Reykjavík Grapevine - apr. 2021, Blaðsíða 23

23The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 04— 2021
We really don’t stand a chance, do we?
With calm surrender to my fate, these
were the words that entered my mind
as the helicopter steadily emerged over
a ridge on the Reykjanes peninsula. In
front of me—of us—the pudgy black
tephra of the Geldingadalur eruption
site unceremoniously materialised
surrounded by a bed of fresh snow,
which we were now landing on. In the
centre of the flow, rising ominously
like the spires of a cathedral, lied the
craggy cone, which—as fate would have
it—was in the midst of vomiting up a
violent gush of bright, neon lava. Flying
high in the air, the lava then landed,
spilling out the sides of the cone and
settling down into the basalt until it
cooled and, ultimately, slowly assimi-
lated with the days- or hours-old rock.
At the moment, I couldn’t put my
finger on what I felt. It was something
that I had never experienced before.
Something that truly hit me, that
truly troubled me. But now, days after
my flight with Nor!urflug Helicopter
Tours to the baby volcano, I know what
it was:
Awe.
The limits of life
The maximum body temperature a hu-
man being can survive is around 44°C.
After that, proteins denature and the
brain, essentially, cooks. Lava, mean-
while, varies between 700º to 1,200°C.
It’s outside the realm of our existence
and, despite having concocted vari-
ous inventions—kevlar and such—to
handle it, it’s up there with gamma rays
and prions. It’s death.
Gamma rays and prions, though,
can’t be seen by the naked eye. Lava,
meanwhile, is like a peacock. Stand in
front of an erupting volcano and you
can’t help but gape at the shining or-
ange sludge. It’s mesmerising, calling
out intrinsically to the depths of the
human soul much like the songs of the
sirens. The French call it l’appel du vide
or the call of the void—man’s innate
fascination with that which would de-
stroy us—but perhaps, it’s time to re-
name it l’appel du volcan.
Because, as the helicopter slowly cir-
cumvented the volcano, Geldingadalur
called out to me. In my head, I saw my
foot reaching out to softly poke the pil-
lowy lava or putting my hand into the
cloud of ash just to see what it felt like.
And so I watched, buckled comfortably
into my seat, as the smoke poured out
of the volcano, casting a shadow over
the pristine snow. It was Plato’s cave
realised—and like those poor inmates,
I couldn’t look away.
Watching from afar
Softly, we landed at the volcano for a
prompt 15 minutes, which gave us a
chance to admire its beauty from atop
the surrounding hills. Opposite us,
hikers marched like ants; some keeping
their distance while others ventured
bravely just metres from the destruc-
tion. I, perhaps in a stroke of good for-
tune, was relieved of the choice to go
close—we were too high to walk down
and back in 15 minutes. I, therefore,
didn’t even have to consider whether I
would heed the call of Geldingadalur or
ignore it. I could, like those cave-dwell-
ers, merely watch from afar.
The creation of the watch
If you look at the Earth on the geologic
timescale, volcanoes are commonplace.
Iceland, in particular, would probably
resemble a pot of boiling water. But for
us humans, who exist for but decades
on this speck of blue dust, a volcano
is a wonder. And a volcano that you
can safely stand but a skip away from
and watch it erupt—that’s an anomaly.
That’s serendipity.
The Watchmaker thought experi-
ment, popularised by philosophers like
Descartes, puts forward the notion that
physical laws work so perfectly, like a
watch, that they must imply the exis-
tence of a designer—a watchmaker.
And it’s hard not to think of some sort
of greater order, purpose or reason
when you watch a volcano. We live so
far from the cruelty of nature that see-
ing it naked in all its terror inevitably
inspires some sort of existential night-
mare. A falling drop of lava is the result
of a geological domino effect that’s oc-
curred for millions, if not billions, of
years on our planet. And a falling drop
of lava in an accessible, picturesque
location like Geldingadalur—that’s a
watch.
But the watchmaker here is ethereal.
It’s nature as a whole, which—in its ter-
ror, in its death—is also perfection. A
perfect nightmare. For while volcanoes
spell death for humans, for the earth,
they herald rebirth. Old crust becomes
new, having undergone aeons in the
depths of the mantle reforming to once
again rise to the surface and say hello
to the sun.
So no, in the face of lava, we don’t
stand a chance. But that doesn’t mean
we can’t sit, watch, and marvel over the
shadows it coughs out into the sky.
Words:
Hannah Jane
Cohen
Photos:
Art Bicnick
Tour provided
by Nor!urflug
Helicopter Tours.
Check them out
at helicopter.is.
The Culmination Of
Aeons Of Serendipity
Flyin" to Geldin"adalur, Iceland’s newest eruption, feat. Plato
Careful Icarus, don't fly too close to the eruption
WOW!

“A falling drop of lava is the result
of a geological domino effect that’s
occurred for millions, if not billions, of
years on our planet. And a falling drop
of lava in an accessible, safe, pictur-
esque location like Geldingadalur—
that’s a watch.”