Iceland. The land of ice and fire. It’s a pretty awesome slogan. It is also a very, very accurate statement! A vast amount of the interior of the island (with little to no inhabitants) is covered by glaciers. And some of those glaciers cover volcanoes. Which is rather illogical to my geologically uneducated brain. I acknowledge this and move on.
Every so often Iceland needs to let off some of its built up – not steam, it steams all the time – but its “bad humours” (as the medieval medical establishment used to say). It needs to spew lava. As I have mentioned previously, there are 31 active volcanoes on that island. For whatever reason none of these existing volcanoes was an acceptable location for the current release of magma pressure. On 19 March a fissure opened up in the ground near the Fagradalsfjall mountain on the Reykjanes Peninsula, which is just across the bay (sort of a bay) from Reykjavik.
The original fissure has stopped erupting and there have been four additional fissures with mounds pushed up out of the earth. Geologists in Iceland have jokingly called this a Tourism Eruption as it is not near any towns, nor is it threatening anything. It’s out in the middle of nowhere, happily erupting and helping to draw people to come to Iceland. It’s also in an area where it is a relatively easy hike to get to (although it is about an hour each way). As soon as we arrived in Iceland we were being asked if we were going to go see the eruption! Of course we wanted to see it…
There were a few options to get to the volcano: hike in and hope for the best (after renting a car to get out there), pay quite a bit of money to join a guided hike (and still needing to rent a car to get out there) – both of these had a significant drawback: the volcano sometimes creates so much poisonous gas in the area that hiking in is banned on certain days. The other main option was to take a helicopter out to the area. Oh Lordy, that was not high on my list of things to do. The idea of it was fabulous – I love the idea of riding in a helicopter! The reality of it is that I battle motion sickness. But I REALLY wanted to see this volcano! Deep breath. I can do this.
The day of our trip arrived. It had been gloriously sunny all week. Except that day. We arrived at Reykjavik City Airport to meet our pilot Mattias. He told us the weather was bad out on the peninsula but with the changeable weather in Iceland maybe it would clear up by the time we got there. We were briefed on what to expect, buckled into our seats, headphones on (I now know why headphones are important) and off we went. Did you know helicopters actually use the runway for takeoff and landing? It was pretty cool! which I tried to focus on instead of thinking that we were having a lot of faith in this little contraption! We got about five minutes away from the volcano (which we could not see at all!) before our pilot set us down in a field to wait a few minutes to see if the weather would clear.
We gave it about fifteen minutes before giving up and heading back to Reykjavik. Mattias said we could try again and that he would let us know when he had another open time. Since we spend the afternoon/evenings working we were concerned that there wouldn’t be another time that could work for us, but just a couple of days later he asked if we could come later that evening – at 9:30. This being Iceland in late spring meant it was still fully daylight at that time and it was a beautiful evening to boot.
I’ll stop blabbing and just show the photos now…
The next few are from up in the air –
An amazing, incredible, awe inspiring experience that was worth every penny we spent. A once in a lifetime experience.