In the forests around Kitkiöjärvi, people have been finding parts of the Muonionalusta meteorite for more than a hundred years. It fell over the area long before the last Ice Age, which began about 115,000 years ago. Parts of it are still buried in the ground, often several metres down. In winter, the ground is frozen hard and covered with snow, but during the summer months you can see people searching with metal detectors and shovels.

The first known discovery was made as early as 1906, when two children found a rusty stone in the forest weighing about 7.5 kg.

Since then, hundreds of meteorites have been found in the area, and the record for the largest is more than one tonne.

The meteorite is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old, and researchers believe it came from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which lies more than 180 million km from Earth.

Most meteors that fall toward Earth are various forms of stone. Only a small number, like this one, are made mainly of iron and nickel.

The distinctive pattern visible on the meteorite’s surface appears when the surface is polished and then etched with acid. It is called the Widmanstätten pattern, after the Austrian discoverer, and it forms when different parts separate from one another during extremely slow cooling over millions of years.

The meteorites found here do not only tell us something about the very earliest period in the history of the universe, but also about the place where they are found. When the ice sheet moved across the landscape, it carried the fragments with it, and for that reason these finds can provide clues both about the universe and about how Tornedalen was shaped.