Day 5 - Exploring Heimaey

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10:15 AM

Heimaey was almost abandoned in 1973 after an unexpected eruption formed a brand new volcano, destroyed half the town and almost sealed up the harbour. It was one of the reasons that I wanted to come here in the first place - not only to see the result of a recent eruption but to see how the town had avoided near disaster. I also wanted to climb a volcano at some point, and it helped that the two on this island were nowhere near as big or challenging as Hekla and some of the others on the mainland. After we had dropped our supermarket supplies back at the hostel, we took a walk up a small, grassy trail towards the back end of the harbour. The grass soon gave way to great mossy rocks, similar to those we had seen between the airport and Reykjavik across the miles of flat lava fields in that area. This was the very edge of where the 1973 eruption had reached, and while in some ways you could imagine that these dark rocks had always been there, but there were obvious sign here and there that parts of a town were buried deep beneath. Some of these indicators came in the form of little wooden signposts that told us the name of the street that used to be connected to the rest of the town, now crushed by rock somewhere below. The most obvious sign though, was probably the local swimming pool. A tower of rounded concrete with small pieces of twisted metal jutting out seemed to be carved around the edge of the rocks, although the opposite is of course true. The swimming pool was here first, but it was brutally run over by the lava which came to a halt right at the very end.

We carried on our journey along the rocky beach that made up the entrance to the harbour until we couldn’t go any further, then turned back and took a gradual walk back to the hostel via a different route through the lava mounds. There were plenty of routes through, some of which looked like official paths dug out to let us through, others that had probably been conveniently created when the lava first drifted down the hill, although some of these inconveniently ended in dead ends or little crevices that we were probably best not to jump into. We spent a while in the lava mounds trying to get pictures of the sunset (something John is particularly keen on), then headed back for tea just as it was getting dark.

By the time we got back, the kitchen was already in use by Molly, an American from the room next door to us. We chatted to Molly for a while, then once she was finished in the kitchen we cooked our local fishcakes and chips, which turned out to be a chicken kiev with a cheesy filling and chips once we had pulled the phrasebook from my bag.

Being such a clear, cold night, conditions were pretty much perfect to see the northern lights (although I wondered if we were now too far south), so we took another walk out later on in the evening, away from the lights of the town and down some scary looking country roads which cut neatly through two sides of volcanic rubble. Tonight wasn’t to be our night for the northern lights though, presumably the sun spots weren’t in our favour and the full moon probably shielded some of the lights, but we had a good view of the moon and stars, which was nice enough.

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