Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.07.2013, Blaðsíða 14

On January 23, 1973, a volcanic
eruption started on Heimaey, the
only inhabited island of the Vest-
mannaeyjar archipelago off the
south coast of Iceland. The 5,300
islanders were rudely awoken
when a 2km long fissure opened
up at the eastern edge of the town,
just 200 metres away from the
nearest houses. A fleet of boats
and airplanes managed to evacu-
ate the island in only a matter of
hours, leaving only a group of men
who took on the task of trying to
save whatever could be saved.
Crews of volunteers worked
hard the following weeks, shovel-
ling ash and pumice from rooftops,
putting out fires and sheltering
houses from falling tephra to save
at least some of the properties.
They managed to save the harbour
and some houses by dousing the
lava flow with seawater, steering
the direction of the lava flow. Of
1,345 houses, 400 were destroyed
during the eruption and another
400 were damaged. On June 26 the
same year, the eruption died down
and was officially declared over on
July 3. Many of the islanders slow-
ly returned to clear up the town
and rebuild it while others never
returned.
Every year on the island, the
inhabitants of Heimaey—around
4,000 today—and those who relo-
cated to the mainland, celebrate
the end of the eruption with a fes-
tival the first weekend of July. This
year, on the 40th anniversary of the
eruption, a new documentary, ‘My
Unfamiliar Home—Accepting the
Volcano,’ will be screened at the
festival. It will air on RÚV (channel
one) on July 7 and will be out on
DVD in English later this year.
lived his whole life in the eastern part of the town and
had just built a new house for his wife and young daugh-
ter when the eruption started. Their house went under
the lava in less than a week and Kristinn never returned
to live in Vestmannaeyjar, because he didn’t feel as if it
was his home anymore; everything that was familiar to
him had been covered with lava. A scene in which Kris-
tinn reads an excerpt from his diary always brings a tear
to Jóhanna’s eye. “That’s what surprised me the most,
all this hidden heartache, especially amongst those who
never moved back to Vestmannaeyjar,” she says.
To Jóhanna’s surprise, some of the people she’d
known for years and considered “toughies” got teary-
eyed when they talked about the eruption, though they
tried to hide it. “We’re not used to getting emotional or
talking about our feelings,” she says, echoing what the
elderly characters in the film said. In those days, people
just didn’t talk about the shock or the strain of the catas-
trophe, focusing only on the good things.
One delicate matter which Jóhanna and Sighvatur
shed a light on in the film is the death at the pharmacy,
the only casualty during the eruption. Miraculously, ev-
eryone was saved on the night that the eruption started
but weeks later, when volunteers were allowed on the is-
land to save what could be saved, a young man died from
poisonous gas when he attempted to steal prescription
drugs from the town’s pharmacy.
“There was very little talk of that, probably because he
wasn’t born and bred in Vestmannaeyjar and because his
death wasn’t heroic,” Jóhanna says pensively, adding that
she’s already been criticised by some locals for giving his
story such weight in the film. “But he was a real person
and had a loving family who was eager to tell his story. He
had lived there for 14 years and loved Vestmannaeyjar. So
we finally put a name and a face to that one casualty that
people have avoided talking about for so long.”
There are other angles in the film that also haven’t
been covered much before. As a mother of three now,
Jóhanna says she became more interested in what effect
the cataclysm had on the children, and what it must have
been like being a parent on the run from a volcano, fami-
lies living like refugees on the mainland.
“Many of the children never adapted to their new cir-
cumstances on the mainland. Some of the people I inter-
viewed told me, even though they didn’t want to say it on
camera, that they had in fact been taunted,” Jóhanna says.
The children often felt out of place and longed for their
home, their playground and their friends. In the film, one
woman describes how her young son was constantly re-
minded by his new schoolmates how he had lost all his
toys, all his things, his home. Eventually he refused to at-
tend the new school and only became his usual self again
when they finally moved back to the island.
That’s not to say that people weren’t concerned about the
children. The Norwegian Red Cross invited the kids from
Vestmannaeyjar to Norway in the summer of 1973. More
than 900 children went and stayed in summer camps or
in people’s homes. “For some, this trip was a fairy tale
and they have happy memories from that time, still talking
about the trees they climbed in Norway,” Jóhanna says and
chuckles at the fact that it was possibly the first time they
saw actual trees. For others, the stay in Norway was not as
pleasant and in the film. Jóhanna talks to a psychologist
who states that as much as it was a beautiful gesture, ship-
ping all the children away from their families during such
a trauma would never be done today. However, in 1973
this was the only effort specifically aimed at easing the
children’s’ minds.
Jóhanna says that it wasn’t hard to get people to open
up and talk about the negative aspects of the eruption.
“The strange thing is, they were rather surprised that
anyone would be interested in hearing about them,” she
says. “We were not trying to psychoanalyze anyone, but
we think it’s time to tell the whole story. Not talking about
something as huge as this, for forty years, is not healthy.”
Forty Years
Since The
Eruption In
Vestmanna-
eyjar
But every now and
again, something
would strike you as
odd, like the time I
was a little girl, walk-
ing with my mother
past the area where
Blátindur stood and
her saying “Some-
where there under-
neath lies my wedding
band” as she pointed
at the lava field.
“
„
Continues from previous page
Jóhanna Ýr Jónsdóttir
Sigmar Pálmason
Óskar Pétur
Filmmakers Jóhanna Ýr Jónsdóttir
and Sighvatur Jónssdon
14The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 9 — 2013