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618 gram end cut.   L6

TKW 7 kg. Fall not observed. Found 1963 near Lappi, Finland.

Photo 1 is the original, Photo 2 was PhotoShopped to bring out more detail.


Jarkko writes:

Ex University of Helsinki collection with hand-painted museum number.

Ex Robert Haag collection (number 126, page 45 – Field Guide of Meteorites, 12th anniversary edition, 1997).

Ex Matt Morgan collection.

My very good friend Tuomas Uusheimo has a meteorite photo exhibition here in Helsinki, Lasipalatsi, Mannerheimintie 22-24, Helsinki, Finland. The art photo exhibition is titled "Fallen Angels". It will be open until the 26th of January 2014.

After showing Tuomas some of my collection pieces he was very eager to make an exhibition about meteorites and I was very fortunate to be able to help him. The pieces that were photographed are my collection pieces.

Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, Professor of Arabic language and Islamic culture in the Helsinki University wrote the following introduction to the exhibition:

Fallen Angels

The gods circle the heavens at night, governing events on Earth as they pass. Observers of the starry skies have been watching events in the firmament for thousands of years, and every once in a while they see gods descending to Earth in fiery flames.

Many cultures have interpreted lights in the firmament as manifestations of the gods. Some four thousand years ago, early stargazers in ancient Mesopotamia noticed that the passage of the gods across the skies could be predicted. This was the birth of observational astrology.

Althought the movements of the stars have been observed and recorded for the millennia, heavenly events have also been associated with stories. Bolts of lightning were seen as weapons hurled by gods in Finland as well as in Greece, where Zeus was often depicted with a thunderbolt in hand, while in Iran the god of the heavens wielded a club to smite his enemies. The God of the Old Testament may of course have also hurled thunderbolts onto sinners.

Sometimes the blow from a god reached all the way down to earth. Meteorites raining down from the skies were even more awe-inspiring than thunderbolts. One that struck the ground over two thousand years ago in Saarenmaa, Estonia, may have left traces in The Kalevala, where in a song “the heavens are burst asunder” and a “red-ball” rushes down through nine starry vaults. According to a story from the other side of the Earth, the black stone of Kaaba descended from heaven and the sins of mankind turned it black from its original brilliant white.

The idea of meteorites as fallen angels recalls the early days of human religious experience. In the monotheistic tradition, Satan was originally a beautiful angel who was cast down from Heaven, burning on his way down and becoming black and ugly – like a luminous shooting star that is reduced to a black lump of stone by the time it reached the ground. Yet some of its heavenly beauty may remain in the forms and structures of the stone if we look close enough.