File:Kaali crater meteorite.jpg

English: A peek inside the rare Kaali Crater meteor from Estonia. I just obtained this, a complement to the main mass I obtained earlier.

On rare occasion in the era before science, a meteor would explode in the sky near a populated area. As a singular event for a culture, it left a mark in folklore and mythology. It landed in Estonia around 3700 BC, an iron-nickel alloy that came from the molten core of a planetary scale body destroyed in our early solar system, which then cooled very, very slowly in space, just a couple degrees per million years, forming beautiful crystalline patterns inside.

It also left a crater on the island where my mom lived as a child. I visited the round Kaalijärv crater-lake on the Estonian island of Saaremaa in 1998.

The fireball from outer space is the origin of Estonian and Finnish mythology. I love the Baltic Times summary:

"It's kind of an unwritten rule in Estonia — if you want to see something weird, go to the islands. One of the most famous of these curiosities is the Kaali meteor crater site on Estonia's largest island, Saaremaa. To the site's resume we can also add pagan worship, ritual animal sacrifice, appearances in the Finnish national epic, and the possible origin of Jaanipaev traditions. Scientists say that this is the most attractive crater in Eurasia.

Now resembling a small, round lake, the main crater was formed sometime between 7,500 and 4,000 years ago when a 20-80 ton iron meteorite slammed into the Earth, carving out a hole 110m across. Pieces also broke off the meteor as it entered the atmosphere, spraying the land like a shotgun blast and creating eight smaller craters nearby.

Scientists are fairly sure they know how this story began: a meteor initially weighing some 400 - 10,000 tons sped in from the northeast moving 15 - 45 kilometers per second and entered the Earth's atmosphere at a 45-degree angle. After turning into a fireball and losing most of its mass, the meteor broke apart about 5 - 10 kilometers from the surface, then hit Saaremaa with a force that has been compared to that of a small atomic blast.

In 1927, the site's pioneer researcher, Ivan Reinwald, found evidence that the craters were meteoric in origin, but it took him an entire decade to find the first fragments of the actual meteor to prove it.

While geologists are working on the question of when the meteor hit, archaeologists are trying to interpret the oddities they've dug up at the site.

Excavations begun in the 1970s have uncovered many interesting things: remains of a 470 meter wall that surrounded the crater during the early iron age (600 BC to AD 100), evidence of a fortified settlement inhabited from the 5th to 7th century BC, a small hoard of silver jewelry from the 3rd to 5th centuries AD, and piles of domestic animal bones, some dating to as late as the 17th century.

The wall, the silver and the bones have led to speculation that centuries after the catastrophic explosion took place, the crater took on the role of a pagan worship site. The practice of sacrificing animals to ensure a good harvest was known to have continued on Saaremaa well into Christian times, despite condemnation from the church.

The local geographical labels add fuel to this pagan worship argument. Lake Kaali, the small lake formed by the crater, is said to have been originally called ‘Holy Lake’ in Estonian, and the nearby forest is still called Puhamets, which means ‘Sacred Forest.’ It's, therefore, no stretch of logic to assume that Kaali was a place of spiritual significance, whether or not it was connected with ancient tales of a fireball in the sky."

According to a theory first proposed by Lennart Meri, it is possible that Saaremaa was the legendary Thule island, first mentioned by ancient Greek geographer Pytheas, whereas the name Thule could have been connected to the Finnic word tule ("(of) fire") and the folklore of Estonia, which depicts the birth of the crater lake in Kaali. Kaali was considered the place where "The sun went to rest."