The Prettiest Volcano

-
Fagradalfjall volcano photo by Lee-Anne Fox


During 2021, Reykjavik was entertained by a small, pretty volcano at Fagradalsfjall, between the capital and Keflavík international airport. It tossed fire safely into the sky like an overgrown firework, grew a new little mountain and spilled black spongeous lava down a mountainside (see photo above taken by Lee-Anne Fox).

It should have been tourist gold, but COVID-related lockdowns made it difficult to reach. I managed to get there in June of 2021. At that stage, the eruption had calmed down, and sadly the day I visited, the new volcano was covered in cloud. I did manage to hike to the foot of the lava flow: black foamy rock in the process of freezing, with red glowing through its cracks, and sulphurous smoke leaking out.

Lava at Fagradalsfjall photo by Michael Ridpath author of the Magnus Iceland Mysteries


The volcano took a little nap and then reawakened in August 2022 at the nearby Meradalir. Once again, Icelanders and hardy tourists were entertained by spumes of bright red lava. This time, it was a five-hour round-trip hike from the road to see the eruption. 

It's a difficult hike and many tourists kept the search and rescue teams busy with their poor choice of clothing and footwear. Also, they had to be told not to walk on the lava, on account of the chance of a fiery, excruciating death. Somehow nobody died, but the Icelanders’ suspicion of the woeful lack of intelligence of the rest of the world's tourists was only confirmed.

After a couple of grumpy weeks, the volcano has now fallen asleep again, whether for months or for centuries, no one knows.

Valur Grettisson of the Reykjavík Grapevine did some excellent reporting from the eruptions in his Reykjavík Grapevine newscasts. He gets a little overexcited in this episode right after the eruption of the second volcano.

While researching a forthcoming book about Iceland during the Second World War, I came across an interesting fact about Fagradalsfjall. Apparently, in May 1943, a US Air Force Liberator called Hot Stuff, which had completed 25 missions bombing in Europe, was returning to America with General Andrews on board when it crashed into Fagradalsfjall in bad weather, with the loss of everyone on board. Andrews was one of the USAF’s most important generals – it is he whom Andrews Air Force Base near Washington is named after.

I've seen the lava, but I have yet to witness an actual volcanic eruption myself.  I am sure Iceland will oblige before long.

Would you like to receive an email of these blog posts every time they are published?  Sign up here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Icelandic Crime Writers: a Wave of Fictional Murders Overwhelms a Small Peaceful Country

-
Image
When I started writing crime novels in Iceland, I assumed I would have the country entirely to myself. Idiot. It turns out that plenty of Icelandic writers were thinking the same thing at the same time. There are now an extraordinarily high number of extremely good crime writers in Iceland; why this is so would make a good subject for another blog post. Here is a brief survey of them, starting with the big four who have been published widely abroad, and have reached bestseller lists all over the world. A caveat. I haven’t read all of the books of all of these authors. And I am friends with a number of them. Arnaldur Indridason Arnaldur’s detective, Erlendur, is a policeman of the old school. He yearns for the farm of his childhood in the east of Iceland and he enjoys a sheep’s head for lunch. Arnaldur’s books examine the conflict between the old and the new in Iceland’s society, as well as solving some fascinating crimes. Silence of the Grave , about the discovery of bones dating
Read more

My Icelandic Crime Novels: How are They Different?

-
Image
  In my last blog post , I gave you a brief survey of the amazing crime writers working in Iceland at the moment. Where do my own books fit into this crowded field? Well, they are different. Right from the beginning, with my first novel, Where The Shadows Lie , I wanted to deal with how Iceland connected to the rest of the world, to examine issues that affect the globe beyond Iceland. This was partly because I thought this was a good approach to take, but mostly because that’s the way I have always written my books. My financial thrillers were about the international tribe that beavers away in international finance. The characters came from many different countries, and the novels were rarely stuck in one setting. I have never yet written an entire book set in England. This simply reflects my own dreams from an early age. I was brought up in a tiny village in Yorkshire. I wanted to escape to see the world. I had an uncle who was a naturalist in the bush in northern Australia, and
Read more

Snow in Iceland

-
Image
  The weather in Iceland is terrible. But then it changes. A perfect example of this was my research trip to Saudárkrókur in northern Iceland in November 2016. It was snowing hard in Reykjavík. I only had four days to get to Saudárkrókur and back, a distance of about three hundred kilometres there and three hundred kilometres back, and I was worried. According to the government website , road travel was not recommended. You don’t argue with Icelanders on the subject of snow: if they say it’s too bad to drive, it’s too bad to drive. I lost a day, spent in the snow in Reykjavík. The following morning, at about 10 a.m., the website advice changed to a go. So I went. The first hundred kilometres along the Ring Road were fine. I passed the windy headland by Borgarnes successfully, and drove north through the snow.  Then the road climbed to the notorious Holtavörduheidi, the highlands between the west and the north of Iceland. People lost their way and died trying
Read more