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Walking on Seafloor in Iceland
by Nancy Penrose, photographs by David Muerdter Introduction
Iceland is an island that nudges the Arctic Circle and is set within the sapphire blues of the North Atlantic Ocean. Iceland is tall blondes with Viking genes, all-night pub crawls in Reykjavík, the music of Björk, hand-knit wool sweaters, smoked lamb and dried cod. Iceland is a financial meltdown in 2008. Beneath these clichés that are truths is the land: a banquet of geology. We traveled to Iceland, writer and photographer, to feast upon the island's volcanoes and geysers, ice caps and shorelines, hot springs and headlands. We went to walk on seafloor that has recently emerged at the surface of the planet, to observe for ourselves some of Earth's newest scenery. Iceland sits where two great tectonic plates — pieces of the hard outer shell of the planet —are spreading away from each other. The North American plate pulls west; the Eurasian plate pulls east. Here, between the shifting plates, molten rock — magma —oozes out and solidifies into Iceland, sometimes with the drama of an erupting volcano or a house-crumbling earthquake. The island sits at the northern end of the 6,000-mile-long Mid Atlantic Ridge, a chain of underwater volcanoes that stretches from the Arctic to the Antarctic. The Ridge is part of an Earth-circling system of spreading plates and mountain ranges mostly hidden beneath the oceans. But Iceland is also the child of another geological phenomena: a hot spot. Here a plume of magma rises from a fixed source very deep within the Earth and multiplies the volume of molten rock emerging from the suture between the plates. Iceland is the only place on the Mid Atlantic Ridge that rises to break the surface of the sea. The results of all this geology can be as cataclysmic as they are beautiful; we moved through landscapes shaped and shaken by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions since the island's birth 25 million years ago. And although we traveled no more than 60 miles from Reykjavík, we discovered volumes of Earth writing born from deep below, edited at the surface by wind and by water in all its forms. 1. Stykkishólmur Harbor
Most of Iceland is basalt. When molten this volcanic rock can emerge at the surface to flow across landscape like thick, hot taffy. It can cool and harden into columns like the clustered pipes of a church organ. The powers of wind, rain, snow, ice, and saltwater etch most deeply where the rock is the weakest, along the joints. Here, in the harbor at Stykkishólmur, there is a headland of columnar basalt. Glacier-capped mountains in the distance. Salt water. Three elements that define Iceland. But the mirror surface of the sea speaks of what is missing: the wind. Iceland sits where Arctic waters meet a curling branch of the warmer Gulf Stream, where currents of warm and cold air clash above in the atmosphere. A setting for wind as a frequent and persistent visitor. Except on this day in May when the fever of sun on our skin was undimmed by what was missing. 2. Snæfellsjökull
A sleeping volcano clad in the ice of glaciers and snow. Nearly 5,000 feet tall, Snæfellsjökull sits like a jewel at the western tip of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula north of Rekjyavík. The mountain first erupted 700,000 years ago but has been quiet for at least the past 1100 years. Jules Verne's imagination took him to the heart of Snæfellsjökull when he used it as the setting for Journey to the Center of the Earth. The mountain was our beacon as we drove the perimeter of the Peninsula. It first rose within our view from the road on the outskirts of Rekjyavík, and it anchored our journey even as its aspect shifted with the angles of our proximity. The name holds a tiny lesson in Icelandic, a language close to Old Norse that shares roots with English. Snæ means snow; fells, mountain or hills; jökull, glacier. Many Icelandic names seem dauntingly long but can be teased apart so that speakers of English may grasp a linguistic life ring. 3. Black Stones at Djúpalónsandur
Near the shore at Djúpalónsandur, not far from the base of Snaefellsjökull, sit grotesque stacks of volcanic rock that we deciphered as more resistant stone surviving the erosion of a surrounding softer rock. This is a landscape that feeds the imagination, and some Icelanders will admit to believing in huldufólk , the hidden folk — trolls, elves, dwarves, and fairies — who are said to make their home among the rocks and mountains and plains. The sound on the beach at Djúpalónsandur was the song of stones tumbling in waves. I could not resist the dark and appealing shapes of the water-worn and rounded rocks, licorice-black basalt warm from the sun. I plucked some for my pockets. On the drive back to Rekyjavík, we stopped at an art gallery that displayed works of Icelandic stone. The man behind the counter was friendly, and on impulse I spread my pocketed rocks on the counter, sensing he too would admire them. "Ah. You were at Djúpalónsandur," he said, touching one with his finger. "These are very powerful stones." "Is it OK to pick them up?" "Yes, they have a good power." Then he hesitated a moment before speaking, glanced at me as if to judge his audience. "You know the big rocks?" I nodded. "Some say those are apartment houses for the elves," he said with a smile that seemed unwilling to release the possibility. 4. Geysir
Geysir is the birthplace of the word used in many languages to mean an erupting hot spring. Here Strökkur Geyser bubbles up from some 30 feet below and explodes out of the ground, streaks skyward with a roar. Our nostrils winced at the smell of sulfur leached from the rocks below. The gaseous imprint of this Earth exhalation hung in the air for an ephemeral moment. Only a short drive from Reykjavík and a popular stop on the tourist trail, the Geysir geothermal area expresses a fact of life in Iceland: more than three-quarters of Icelandic homes are heated with Earth energy. The cycle begins when roundwater percolates down through fractures in the ground. Hot rock, so near the surface on this island of volcanoes, quickly heats the water. Steam forms and rises toward the surface. This energy is harvested by drilling, is tapped to heat homes, schools, offices, greenhouses, and an abundance of geothermal swimming pools. A short walk from the exuberance of Strokkur lies the quiet spring of Blesi. One of its holes is milky blue; the other is clear and blue-green, edged with the white lace deposits of geyserite, an amorphous silica that precipitates out from the hot and mineral-laden water. Steam kissed the surface of this Earth portal. Shades of deepening aqua drew my eye into the allure of the subsurface, tempted my imagination with the hazardous desire to enter and explore. 5. Midline
Standing in the suture that is the Mid Atlantic Ridge, I strike a joyful tourist pose. I am here! David stands on the bridge to take the photo. We each have one foot in North America, one in Europe. Or so the sign says. We know it is only symbolic: the Ridge is really made of miles-wide fractures of brittle rocks at the surface of the Earth, broken by earthquakes born from the constant shifting of tectonic plates. The Ridge emerges from the sea in southern Iceland as two prongs, does a fractured zigzag across the island, and then plunges into the Arctic Ocean to the north. Nonetheless, I am made happy by this evidence that I stand on some of Earth's newest scenery, am held among rocks that are usually seafloor. |
