About 18 kilometres northeast of Kuressaare, near the village of Kaali, a meteorite struck Saaremaa roughly three thousand years ago and left a cluster of craters. The main crater is 110 metres across and 22 metres deep; it has since filled with groundwater to form a small lake, ringed by trees and surrounded by the smaller satellite craters that pock the surrounding pasture. A low stone wall marks the rim.
The site includes a small exhibition centre explaining the impact and its archaeological context — Bronze Age tools and animal bones found in the crater suggest it was a site of ritual significance for millennia after the event. It is easy to underestimate the scale of the impact standing at the rim; the crater looks almost genteel in its pastoral setting. It becomes more striking when you understand that witnesses to the strike would have been within living memory of the first permanent human settlements on the island.