Day 5 - Watching a Documentary at the Cinema, Climbing a Volcano and Cooking Buns on the Top

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7:05 PM

Last night ended up with a relatively early finish, although by the time we had settled back at the hostel and made ourselves a glass of hot chocolate (bought from the supermarket with the intention of warming us up, and looking like being a regular source of sustenance from now on) it was sometime after midnight. We arranged to have a bit of a lie in this morning, mainly because we had arranged to see the Heimaey volcano film in the local cinema at 11.00, which didn’t give us much time to do anything else beforehand. From what I can gather, we were reasonably lucky to see the film, which is apparently not available outside of Heimaey and only gets played once a week in the summer season, but there had been a special request for it today and the local hotels were all trying to fill the place up a bit.

Walking from the hostel to the cinema we became aware that there was absolutely nobody in Heimaey, but eventually we met an Icelandic woman and her sheepdog in the cinema’s foyer area, who took our money, chatted to us for a while then directed us up the stairs. The cinema was deserted when we arrived, which seemed odd considering somebody had specially requested it, and led me to wonder whether this was some elaborate hoax by the locals who were going to lock us in and leave us to rot until summer when they could serve our meat to the tourists (I’m not sure anyone would know what meat they were eating when they chomped on their Hákarl, the main point being that it is rotten). Eventually, though, more people arrived, and by the time the show started there must have been at least ten of us, which appeared to be around double the number of people that actually lived here.

The film had been transferred to a high definition digital projector, which did nothing to improve the quality of the picture of a 70’s documentary made up of local footage and newsreels, but at least it meant that the cinema staff could just press a button and leave it running. The film itself was a very American style documentary, but it was very interesting at the same time, mainly about the 1973 eruption, how the town was evacuated and how the harbour was almost blocked off until they had the clever idea of pumping water at the lava flow to cool it off and redirect it away, leaving the little passageway that we came in on the ferry. Without that, the fishing industry would have been ruined and the island would almost certainly have been abandoned. The film also concentrated on Surtsey, one of the newest islands in the world, after an underwater eruption in 1963 grew new land not far south of Heimaey. The island was set up as something of a scientific study area, with no people living there, but over the course of 45 years or so, insect, plant life and eventually birds started living there. There are tours around Surtsey that run from Heimaey, but we didn’t see any advertised and didn’t really have enough time on the island to slot one in.

The film lasted an hour or so, after which we pretty much headed straight for the nearest volcano. Eldfell is the volcano that didn’t even exist until 1973, the eruption not only making the island 1/3 of the size bigger, but also building a huge mound to overlook the town. The side facing the town had been blown off towards the end of the eruption, so it didn’t have the perfect cone of Helgafell, Heimaey’s other volcano, but looked impressive nonetheless. We took a walk up the gravel paths through the old lava flows up to the crater (which I insisted on jumping into, despite John and Lyndsey’s concerns that I wouldn’t be able to climb out again), then decided to carry on and climb to the top, which didn’t seem to please John too much, who decided today that he wasn’t too keen on heights.

Almost 37 years after the eruption, Eldfell is still hot, and if you find one of the little air vents popping out of the mountain at the top (and, to a lesser extent, in the crater), we had been told it was warm enough to cook buns. Experimenting with various vents right at the top, we managed to burn various till receipts, and eventually, the map (we reasoned that the way back was down, you can’t really get lost), until eventually we decided to get the slightly squashed, cinnamon tinged buns that we had bought on the first day out. I’m not sure if you could cook bread from scratch up on the top of Eldfell, but we warmed the pre-cooked versions through enough to burn Lyndsey’s hands.

The views from the top were pretty spectacular; not only could you see the whole of Heimaey from here, but, being a sunny, clear day again, we could see the mountains and glaciers on the mainland. There was also a clear contrast in the land that had been created by the eruption - the old Heimaey is largely green and grassy, but the mountain itself is red in colour, while in between the two are large lava fields, mainly black in colour but with green tints where moss had started to grow. Not for the first time this week we had the feeling that, if you didn’t know, you could be on a completely different planet.

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Photos

"Countries Street"
There's a town below here

Green, Red, Black and Blue
Like something on Mars