Iceland blows its top. Again.
Iceland blew its top last week. And then it calmed down. This was the third eruption on the Reykjanes Peninsula in the last three years. It was the most spectacular – and the briefest – to date. The volcano erupted on the evening of 18th December. Rather than a classic conical volcano, this eruption site is a four-kilometre-long fissure which threw a wall of fire into the air and spewed lava over the mountainside. Within twenty-four hours the ferocity of the eruption had diminished and it was declared over after only three days. The first eruption, at nearby Fagradalsfjall , lasted months. photo AFP/Viken Kantarci Grindavík The site is only three kilometres from Grindavík – see photo above. The fissure actually stretches under the centre of the town and for a couple of days in early November, it looked as if Grindavík itself might erupt. That doesn’t mean lava flowing down onto the town like it did at Herculaneum, say, but rather lava bursting up from beneath the streets and ho