, a group of kettles sits between apartment blocks, and hundreds of people walk past every day without noticing the ice age beneath their feet. The suburb was built on the outcrops in the 1960s, and the kettles were left exposed.

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  6. Imatrankoski ja Kruununpuiston hiidenkirnut

    Imatra

    In Kruununpuisto park at Imatrankoski the kettles lie in the former channel of the Vuoksi, where the rapids have eaten the rock ever since Lake Saimaa broke through the Salpausselkä ridge. Kruununpuisto is Finland's oldest nature reserve, and the summer-evening rapids show lets the water back into the channel.

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  7. Pakasaivo canyon lake

    Muonio

    Pakasaivo in Muonio, the "Hell of Lapland", is a kilometre-long gorge lake whose walls rise 50 metres and whose bottom continues deep under water. A Sámi sacred site, today with signposting, a hut, viewing platforms and a summer café.

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All on the map

The whole theme. This list is a selection. The theme page has every place by region, a map and background on the phenomenon.

Giant's kettles · 24 places →