Message #12333

[Aphrodite]

Finland’s Largest Cave

According to Hirvas the Wolf Cave is Finland’s largest cave (Vbl 16.10.1997).

"The Wolf Cave is Finland’s largest cave, at least 400 square meters, 18 meters deep and 25 meters long. The crevice in the primary rock is horizontal, and Hirvas assumes that it can extend to the top of the Vargberget (The Wolf Hill). The cave opening can be up to about a billion years old, but how old the cave is, no one can say."

During the summer 1997 excavations about one hundred stone tools with various flake scars were revealed. The predominant stone is Jotun sandstone; objects out of quartz were not frequent. Hans-Peter Schulz wrote in 1998 that the encountered archaeological lithics were fine-grained Jotun sandstone (c. 80 %), quartz, vulcanite and quartzite.



The Wolf Cave
Photo: © Olle Haavisto

Excavating continued the summer of 1998 and the research team consisted of Section Head Heikki Hirvas; FL. Pekka Huhta; Research Assistant Pentti Hakala from the Geological Survey of Finland; Prof. Mikael Fortelius; FD Juha-Pekka Lunkka; and FM Pirkko Ukkonen from the division for geology and paleontology of the Department of Geology; Högne Jungner from the C14 laboratory at Helsingfors University, also Chief Superintendent Paula Purhonen and Hans-Peter Schulz, MA from the National Board of Antiquities (Syd-Österbotten 9.6.1998).

At the same time as the press conference that was arranged 8.6.1999, the excavation leader Hans-Peter Schulz said the yield of found objects for 1997 was ca 70, whereby 25 clearly were created by human hands, which was determined through an artifact morphological investigation.

In 1997 they had examined an area of only 4.5 square meters. The discovery was found in the lowest layer. They found a stratification in the layers in the cave, and the three uppermost layers were empty. The upper layers are considerably younger than the lower ones.