Every time there’s an eruption in Iceland, I feel a compulsion to write about it, to tell you what’s really going on. I’m not a volcanologist, a geologist, a science writer or in any way qualified to do this but I love Iceland and I know the area as well as any casual tourist who’s been there.. *ahem* sixteen times. This is the tenth eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula since March 2021, a flurry of activity that I’ve seen called the Reykjanes Fires (although not yet used officially, I don’t think).
First, there’s no “volcano”, not as you might be picturing it. It’s not a cone-shaped thing with lava running in picturesque streaks down its black slopes. It’s a fissure eruption, as the previous nine have been. The ground has simply split open under the pressure of magma building up underneath. A fissure eruption that goes on long enough will eventually build a classical cone-shaped volcano. The 2021 Geldingadalur eruption built two small cones, 2022’s Meradalir built a tiny baby one (I went to see that one myself!) and the subsequent ones will have built various small things. But it takes a while to build a proper volcano. In 1973, a fissure eruption on Heimaey, an island a mile wide and six miles long off the south coast of Iceland, built a newborn volcano that stood at 200m by the end of the six-month eruption. The longest eruption on Reykjanes since 2021 has been 183 days, about six months, for the very first one but most of the subsequent eruptions have limited themselves to a single month, with three of them limiting themselves to under 48 hours.
Second, there’s no fear of this eruption disrupting the airport or even getting anywhere near it. Even the first eruption, which was the longest and produced the most lava – 151 million cubic metres of the stuff – couldn’t get near the airport. If today’s eruption lasted as long as that and produced as much lava as that, it still wouldn’t get near the airport. It would need to be ten times the size for the airport to even see the lava on the horizon. Of course, Reykjanes being as volatile as it is, you can never rule out a new eruption happening closer to, or even at, the airport but currently, there’s no danger. The airport is 14km from the current eruptive area.
No, the main danger at the moment is the Blue Lagoon. There was fear for the hot water pipeline but that appears to be merrily piping hot water around despite now being under the lava. The road running north-south across the peninsula from the 41, the main road between the airport and the capital, and the road that runs along the southern coast of Reykjanes, has been destroyed but Iceland is accustomed to that and will have it rebuilt by bedtime. There’s a lovely quote somewhere from someone who is audibly shrugging his shoulders at the thought of it. Been there, done that.
Of course, the power station is in danger and that’s the priority but as far as I can tell from the news, no one’s particularly worried about that. They’ve had nearly a year to build protective walls and get used to lava in the area. “The eruptions have increasingly tested mitigation measures, such as lava cooling, employed to protect Svartsengi power facilities, but residents and authorities have become adept at handling eruptions,” says RUV English. The lava has taken out the power line between the power station and Grindavik, at the southern end of the road, but as Grindavik was evacuated last night – again – there’s no one around to worry too much about the lack of electricity right now.
However, a tongue of the lava flow has managed to get into the Blue Lagoon’s car park and has eaten about two-thirds of it. Iceland will move heaven and earth – literally – to protect the Blue Lagoon. That’s the country’s biggest asset. Quite apart from the money it generates, it’s the very reason tourists come to Iceland in the first place. No Blue Lagoon, no tourists. No tourists, no tourism economy. The fact that there are nine other luxurious geothermal spas will mean nothing. So Iceland simply cannot afford to lose the Blue Lagoon. Fortunately, most of the lagoon itself is behind the defensive walls, there are diggers in the car park right now building up barricades and Iceland has a history of fighting volcanoes and winning. I mentioned the 1973 Heimaey eruption. Back then, fishing was Iceland’s biggest industry and Heimaey’s port the biggest and most valuable in the country. Letting the lava flow seal it off simply wasn’t an option, so they fitted together hoses and used the abundant cold sea water to freeze the lava. It’s not a magic finger but cooling the lava slows the flow, which makes it a little bit easier to control. They’re already using that sort of thing to protect the power station and it’s unfathomable that they’ll let anything happen to the Blue Lagoon if they can possibly help it. I’m going to Iceland in just over three weeks. Judging by the past history of the 2023-24 eruptions, it’ll be long finished by the time I get there but I think I might have to do another Blue Lagoon trip just to see what’s happened around it.
I think when people hear “volcano in Iceland!”, especially in newspapers that love a melodramatic headline, they picture something like the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption. That was a relatively small eruption but it happened under a glacier. Fire meeting that amount of ice is hugely explosive and glacial ice, for some reason, turns into a glass-like ash under those particular circumstances. The Reykjanes eruptions aren’t like that. Eyjafjallajökull is a stratovolcano, a steep-sided volcanic cone made up of many layers of relatively thick lava that doesn’t run easily away. It’s a lot more like the kind you drew when you were seven. Reykjanes eruptions are like a paper cut in the planet, the lava running away like blood. There’s enough pressure to tear the Earth open but it’s not enough to explode, and the nature of the lava is different – runny vs sticky. Last, there’s no ice. You simply can’t compare Eyjafjallajökull to Reykjanes. They’re eruptions of an extremely different nature.
I started this by referring the the Reykjanes Fires. Iceland is a volcanic island formed by eruptions. When you picture the Reykjanes peninsula being formed in the first place, you picture thousands of massive volcanoes pouring fire out simultaneously over a dinosaur-like fern-and-forest-and-swamp Jurassic paradise. Well, Iceland is far too young for that. The last dinosaur had been dead for fifty million years before the first Icelandic rock ever emerged from the ocean. And it formed exactly like this, in flurries of activity that stopped and started and just gradually built up. Back in the 1720s, there was something a lot like this happening in the north-east of Iceland, called the Mývatn Fires, and then another round in almost exactly the same place between 1975 and 1984 which was called the Krafla Fires. It’s just a name Iceland uses for a period of increased activity. This one could go on for a decade or a century or it could all come to an end tomorrow. Actually, the name Reykjanes Fires has been taken, by an eruptive period in the first half of the thirteenth century but it’s still a good name.