Eruption has happened on Icelandic peninsula

December 20, 2023 9:07 AM

As reported previously on the Blue, geologists were monitoring a buildup of magma under the Reykjanes peninsula, with earthquakes and other seismic activity reported in the region. Subsidence of said phenomena had researchers stating that risk of eruption had lessened - until the 18th, when said eruption finally occurred.

Video of the eruption is already out online, and officials are reporting that the eruption may go on for a few days, though the main eruption has subsided.

posted by NoxAeternum (38 comments total)

Those two videos almost make the eruption look festive, like one of those fancy fountains in Las Vegas - but with hot lava instead of water.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:23 AM on December 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was going to post this when it was happening since the initial split was pretty epic.

For the previous eruptions I found this channel to be very informative, with local effort.
posted by torokunai at 9:27 AM on December 20, 2023

although i know i am not the first to make this observation, i feel nonetheless compelled to say that this volcano is sick as hell and totally metal
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:29 AM on December 20, 2023 [9 favorites]

Favorite post from Iceland Public Radio's English-language liveblog about the eruption:

20. December 2023 – 03:42

Do not walk to the eruption - go to Kringlan instead

Walking to the volcanic eruption is particularly difficult, says Hjördís Guðmundsdóttir, communications director of Civil Defence.

The lava is difficult to cross and it has spread over cracks and crevasses. Therefore, there is a considerable risk.

"It's exactly these difficult situations that people are going into. Me and everyone else, we see pictures of people who decide to wear ridiculous footwear to look at all this.

"This is not that kind of place. It is then better to just go to Kringlan*; look at Christmas gifts and get into the Christmas spirit. Or maybe just have hot cocoa at home and wrap Christmas presents. It would be a better place to be than there."

(*or Smáralind...)

(wikilinks are to articles on two prominent shopping malls in Iceland referenced in the story.)
posted by larrybob at 9:30 AM on December 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

it's not a tourist volcano
posted by supermedusa at 9:33 AM on December 20, 2023 [15 favorites]

Some drone footage.

It's wild that we're all living on top of this stuff. We're on big plates of rock that are sliding around on molten rock, and sometimes the molten rock will come shooting up in between the plates. Absolutely wild.
posted by clawsoon at 10:20 AM on December 20, 2023 [12 favorites]

JoeZydeco posted this live feed to the free thread a couple of days ago. It was pretty spectacular then, and there are still fountains to be seen provided the visibility is decent.
posted by mollweide at 10:42 AM on December 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

These pictures are pretty spectacular. This is a local site that seems to have good coverage of the fireworks and all things Icelandic. The Icelandic Meteorology Office has more technical information.
posted by kjs3 at 10:44 AM on December 20, 2023

Great photo from a friend about 10 km away.
posted by doctornemo at 10:50 AM on December 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

even crazier that we didn't figure this out until the 1960s.

One day somebody looked at the pattern of seamounts heading NW and then N from Hawaii and had a brainwave . . . and knew something nobody else knew at that time.
posted by torokunai at 10:50 AM on December 20, 2023

People of Earth: 2023 is nearly done. There are holidays. Maybe the year can just relax and leave us alone for a blessed minute -

Iceland: Watch this.
posted by doctornemo at 10:52 AM on December 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

How do you get water to shoot up 100 meters? I don't think there's a human-engineered fountain that can achieve that feat.

Now imagine doing that with molten rock.

Nature you're good. And terrifying.
posted by flamewise at 10:55 AM on December 20, 2023 [5 favorites]

Ok I guess I was underestimating engineers
posted by flamewise at 11:00 AM on December 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

If it's history of Iceland and tectonics, mention shd be made of Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen and the mid-Atlantic Ridge.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:15 AM on December 20, 2023 [6 favorites]

As someone with a degree. IN SCIENCE!!! (Geology)

Rock on Earth! You are metal af.
posted by Windopaene at 12:18 PM on December 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

According to the latest information given by Icelandic geologists, the volcano seems to be settling down. It started with real force, and it’s already produced about three-quarters as much lava as the first eruption in this series produced over a six month period.

The ridge where this volcano erupted is known as Sundhnúkagígar (which translates to Strait Peak Craters) was a site that had worried geologists for a while, because of its proximity to Grindavík. When the eruption started with such force, there was real concern, but it soon became apparent that the main force was concentrated towards the north of the ridge, further away from Grindavík.

As I mentioned, the the eruption has become concentrated in a couple of places, and there’s a lot less lava flowing. There is a lot of magma underground, but so far it seems like that this relatively small opening is enough to release the pressure.

Tomorrow inhabitants of Grindavík will be able to go into the town, if they have a reason to go, but no one else is allowed near. Some inhabitants had been agitating to move back, and at least one couple had started to spend nights there, until they were ordered to leave by police, which happened to be the day before the eruption started. The male half of the couple had given a fairly intemperate interview with the media after he got back to Reykjavík, but had the good grace to be sheepish after the volcano erupted.

So far one person has almost died hiking across the snow and (old) lava to get near the volcano, so all authorities are really hammering home the message that this eruption is not in an easily accessible place. It’s dangerous in the best of conditions, and Iceland in the dead of winter is never the best of conditions.

Mostly people are feeling relief that it seems that this eruption will only mildly affect Grindavík and nearby infrastructure. Though the town has been heavily damaged by the earthquakes and land deformation that preceded it. But considering other likely scenarios, this is about the best that could be hoped for.
posted by Kattullus at 12:19 PM on December 20, 2023 [14 favorites]

Lava always wins
posted by Windopaene at 12:19 PM on December 20, 2023 [5 favorites]

tourist volcano would be a pretty good name for an icelandic band, i think. they could either lean into the name by playing vintage touristcore — "hi we are from iceland and we will now sing to you ethereal melodies in a new language we just invented backstage!" — or else wear it ironically by playing extremely abrasive punk songs about airbnb and the reykjavik housing crisis.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:27 PM on December 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

It's wild that we're all living on top of this stuff. We're on big plates of rock that are sliding around on molten rock, and sometimes the molten rock will come shooting up in between the plates. Absolutely wild.

Ya, no, we're not. We are on big plates of rock that are sliding around carried by the convective currents of the mantle, which is completely solid but which, on geological time scales, flows somewhat like a liquid. Like glaciers, which are solid ice, but still flow downhill.

Melts in the upper mantle are confined to hot spot islands like Iceland or Hawaii, or along volcanic chains. But even in these regions, the amount of melt (liquid) is low single digit percent by volume.

Very, very few of us are living above a magma chamber, rest easy.
posted by bumpkin at 1:07 PM on December 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

I gotcher magma chamber right here, pal!

(no, I don't know what that means either)
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:37 PM on December 20, 2023

I texted a friend earlier to see if she and her family still planned their Iceland trip this month and she texted back to say that their plane landed an hour before the eruption, and attached the most AMAZING photo of herself holding her kid by the side of the road, eruption clearly visible and everything bathed in the red-orange glow. INTENSE AND AMAZING. So from their perspective it was certainly a tourist volcano.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 1:58 PM on December 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

"it's not a tourist volcano"

what a time to be alive
posted by Jacqueline at 2:04 PM on December 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

Ya, no, we're not. We are on big plates of rock that are sliding around carried by the convective currents of the mantle, which is completely solid but which, on geological time scales, flows somewhat like a liquid. Like glaciers, which are solid ice, but still flow downhill.

Huh, interesting. Is the mantle lower in temperature than lava, or higher pressure, or made of different stuff?
posted by clawsoon at 3:21 PM on December 20, 2023

Good question clawsoon. Even as a geologist back in the day, don't really have an answer for that. Maybe not much rock stays over a hotspot long enough to actually melt? And lots of old landmasses are really, really old, (like pre-cambrian). They've already dealt with all the shit the earth can throw at them...

Precambrian! Just, wow. All we are are dust in the wind
posted by Windopaene at 6:19 PM on December 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

I enjoy this guy’s YT channel. He’s a geologist from the University of Idaho, and has ties to Iceland.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 6:56 PM on December 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

Geologists flew over the eruption site this morning and couldn’t see any signs that the eruption was still going, but it’s possible that there’s still some lava flowing, but that it is within lavatubes.

Hopefully this turns out to be the end, but selfishly I can’t but be a bit disappointed, as I’m flying to Iceland on Saturday, and it’s always exciting to see an eruption from high up in the air.

Though really, it’s a very good thing this turned out to be a short-lived eruption, because the first day or so was fairly scary.
posted by Kattullus at 1:39 AM on December 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

it’s always exciting to see an eruption from high up in the air

Potentially even more exciting if you fly through the ash cloud.

N.B. - According to Snopes, most of those "airplane engines exploded after ingesting volcanic ash" pictures passed around social media are apparently fake. TIWWCHNT.
posted by kjs3 at 1:13 PM on December 21, 2023

The eruptions in this series have not had much in the way of an ash plume, almost nothing when compared to the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption. Thankfully, as the international airport is on the same peninsula.
posted by Kattullus at 1:57 PM on December 21, 2023

There's been a fatality in Grindavík. A man was working on repairing damage that resulted from a crevasse opening through the middle of the town fell in yesterday, most likely because a part of the wall gave out, and a day and a half later he still hasn't been found. The crevasse is 20 meters deep (60 feet) where he was working, and about half of it is full of water. They've sent drones down, but so far haven't found any trace of him, but they're working on expanding the mouth of the crevasse so that divers can go look for his body. It's a sad, strange coda to this whole thing.
posted by Kattullus at 12:59 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

Here we go once more, another eruption has started, slightly closer to the town of Grindavík.
posted by Kattullus at 12:45 AM on January 14

Another fissure opened, right by Grindavík's town limits, and lava has flowed into town, two houses so far have been destroyed. You can follow further developments on RÚV's English-language liveblog.
posted by Kattullus at 7:37 AM on January 14

How terrible (in the word's literal sense). I woke up to this news and, thanks to live webcams from RUV and mbl, I watched the lava erupt and flow through the early-morning darkness into sunrise and now sunset.

I'm glad they evacuated the town, and I guess the residents must be pretty good at getting out quickly after months on high alert. I hope any animals in the area will be safe too.

But, god, how it must feel to watch that slow, unstoppable superheated wave of absolute destruction creeping towards your home. Iceland, fortunately, is (I think?) a government that takes care of its people, so I hope anyone who needs to relocate will be able to get assistance, but... it's just horrifying to watch.

(and yes, I know we are also currently watching almost an entire region lose their homes to military violence, and that the Icelanders have the privilege of safe evacuation and of their losses being taken seriously. I suppose the reason this feels different is the inexorability: a person could *choose* not to drop bombs, but once a natural disaster like this begins, no human choice can stop it or end it.)

***

The mbl webcam was good enough that, before local sunrise, I was able to observe the cars with flashing lights driving towards the lava flow. The cameras zoomed in on people running away from the cars, but it turned out those were workers who'd been building the lava defences hurrying to save their earthmovers from being engulfed.

Apparently the mad dash worked and all the equipment was saved without harm to humans. There's cabin video from one of the earthmovers driving verrrry sloooowly away while lava glows by the roadside on the RUV liveblog if you scroll down.

(Those heavy machines can't get far without being refueled... imagine carrying a load of diesel into the teeth of a lava flow.)

The streetlight under which the cars had first pulled up kept on valiantly glowing after they all drove away, even as the lava came for it.
posted by Pallas Athena at 9:13 AM on January 14 [3 favorites]

So, it seems that the small fissure that opened right by Grindavík seems to have closed up during the night, happily, though three houses were destroyed. The lava is still flowing from four or five openings along the larger fissure that was further away from the town.
posted by Kattullus at 2:05 AM on January 15

The owner of the first house to be hit, which he and his family had been building themselves for the last two years and were just about ready to move in when the town was evacuated in November, was interviewed by RÚV. He was remarkably well-what're-you-gonna-do about the whole thing, especially considering that his family's older house had also been destroyed as it was on a faultline. It certainly puts in perspective when I curse of all available gods because I bumped my head on an open cupboard door.
posted by Kattullus at 2:07 AM on January 15 [2 favorites]

All indications point to the eruption being over. Or rather, that this eruption is over, because the magma chamber beneath the Svartsengi Power Station, just north of Grindavík, is still getting fresh magma from below. The people of Grindavík, and the Icelandic government, is taking stock of the situation. As of now, the whole town is in shock. Not just from the eruption, but also the fatality that occurred three days prior (the body is yet to be found).

One increasingly discussed possibility is that the government buys the properties of the inhabitants that wish to sell, so that they can move away. It's a very expensive prospect, costing literally a billion dollars, and difficult for the inhabitants of the town to contemplate, because it would mean the end of their physical community, and probably their eventual disappearance as a coherent social group.

Grindavík, the town itself, is not very old, dating back to 1897, but that area has been inhabitated since the island of Iceland was settled in the 9th and 10th centuries CE, and this would mean the end of that long history. On the other hand, all scientific evidence suggests that volcanic eruptions will continue for years and even decades to come. So it's not an easy decision to make.
posted by Kattullus at 5:52 AM on January 17 [2 favorites]

The Atlantic has a stunning collection of photos of this latest volcanic event. Or maybe the word I want is "dramatic."
posted by Quasirandom at 7:22 AM on January 17 [1 favorite]

Kattullus, I wondered what the choices would be for people who wanted to move, since the value of even the intact houses is now essentially zero. Having the government buy the land (if there's a consensus among thr residents to sell) seems like a good solution-- hard to see who else would buy a piece of land they couldn't build on or use for some years. (Temporary wildlife sanctuary? Centre for vulcanology studies?)
posted by Pallas Athena at 10:32 AM on January 17

Thanks, Kattullus, for sharing your native perspective in this thread. It would otherwise be too easy to view Grindavík through the lens of Kilauea or Centralia. Exploring Icelandic media has shown me the parallels instead to Vestmannaeyjar 1973. I would not have known that the Icelandic government imported prefabricated homes for displaced persons on the mainland, some of which still stand in Grindavík today. It seems that they and many other homes now on unstable ground could be lifted from their compromised foundations and transported to terra firma. I am not able to work out if the abandoned townsite on Hópsnes could be reused to keep the harbor and community alive.

I could not find the interview with the owner of the not-quite-finished home, but I did find it referenced on the RÚV English wrapup. From this faraway half-destroyed town, seeing one's home completely destroyed should be a relief; homes merely damaged have meant years of battling for compensation. The tail of the liveblog reads:

Bryndís Gunnlaugsdóttir, former town representative of Grindavík, received a standing ovation at the meeting when she said that she wished the state would buy out the residents' homes.

She described the situation as the hardest day - when she saw that her home did not burn down in Sunday's lava flow. If it had burned, the uncertainty would have ended and she would have been released from the noose around her.

Credit to the translator for conveying the emotion so well. I hope Surtur's fury can be slaked and Bryndís and her nation can find peace.
posted by backwoods at 7:28 PM on January 18 [1 favorite]