Iceland's Trial by Fire
Photographs by Steve Winter
Text by Glenn Oeland
Like a hellish scene from a medieval imagination, a hissing cauldron yawned open at the bottom of Iceland’s Vatnajokull glacier as one of the largest volcanic eruptions to hit Iceland this century rumbled to life beneath the country’s largest ice cap. For two weeks ash and steam billowed skyward as elemental forces clashed in thermal battle. Yet this violent spectacle was but a prelude to the watery cataclysm that would follow.
Magma melted the underside of the glacier, collapsing its surface and creating a river roofed by ice. Billions of gallons of meltwater filled a hidden crater and paused, as if for effect. Then, a month later, the pent-up waters spewed forth with startling speed, ripping ice blocks weighing a thousand tons from the glacier and depositing them three miles away. It was Iceland’s most powerful flood in almost 60 years.
NGM 1997/05