BJ Deming

Is Iceland Safe To Visit? (Part 1)

Despite appearances —

This is a long-term problem for local residents and business owners in the district — but everyone at the Blue Lagoon was gone before this lava even reached that road.

— yes.

Well, mostly safe. (This post does finish by drawing links between an old eruption and Ragnarok, but the end of the world happens so rarely that tourists need not take it into account when planning this year’s vacation. Seriously.)

You shouldn’t miss out on a great vacation or business trip because of the natural concern raised by such scenes and other Reykjanes eruption news online (even when fact-checked).

Try taking the broader perspective, looking at the whole eerily wild 40,000-square-mile country and that fascinating saga — still unfolding — of rugged people who, for generations, have lived with and sometimes in spite of their volcanoes.

“Rugged” also means knowing how to enjoy the good times, as any Viking (Icelandic, but you’ll enjoy the video) can tell you. And yes, this embedded video is a night scene — Iceland is far enough north to experience the midnight-sun phenomenon in summertime!

Iceland’s countryside is complex; also, its human history is too long and involved to be told in one post.

Nevertheless, a few geological points about Iceland and its people are especially relevant to tourism and traveling safety.

First of all (and for reasons that not even the puffins boffins fully understand), Iceland has almost every kind of volcano there is. (Thordarsson and Hoskuldsson)

This does not mean that visitors will be assaulted by every sort of eruption. (As a matter of fact, floods are the most common Icelandic volcanic hazard!)

It does mean that, on one island, you can see Hawaiian-style shield volcanoes, towering Rainier-like glacier-capped stratovolcanoes, and almost everything in between.

And pufflings. Save the pufflings! (Oddly, such efforts to help disoriented young adult bears, big cats, and cougars are not as popular.)

At the time of writing, you can also watch an ongoing eruption in Iceland up close — from the Blue Lagoon when it is open or by air (autotranslated).

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Second, even with so many active volcanoes, there have been surprisingly few confirmed casualties during eruptions down through recorded history. (Gudmundsson et al.)

Deaths from famine after the eruptions — that’s another, sadder story. But famine is unlikely to occur in modern Iceland.

Iceland is technologically advanced and internationally connected. What was subsistence living in the eighteenth century is now family tradition and quite a treat for guests at the local bed-and-breakfast.

Finally, although it takes some imagination, we can actually draw a credible link between Eldgja, Iceland’s largest known fissure eruption since settlement (Thordarsson et al., 2001), and Harry Potter, the Marvel universe, and the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien (as a hardcore Tolkien fan, I do not say that lightly).

Here is the Potter connection. I believe it’s fan fiction but a natural stone bridge did exist here until the 1990s.

Top that, Hawaii! (Not New Zealand — they’ve got a supervolcano down there!)

Flooding the most common Icelandic volcanic hazard

The long view shows an average of one small eruption occurring in Iceland every few years; a stronger VEI 3-4 Eyjafjallajokull-type blast every decade or two; and some truly impressive VEI 5-6 explosive or flood lava events once or twice a millennium (last in 1783-85). (Gudmundsson et al.; Thordarsson and Self)

No evidence for a VEI 7 or 8 event has yet been found, but in 1362 Iceland hosted Europe’s largest known plinian blast since Mount Vesuvius erupted all over residents of Pompeii and other unfortunate Romans in 79 AD. (Gudmundsson et al.)

That eruption at Oraefajokull, by the way, is the one exception to Iceland’s typically low casualty count during eruptions — thirty farms at the volcano’s feet, and some three hundred people living there, were wiped out. (Gudmundsson et al.)

Today many more Icelanders than that live and work near a dangerous volcano, but as we will see, they are volcano-savvy and better protected than ever before.

Gudmundsson et al. do express concern about the increased tourist presence on and around volcanoes, particularly at Hekla, which they say is popular with hikers but tends to awaken quickly and with a plinian-style blast.

So, be confident but do your homework when planning a visit to Iceland, including but not limited to a stop at the online Catalogue of Icelandic Volcanoes.

While in Iceland, keep up to date with info from the Icelandic Met Office (IMO).

(This is one of the countries that combine weather and volcano monitoring into one agency.)

IMO websites are in both English and Icelandic (autotranslated) and they also issue VONAs (Volcano Observatory Notice for Aviation, but there are links to general information for the public on this English-language page, too).

Since volcanologists are popular media personalities here, keep an eye out for volcano-related news, too, if you understand Icelandic or use a machine translator — official information, however, comes from IMO and various other governmental sources (see details in Bird et al.)

Yet one nagging question remains.

With all that Big Bad around, why is the volcanic hazard we’re most likely to face in Iceland a water flood?

This is not something anyone would pick up from simply doom-scrolling through the headlines but it does make sense in a land where glaciers cover so many volcanoes.

However thick it might be, that ice melts fast when in contact with lava or dusted with a coating of fresh, hot volcanic ash.

Another way to produce floods is by heating an iced-up volcano — it doesn’t even have to erupt in order to produce a subglacial lake that can suddenly drain without warning.

It’s terrifying, even for relatively small glacial outburst floods like this one (at Eyjafjallajokull in 2010). Eyjaf’s big neighbor Katla has HUGE outburst floods! While land is valuable on any island, Icelanders do not live on the flats that such events leave behind.

According to Gudmundsson et al., these awful floods — known by the melodious name of jokulhlaup — occur most often in south central Iceland, at Myrdalsjokull (the glacier capping Katla) and Vatnajokull (second largest Eurasian glacier and capping several volcanoes, including the famous Grimsvotn and Bardarbunga calderas as well as deadly Oraefajokull, source of that 1362 plinian blast).

Lowlands east of Katla and southeast of Vatnajokull (and frequent offender Grimsvotn) are areas that have been most heavily affected by jokulhlaups down through time. (Gudmundsson et al.)

Roads and power lines must cross the glacial outwash plains, and as this video (Icelandic) of a Grimsvotn jokulhlaup shows —

— maintaining infrastructure there can be a challenge.

Iceland is a world leader in monitoring and predicting jokulhlaups and it is unlikely that informed tourists will be caught in one, although like everyone else we might be inconvenienced if an outburst flood washes away roads and other key infrastructure.

Floods of lava

The reason why the names of those glacially capped volcanoes sound familiar has to do with the fact that Iceland’s hotspot seems to be centered underneath the planetary crust that Vatnajokull sits on. (Allen et al.; Einarsson, 2008)

That’s why Grimsvotn, Bardarbunga, and nearby Katla erupt frequently and so have been in the news a lot.

What you might not know is that, as a result of the hotspot-caused excessive crustal melting, some of Iceland’s largest eruptions since the last ice age have happened here, particularly along the fissure systems that are associated with each central volcano (jargon alert). (Allen et al.; Oppenheimer; Thordarsson and Hoskuldsson; Thordarsson et al., 2001)

These include:

  • Thorjsa, about 8,600 years ago (Bardarbunga/Veidivotn fissures) — flood lava.
  • Eldgja, 930s AD (Katla/Eldgja fissures) — flood lava.
  • Oraefajokull, 1362 — plinian explosive eruption.
  • Laki, 1783-85 (Grimsvotn/Laki fissures) — flood lava.

Thjorsa, Eldgja, and Laki are world record holders for largest historical basalt eruptions (Steingrimsson and Saemundsson) but only because there is no other competition for that title.

Millions of years typically pass in between continental flood basalts — eruptions that absolutely dwarf Iceland’s biggies in both volume and area covered.

For example, it has been 15 million years since the last one happened, in the Pacific Northwest, and nothing new seems to be pending at the moment.

In Iceland, however, and only in Iceland, lava floods occur just several hundreds or thousands of years apart. (Thordarsson and Larsen)

Thankfully, the only flood basalts to occur during human history are much smaller than the continental type.

Nonetheless, they’re rough on the human neighbors — though only for the two most recent flood lava eruptions.

Iceland was uninhabited when Thjorsa, the largest one, cut loose.

Our focus continues to be on Iceland’s people and on tourism, so let’s just look at Eldgja and Laki in the rest of this post series.

Yes, they were hard on past generations, but Laki is the best documented Icelandic eruption before the twentieth century, giving modern volcanologists plenty of data for their “worst-case scenario” and emergency planning models. (Thordarsson; Witze)

Laki also serves as what Witze calls “a historical springboard” in studies of human resiliency during and after major natural disasters.

On a more fun note, both Eldgja and Laki created beautiful scenery and are popular attractions today.

They seem to draw the two main types of tourists in Iceland:

  1. Eldgja: Rugged adventurers (sort of: you can drive there but Eldgja reportedly is not easy to reach).

    Here is that Harry Potter waterfall Ofaerufoss (“The Impassable Waterfall”), which now flows over the edge of a lobe in what was one of the three main Eldgja flow fields (and not the biggest field, either!)

    The next video is in Dutch, and it focuses on the young men but does give us a ground-level view of the falls and their surroundings; these adventurers are having lots of fun; and they swing the camera around enough to show the scale of this huge eastern Eldgja flow:

    As scary as eruption videos can be, and horrifying as it must have been to experience a lava flood eruption, at such times we also are privileged to get a glimpse of Iceland’s building blocks in action, although centuries must pass before that basalt hardens and weathers into spectacular scenery like this.

  2. Laki: Sightseers. You can take a bus to Laki and back but be sure to book ahead.

    Save the dress clothes for Reykjavik and focus on warmth and comfort. (I hope the English captions for this interview with Laki landwarden Kari Kristjansson come through; if not, the transcript at YouTube is in English.)

Laki, being more recent, ties in more with the volcano monitoring practices that are described in Part 2, so let’s close this post with a look at —

Eldgja, the sagas, and modern myth making

The geological record shows that Eldgja was, to get technical for a moment, a doozy of an eruption, not quite as voluminous as Thjorsa but larger than Laki would be eight centuries later.

If we take the traditional date of 874 AD for the arrival of Ingolfr Arnarson and his group of well-to-do but disgruntled Vikings who were aggravated enough with Norway’s King Harald I to move out and take their chances on “Thule” or whatever Iceland was called back then —

These folks, although the monument erected to them by grateful descendants doesn’t include the livestock, household members, servants, and supplies those Vikings brought along to last everyone, human and beast, for at least the six-day sea journey. (Image: Oxanaso/Shutterstock)

— and if we accept the dating for Eldgja’s eruption that Oppenheimer et al. suggest, i.e., Spring 939 AD, then the settlement of Iceland had been underway for more than sixty years when explosions and ash first blasted through the ice on Katla’s summit and a sequence of at least sixteen plinian explosive eruptions, interspersed with intense lava flows and fountaining, then occurred as the ground split open between the Myrdalsjokull and Vatnajokull glaciers, becoming what is today a 45-mile-long line of fissures that almost reaches Vatnajokull. (Moreland; Oppenheimer et al.; Thordarsson et al., 2001)

Indeed, Thordarsson et al. (2001) find evidence of two different kinds of magma that might mean that Grimsvotn crashed the Katla/Eldgja party.

Enormous quantities of lava filled what was then a valley in Iceland’s south central highlands and poured down to the sea following three river valleys.

You’d think that someone in the settlements might have noticed.

But there is no contemporary record of the Eldgja eruption and what must have been an existential crisis for everyone on the island.

Trouble is, this all happened during the Saga Age — the early centuries of history that Icelandic sagas would describe in writing two centuries later.

The 900s were a different time. Survivors of a Norsemen raid might not believe it, but at home, Vikings were generally farmers and traders; they accepted the rule of law — but those laws were recited periodically to the chieftains, not written down.

What is less understandable is the lack of any direct reference to Eldgja in the early sagas, written within two or three generations from those who lived through the catastrophe.

I’ve come across two explanations for this in research papers:

  1. The first written histories include descriptions of the aftermath, with mention of settlers forced off their holdings, especially in the Alftaver and Sida districts — both of which are still in existence — and the Skafta River being forced into a new channel (something that would happen again when Laki’s flood lava flows came through in 1783). (Moreland; Oppenheimer et al., 2018; Thordarsson et al., 2001
  2. Icelanders possibly did describe it — poetically in the Voluspa Edda. (Oppenheimer et al.)

Oppenheimer et al. don’t insist on point #2; they just mention it as a possibility.

But it is sensational and you have been a very patient reader to get this far and deserve some fun at the end of Part 1.

Hold onto your hat — we’re heading into Marvel Land and Middle-Earth, and both fall short of the real Icelandic imagination and lore!

The Voluspa and Modern Myth-making

Simple fact: The Voluspa is the most famous poem in the Icelandic Edda (though if you are like me, you never heard of it until now).

Wowser: Oppenheimer et al. suspect that this part of the lengthy poem might be drawing on listeners’ memories of Eldga (in it are just a few of the items in Voluspa that you may have encountered in a Marvel production):

45. …The earth resounds, the giantesses flee; no man will another spare.

46. Hard is it in the world, great whoredom, an axe age, a sword age, shields shall be cloven, a wind age, a wolf age, ere the world sinks.

47. Mim’s sons dance, but the central tree takes fire at the resounding Giallar-horn. Loud blows Heimdall, his horn is raised; Odin speaks with Mim’s head.

48. Trembles Yggdrasil’s ash yet standing; groans [Pg 7]that aged tree, and the jötun is loosed. Loud bays Garm before the Gnupa-cave, his bonds he rends asunder; and the wolf runs.

49. Hrym steers from the east, the waters rise, the mundane snake is coiled in jötun-rage. The worm beats the water, and the eagle screams: the pale of beak tears carcases; Naglfar is loosed.

50. That ship fares from the east: come will Muspell’s people o’er the sea, and Loki steers. The monster’s kin goes all with the wolf; with them the brother is of Byleist on their course.

51. Surt from the south comes with flickering flame…

Surt is a fire god and the young Icelandic volcano Surtsey was named in his honor.

In my imagination I can make this whole excerpt an account of a major eruption — the precursory earthquakes and loud sounds coming from the ground (those are prominent in eyewitness accounts of the 1783 Laki flood lava eruption, too); the suddeness of “rending asunder” the ground with those first powerful lava releases.

This — but subplinian to plinian, raising a column miles into the air and perhaps even forming a mushroom cloud. Multiple times. That fits eyewitness description of Laki, and Eldgja in the 930s was even larger in volume.

The water could be from jokulhlaups — this is Katla, so it might seem like seas; there could also have been tsunamis from eruption products hitting the ocean.

Those weird side references could be symbolic of now long forgotten clans — wolves, eagles, and snakes, for instance — and mythical holy references might refer to supernatural beings worshipped in various locales that Eldgja destroyed.

And it’s not difficult to see in this excerpt the expected social disintegration in the face of such a disaster.

If I had survived that horror, I would want to forget it — yet it would haunt my dreams…

Ah, imagination is a wonderful thing but, until time travel comes along, we’ll never know for sure if Eldgja really did inspire this description of Ragnarok.

For Marvel fans, other terms in the poem’s glossary will be familiar.

Sharp-eyed Tolkien readers have already spotted “Mim,” but check out the list of names starting at verse 10!

In the Voluspa they all are dwarves but J. R. R. Tolkien put more variety into the characters — including Gandalf — that he christened with those borrowed names!

To sum up briefly, is Iceland safe to visit?

The puffins think so:

The human residents think so, too, although the town shown is the one where Icelanders successfully stopped a lava flow by pouring seawater on it several decades ago AND the majestic ice-capped mountain seen at the end of this video is Oraefajokull.

What do you think?

(Coming in Part 2: Laki and volcano science in Iceland; the positive impacts of eruptions in 2010 and 2014-15; and a brief review of Reyljanes Peninsula volcanism from 2019 to the present.)

If you enjoyed the writing in this post, tips are welcome via the secure Stripe donation link. I won’t be saving your email for marketing or other spam, so here’s a big thank you in advance!

Featured image: Believe it or note, unaltered screenshot of the live view through mbl.is’s Hagafell cam a little before 0200 on June 13, 2024.

Sources:

The source list in previous two posts plus:

Buck, W. R.; Einarsson, P.; and Brandsdóttir, B. 2006. Tectonic stress and magma chamber size as controls on dike propagation: Constraints from the 1975–1984 Krafla rifting episode. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 111(B12).

Gudmundsson, M. T.; Larsen, G.; Höskuldsson, Á.; and Gylfason, Á. G.
2008. Volcanic hazards in Iceland. Jökull, 58: 251-268.

Hartley, M. E.; Morgan, D. J.; Maclennan, J.; Edmonds, M.; and Thordarson, T. 2016. Tracking timescales of short-term precursors to large basaltic fissure eruptions through Fe–Mg diffusion in olivine. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 439: 58-70.

Larsen, G. 1984. Recent volcanic history of the Veidivötn fissure swarm, southern Iceland—an approach to volcanic risk assessment. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 22(1-2): 33-58.

Larsen, G., and Gudmundsson, M. T. 2014. Volcanic system: Bárðarbunga system. Catalogue of Icelandic Volcanoes, 1-11.

Moreland, W. 2017. Explosive activity in flood lava eruptions: a case study of the 10th century Eldgjá eruption, Iceland. Ph.D. thesis, University of Iceland. https://opinvisindi.is/bitstream/handle/20.500.11815/324/PhD%20Thesis_v10-5.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1

Oppenheimer, C. 2011. Eruptions That Shook the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=qW1UNwhuhnUC

Oppenheimer, C.; Orchard, A.; Stoffel, M.; Newfield, T. P.; and others. 2018. The Eldgjá eruption: timing, long-range impacts and influence on the Christianisation of Iceland. Climatic Change, 147: 369-381.

Thordarson, T. 2003. The 1783–1785 AD Laki-Grímsvötn eruptions I: A critical look at the contemporary chronicles. Jökull, 53: 1-10.

Thordarson, T.; Miller, D. J.; Larsen, G.; Self, S.; and Sigurdsson, H. 2001. New estimates of sulfur degassing and atmospheric mass-loading by the 934 AD Eldgjá eruption, Iceland. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 108(1-4): 33-54.

Thordarson, T.; Larsen, G.; Steinthorsson, S.; and Self, S. 2003. The 1783–1785 AD Laki-Grímsvötn eruptions II: Appraisal based on contemporary accounts. Jökull, 53: 11-47.

Thordarson, T.; Self, S.; Miller, D. J.; and others. 2003. Sulphur release from flood lava eruptions in the Veidivötn, Grímsvötn and Katla volcanic systems, Iceland.

Click to access Sulphur-Release-from-Holocene-Basalt-Eruptions-in-the-East-Volcanic-Zone-Iceland.pdf

Witze, A. 2015. Island on Fire.https://hazards.colorado.edu/article/island-on-fire-societal-lessons-from-iceland-s-volcanoes

Zjilstra, A. 2016. The Eldgja eruption: Iceland’s baptism by fire. https://www.volcanocafe.org/the-eldgja-eruption-icelands-baptism-by-fire/

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