Finnish meteorites

Meteorite	kg	Type	Fell / Found
28 Jan 2003
Finnish meteorites
Abo: see Åbo
Åbo *	0.0012+	H chondrite	before 1840 (Fell 21. Dec 1803?)
Luotolax	0.843+	AHOW howardite	fell 16 Dec. 1813
Bjurböle	~328+	L/LL4 chondrite	fell 12 March 1899
Hvittis	14.050	EL6 chondrite	fell 21 Oct. 1901
Marjalahti **	~44.8+	PAL pallasite	fell 1. June 1902
Saint Michel: See St. Michel
St. Michel	16.452	L6 chondrite	fell 12. July 1910
Varpaisjärvi	0.118+	L6 chondrite	found 1913
Metsäkylä	~1.0	H4 chondrite	found 1938
Valkeala	~4.0+	L6 chondrite	found 1962
Salla	~7.0+	L6 chondrite	found 1963 (Fell 23. Feb 1858?)
Kivesvaara	~0.2+	CM2 chondrite	found 1968, identified in 1980
Haverö	1.544	AURE ureilite	fell 2 Aug. 1971
Orimattila	1.872	H4 chondrite	found 1974 (Fell 1960's?)

13 pcs	~416 kg		6 fall, 7 find

Doubtful:
Köyliö	120 pcs	micro- meteorites?	found 1960's, confirmed 1998, but recently questionized.
) Åbo is wrote as Abo in most meteorite cataloques. *) Marjalahti fell in north shore of Laatokka lake in Vyborg region. The Vyborg region was part of Grand Duchy of Finland at that time. Today the area is part of Russia. Because it fell when the are was part of Finland, I have counted it here as a Finnish meteorite. In meteorite catalogues it is counted as a Russian meteorite. +) The plus sign after the weight means that all pieces is not managed to recover. They are not found or some local peoples has took pieces. Here you can find a list of probably missed Finnish meteorites. When Luotolax, Bjurböle, Hvittis, Marjalahti and St. Michel fell and Varpaisjärvi were found Finland was Grand Duchy of Finland (part of Russia). If Åbo meteorite fell 1803, Finland was then part of Sweden.
		Distribution of Finnish meteorites Åbo Luotolax Bjurböle Hvittis Marjalahti St. Michel Varpaisjärvi Metsäkylä Valkeala Salla Haverö Orimattila Kivesvaara Red dots are falls and blue finds. Blue dots with red center are cases which has a possible observation of fall. Those are listed usually as finds.
About names of Finnish meteorites Names of Finnish meteorites has quite interesting history too. Some names are in Swedish (Luotolax, Åbo, Bjurböle, Hvittis, St.Michel and Haverö) when others are in Finnish. That is mainly because Finland was part of Russia and Finnish language was not the language which was used in official matters. It was often Swedish. So when meteorite was found or fell in some place, the meteorite was named by the Swedish name of the place, not by the Finnish name. This way of naming meteorites changed when Finland got its independence in 1917 and Finnish become official language. There is two exceptions to that: Marjalahti is a Finnish name given before 1917 and Haverö is Swedish name after 1917. Reasons are that Marjalahti doesn't have any Swedish name and Haverö doesn't have any Finnish name. In the end, four Finnish meteorites has been named by "wrong language": Luotolax should be Luotolahti, Åbo should be Turku, Hvittis should be Huittinen and St. Michel should be Mikkeli. Bjurböle doesn't have any Finnish name and that's why it and Haverö are only meteorites which has right names in Swedish. Anyway, those swedish names are official names for those meteorites and there is no need to change them. Name of the Salla is also "incorrect". It should be Salmivaara, since at that time meteorites was named in Finland mostly by post office area. Salla-meteorite was found in Salmivaara where was a post office. Somehow name Salla was incorrectly choose for the meteorite and Salla is the official name for the meteorite now. Today Finnish meteorites seems to be named after geographical location (Kivesvaara is a hill where the meteorite was found).

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