STRAND (Beach) - The taxes that are right in front of you

GRANITE

Coarse-grained, cracked red GRANITE undulates softly like the sea waves in the outer skerries of Åland and gives our roads their pink tone. Also known as rapakivi, this rock is the very foundation of Åland. Radioactive substances in the minerals act like tiny clocks, which is why we know it is over 1 585 million years old. GRANITE can also be white or black.

Porphyry

The beach stones that range in color from gray to black are often porphyry. The hard bedrock consists of rapidly solidified lava or ash that has rained down on the earth. Over millions of years, quartz, feldspar and hornblende have found their way into the dense structure as hexagonal crystals.

Sandstone

The bright, solid-colored rocks on the beach - light gray, yellow and sometimes pink - are sandstone. Water, ice and wind erode different types of rock into sand, which is then pressed and cemented together by natural cement. In the sandstone, plant parts, shell remains and the remains of similar animals can be incorporated as fossils, a greeting from things that lived millions of years ago.

Diabase

Dark or grayish diabase emerges from the earth's crust as magma and fills the cracks in older rock. Diabase contains large amounts of iron and is therefore hard and very heavy - one cubic meter weighs about three tons. Our ancestors used diabase to make useful tools.

Gneiss

The pinkish-red color makes gneiss look a lot like GRANITE, but on closer inspection the clear bands and veins in parallel layers show that it is gneiss. When the stone is formed into small beads, it is really hard to tell the difference.