Iceland was formed by two things, the slow-moving glaciers grinding up the earth and the volcanoes that produced much of the barren landscapes that I saw while I was there. I saw much of the effects of the volcanoes, but few of the volcanoes themselves. As I was driving from the airport to Reykjavik, I got the first look at what I would see much more of: the barren volcanic rock landscapes stretching on for miles and miles.

This volcanic rock can come in many shapes and sizes. Looking back, I think that more than half of the rock that I saw there was one form or another of lava that had cooled long, long ago when some volcano erupted. The most striking think that I remember seeing was when we were driving down a dirt road towards a lake. The land on either side of the road had been primarily farmland with sheep and low shrubs growing there. But as we drove on, the land suddenly turned to the rocky, craggy lava landscape that I had seen my first day. Gudrun pointed out that there was a volcano in the distance and that we had just passed where the lava flow had stopped when the volcano had eruped many years ago.

The rocks can range from black to a dark brown and are often very porous. I don't know how light or heavy the rocks were. I guess they were normal weight. Not the kind that will float in water. I think the most prominent black rocks that I saw were on a black sand beach on the south side of the island. At the base of a tall, tall cliff, there was a black sand beach on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. The sand was real sand like you will see on any other beach in north america: finesand that looked and felt like any other sand except for the fact that it was jet black in color. Combine that with the black wall of stone and you have a really striking combination of natural features.

So, I didn't see any fireworks while I was in Iceland, but I did get to see an extinct volcano. It was in the same area in whcih I described the edge of the lava flow earlier in this page. From the distance it looked like a low hill. The only indication of it's size was the houses in the foreground that seemed like tiny white specks. That was one big hill! I understand that there were due for a volcano eruption soon since it had been a few years since the last one. Lo and behold, two weeks after I leave, a volcano that is buried under three football fields of snow and ice erupts, sending ash over the northeasters portion of the island. Of course, all the heat and steam melted the ice and a billion tons of water still has to work its way out from under the ice. As I understand it, as of this writing (10/15/96) there was a lake underneath the ice cap that is 150 meters (about one and a half football fields) deep which is then underneath 200 meters of ice. All of that water still needs to find a way out, which may still cause some flooding in the less inhabited areas of southeastern Iceland.

So perhaps it would have been fun to see a little of the island in the making, but I think I might have been a little spooked by all the activity. There's nothing like a good natural catastrophe to make one realize how insignificant one is in the big picture of Mother Earth.