Vestmannaeyar, Iceland
Today we are visiting the Vestmannaeyar, or Westman Islands on the southern coast of Iceland. The islands were so named because in about 1000 AD a group of slaves revolted and took refuge on these remote volcanic rocks. As the slaves were mostly from Scotland and Ireland they were called “West Men” by the Norwegian Vikings. The revolt did not end well for the slaves because the Vikings eventually found them and killed them all, but today the islands are home to about 5000 Icelanders who are primarily engaged in fishing the rich waters around the island group. The population lives entirely on Heimaey, the largest of the islands.
On our way to Heimaey we sailed past Surtsey, an island formed in November of 1963 which emerged right out of the ocean. The island continued to erupt for more than three years and provided a marvelous natural laboratory to study the volcanic activity and its island building process. Today, the island is still used as a laboratory to study the way islands are naturally colonized by plants and animals which swim, fly or drift over from nearby land masses. As the Westmann Islands sit astride the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, they, like the rest of Iceland, are a particularly rewarding place to study the formation of new lithospheric crust as the two tectonic plates, the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate, move apart at about 2 cm per year.
As we sailed around Surtsey, we were joined by a pod of Killer Whales, several females, a calf and three males. We cruised along with them for quite a while until they finally left us for other activities and we proceeded to our afternoon landing at Heimaey.
We entered the narrow harbor at Heimay and tied up alongside next to the small town. Heimaey is famous because in 1973 the island erupted, forcing the evacuation of almost the entire community. The eruption went on from January until May and nearly buried the town in volcanic tephra. When the eruption ceased, the populace returned and rebuilt the town and today there are few signs of the eruption even though the lava is very fresh. When the eruption was going on, the lava flow threatened to close off the beautiful natural harbor, but stopped short, perhaps with the cooling effect of salt water cannons used to cool it and the current harbor is actually more protected than it was before the eruption.
Today marks the final day of our voyage in the wake of the Vikings across the North Atlantic and into some of the wildest parts of the Faroe Islands and Iceland. We have especially enjoyed trying to visualize these places through the eyes of those Irish anchorite monks and Viking explorers who first visited here over 1000 years ago. Much of this part of the Viking world is little changed since those times.
