Heimaey
My friend arrived today and we head out on our round the Iceland adventures tomorrow. I'm pretty excited. I've been in Reykjavik for five days now and am getting a little bored of the place, mostly because I fell ill with a fever turned cold over the weekend and wasn't able to get out as much as planned. My frustration isn't really anything to do with the city.
I was getting desperate for an escape by Sunday evening so I dropped a heaptonne of money and booked a flight for the Westmann Islands. That was yesterday's adventure.
The Westmann Islands are off the south of Iceland. Formed in a manner similar to Hawaii, they're a string of volcanos created as the plate passed over a hotspot. Surtsey is the most recent addition, formed in the 60s. Heimaey is older and the only one with more than one or two huts.
Heimaey is not very big, a few kilometers long by a few kilometers wide, and has one fishing village called Vestmannaeyjar. The island is bigger now than it was forty years ago. In 1973 there was a surprise eruption that blew the top and side off the island's volcano and covered the town in up to 4m of ash and tephra. The entire population of a few thousand were evacuated immediately apart from a hundred or so who stayed behind to rescue belongings and then fight the lava. Eventually the flow covered only a third to half of the village. The lava started to fill in the harbour but didn't make it very far and the town ended up with an even more sheltered port, thus permitting its continued livelihood.
If you're lucky I'll post some photos to Picasa. I hadn't taken many until yesterday. Heimaey is very photogenic, even with a fine ash haze blown in from the eruption at Grimsvotn two weeks ago. Most of the haze had blown away by the afternoon and I could see to the "mainland".
I hitched a ride from the airport and wandered around the “lava garden”. The newer lava was covered in pretty purple-blue lupins. I'm impressed at how quickly soil has built up and at how vegetated the lava is. The townsfolk have started planting trees even. I tried to rest in a nook in the lava but I was worried people would walk by so I moved on.
I noticed that the town landfill was on top of the ’73 lava. There might also have been an incinerator, the arrangement was unclear. I frowned at the thought of situating a landfill over possibly permeable material until I remembered that said permeable material is already contaminated with houses. And the landfill will probably get a free cover (ie ash) some time in the future. Unlike the majority of Iceland, Vestmannaeyjar doesn’t drink its groundwater so no concern there either. No bird control though.
I hiked up to the top of the crater and into its center, now marked with a very large cross. And then I went for a much needed hot chocolate. I was planning on walking to the other side of the harbour (If you’re lucky I’ll post pictures to Picasa, but that might not happen for a while yet) but knew I had only enough energy to get me back to the airport. A sheep and her two lambs followed me for the last 200m of that walk.
Yup. Marcie had two little lambs that followed her where e’er she go. I nearly walked into traffic (very slow, infrequent traffic) while filming and chatting with the sheep.
I arrived at the terminal intentionally early and quickly fell asleep, waking up to the boarding announcement. I made it back to my accommodation in one piece. I hope the same can be said for those sheep. Mind you, there were other sheep grazing next to the airstrip, so I’m sure the ones on the road are just fine.