Iceland review - 2015, Qupperneq 28

26 ICELAND REVIEW
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canyon, used as a base by scientists, police and rangers, we’re
checked on by police a couple more times until we arrive at
the eruption just ahead of twilight.
First, the eruption appears like a giant fire, undeniably
beautiful, the new lava surrounding it with a wall. With no
other landscape features in the immediate surroundings vis-
ible, there’s little to judge size or distance but later the police
tell páll and I the walls are ten meters (33 feet) tall in places.
The colors are different to a forest fire, richer perhaps in
part due to the clouds of toxic gases rising from the craters.
Once closer, the lava fountains come into view. Surprising
is the silence, the dead silence as snow falls around us in the
dark as the earth spews lava from its belly. Bizarrely, several
birds fly low over the new glowing lava, which after observ-
ing from a distance for a while now appears like glittering
city lights.
a couple of rangers—the site lies within Vatnajökull
National park—arrive to check up on us at 7:15 pm. “It’s
great to work here but when I got home after the last shift—
the eruption and glowing river of lava, seen here from a distance at daybreak.
the lava makes the 25-km (15-mile) journey to the river Jökulsá á fjöllum.
we work six-day shifts—I really felt it. I was extremely tired,”
ranger Sigurður Erlingsson describes.
The lava at Holuhraun originates in Bárðarbunga,
Iceland’s largest volcano, which lies under Vatnajökull
glacier. We’re told that the molten lava is building up
behind the walls, forming a small dam. lava is constantly
flowing out of the crater at a steady rate but occasionally
a bottleneck forms and the flow slows, leaving the lava to
build up and eventually overflow. Several weeks later when
we’re back in Reykjavík, Ármann Höskuldsson, volcanolo-
gist at the university of Iceland’s Earth Sciences Institute,
explains that the eruption is being fed from what he terms
the “fire heart of Iceland,” generally known as the Icelandic
hot spot (volcanic regions thought to be fed by underlying
anomalously hot mantle). The extreme volume of lava ris-
ing from the mantle could lead to another eruption, he says.
“The molten lava is charging its magma chamber to such an
extent that it overflows into the associated rifting fissures.
This magma charging could eventually lead to a major