by Note to the Editor: Catharine Fulton is a Canadian journalist and editor-in-chief of The Reykjavík Grape. She lives in Reykjavík with her Icelandic partner and their two children. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more CNN opinion.
I remember the first time I experienced an earthquake in Iceland. I ran for the nearest doorframe – that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? – under the ceilings of my attic apartment in one of Reykjavík’s iconic barrow houses.
I remember being aware of my fate if the old wooden frame and corrugated iron siding decided to give way.
The shaking stopped in seconds, but my knees shook and my heart raced a little longer.
I remember the first time I saw an active volcano. The eruption of Fimmvörðuháls was in March 2010; the precursor to the infamous Eyjafjallajökull eruption that began a month later, spewing ash and memes about its unpronounceable name.
In what seems like a daydream to think back on it now, I donned a snowsuit, boots, balaclava and helmet and rode a car over the rocky, jagged surface of the Sólheimajökull glacier as the sun set with a split view spewing out the glorious springs . liquid magma high in the air, and lava tumbled down the sooty-black side of the newly formed crater.
His location was extremely multisensory. The lava glowed against the night sky, heat waves from the eruption providing intermittent relief from the paralyzing cold on top of the glacier, the sound of the earth rumbling. That sound is still the most vivid memory – the sound of the pulse of the Earth.
Such a tangible reminder of the shifting tectonic plates beneath me was nothing I had ever experienced. Growing up in the suburbs not far from Toronto, earthquakes and volcanoes were phenomena I would see on my television screen or described in the pages of old issues of National Geographic.
The closest thing to my own house experiencing an earthquake was my bedroom door slamming with a little too much teenage angst.
It wasn’t until I moved to Iceland in March 2009, when the opportunity to witness and report on a nation emerging from economic implosion beckoned, that I came to understand and appreciate the explosive qualities of the world. .
The physical beauty of Iceland is easy to appreciate. Due to the lack of dense tree cover, and expanses of lava fields that are sometimes covered in moss and other times, it is called “other” to an almost cliché degree.
But curious visitors soon learn that Iceland’s nature must be respected, not just for its preservation, but for its own safety.
It is something that all the Jesuits know. Their country is beautiful, but there is always danger.
Icelanders have now been reminded that the residents of Grindavík – a small town 50 kilometers from Reykjavík on the southern coast of the Reykjavík peninsula – are staying with their friends and family, and at Red Cross emergency shelters across the country. Although most of the country is safe, much of this peninsula has been evacuated as the Icelandic Meteorological Office continues to predict an imminent eruption.
Perhaps it was the sense from Iceland that “that’s just the way it is” that the people of Grindavík stayed with before when the ground began to shake in recent years not far from their homes.
The peninsula entered a new volcanic cycle in 2019, with an increase in earthquakes and measurable uplift around the Fagradalsfjall volcano which culminated in an eruption in March 2021. The cycle of near-constant earthquakes erupted near with Fagradalsfjall again in July 2022 and again in July 2023.
News during those seismic and eruptive periods characterized the earthquakes as an inconvenience to nearby Grindavík – nearby, but far enough from the center of volcanic activity to be far out of danger. For many years the three craters were a “tourist crater” – far from infrastructure and safe to see if you were up for a 10 km hike.
We could feel the big tremors here in Reykjavík too. Now, in a sturdier concrete house, I can hear shock waves approaching like a big truck speeding down the street before slamming into the building with a jolt and rolling forward.
The 140,000 of us who live in the capital experience the latest activity on the Reykjanes peninsula much the same. The occasional jolt or rumble.
But the latest burst of seismic activity that began on October 25 was different for the people of Grindavík. Apart from strange stories of residents taking seasickness tablets to cope with the ever-moving Earth, the core had moved under the town, which one resident described to The Reykjavík Grapevine as “a monster underfoot”.
That monster was relentless, causing thousands of earthquakes before finally throwing a tantrum on November 10 that repeatedly pulled the ground under people’s feet. It was late that night that 3,700 residents of Grindavík were ordered to evacuate.
The monster had a lava tunnel 15 kilometers long that stretched under the town.
No one is in harm’s way now. Although the earthquakes have decreased – we haven’t felt them in the capital since the tremors of November 10 – but the explosive nature of this country crossing tectonic plates, and the impact it can have on people, is a given to light.
Not since the Westman Islands woke up to an eruption in their backyard in 1973 has an entire town been evacuated. Now everyone waits and watches and wonders if the residents of Grindavík will ever return home. Will they even want to?
I remember my first volcano. I don’t want the memory of someone who destroys people’s homes.
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