Iceland is on fire
with earthquake swarms, volcanic
eruptions, and lava fountains spewing
hundreds of meters into the air. This
tiny country is experiencing volcanic
activity on a staggering scale.
It isn't the first time, and it
certainly won't be the last. This is the
awakening of a thousandear cycle. A
rhythm that last transformed the
landscape when Vikings walked these
shores. And this is no blip on the
radar. It's a geological marathon. The
activity we're seeing today could last
for 2 to 400 years.
But this time will be different. This
isn't the Viking era. Today, Iceland is
a modern nation of geologists and
engineers who aren't going to take this
lava invasion lying down. As the ground
tears apart beneath their feet, they're
attempting the impossible to outenineer
a continent pulling itself in two. So,
can a modern society survive four
centuries of fiery chaos? We're going to
find out.
I'm James Stewart, and you're watching
Astram Earth. Join me as we explore the
youngest land on the planet, delving
into the ancient cycles responsible for
carving out this mythical anomaly of
fire and ice. Geological patterns that
have left Iceland facing the ultimate
test, survival.
Iceland is unique. Not only is fermented
shark considered a delicacy, but
geologically there's nowhere quite like
it.
It sits a stride the midatlantic ridge,
a divergent boundary where the North
American and Eurasian plates pull apart
at a rate of around 2 cm a year. That's
roughly, by the way, the same speed your
fingernails grow. As the plates
separate, magma rises to fill the gaps,
cools into bassalt, and forms new crust.
And I know what you're thinking. There's
nothing particularly unusual about that.
But over millions of years, this process
has built the longest mountain range on
Earth, running down the center of the
Atlantic Ocean. Almost all 16,000 km
lies 2 to 3 km beneath the waves. That
is until you reach Iceland. Here, land
pokes its head above the surface. Why?
Well, Iceland isn't just on a tectonic
plate boundary. Here, the Mid-Atlantic
Ridge intersects another geological
phenomenon, a mantle hot spot. These are
best known for creating island chains
such as Hawaii, the Galapagus, and the
Canary Islands, all of which, I might
add, lie in the middle of tectonic
plates, not at the edge. The hot spot
under Iceland instead creates the
geological equivalent of a pressure
cooker left on high for millions of
years, turning an already active
boundary into something far more
volatile, producing a third of all the
lava that's erupted onto Earth's surface
in the last 500 years, which is not bad
for a country smaller than England. Now,
mantle hotspots are somewhat of an
enigma, which is sort of a nice way of
saying that scientists don't exactly
know what causes them. Actually, let me
know in the comments below if you'd like
to see a video on that another time. But
for now, what we need to know is that
they are driven by columns of unusually
hot, buoyant rock rising from deep
within the Earth and pushing up through
the mantle, and that they can last for
tens of millions of years. Now, the
important thing to note here is that
these hot spots can raise mantle
temperatures by as much as 200° C. And
in doing so, the drop in pressure causes
hot solid rock to melt into magma. The
result is an unusually thick crust up to
40 km compared to typically 7 km and
enough buoyancy to lift the ridge out of
the ocean. And voila, an island or in
this case an Iceland. This is the only
inhabited mid ocean ridge on Earth. In
fact, visit ThinkF Vit Lea National Park
and you can literally stand in the
separation zone between two continents.
But it's what's inside that ridge that's
problematic. We often talk about
tectonics in the past tense. But in this
case, the problem is present. Very
present.
Iceland is a mere teenager in geological
terms. The oldest rocks found in the
west fjords and the eastern fjords are
just 16 to 18 million years old, which
is basically yesterday compared to
continental Europe's half billiony old
crusts. And if you thought that was
impressive, well, wait for this. When
you move south, the land gets even
younger still. It is only 3 to 7 million
years old in places like the Grecian
Peninsula. And remember that name. It's
somewhere we're going to come back to.
Now, just off the south coast is the
youngest land on the planet. In the
1960s, the island of Certzi erupted into
existence from beneath the sea. The
island is a pristine natural laboratory,
allowing scientists a rare chance to
study an island from birth. really
because it began as sterile lava with a
known birthday if you like and has
remained free of human interference
thanks to strict protections.
Researchers can trace exactly how life
builds an ecosystem step by step, giving
us an insight into processes analoges to
the spreading of life on early Earth.
But Iceland's youth isn't only
interesting for the sake of scientific
research and this video. It's dangerous
because young land means fresh lava and
lots of it. There are around 30 volcanic
systems active across the island and
over a 100 volcanoes have erupted in the
last 10,000 years. I say around 30
because nature doesn't draw neat
boundaries. It would be very helpful if
it did. Some systems here have obvious
central volcanoes. Others are long
networks of underground fishes. and many
are a combination of both slipping in
and out of activity over centuries. So
depending on the geological criteria
used to define active, the number sits
somewhere between 28 and 33. And thanks
to lying on such a rare tectonic sweet
spot, Iceland produces almost every
major style of volcanic behavior on the
planet. From flood bassults that spread
lava in vast sheets, gently built shield
volcanoes, groundsplitting fisher
eruptions, explosive composite
volcanoes, sticky rioly domes, and even
huge ashflow calderas. Nowhere else puts
this entire volcanic toolkit on display
quite like Iceland.
In fact, the country's image as a land
of fire has become central to its
identity and its economy. But it also
hides a hard geographic reality.
For all its beauty, the interior of the
country is a vast, high freezing desert.
Often compared to the surface of the
moon, its harsh conditions leave it
largely uninhabited.
Instead, nearly everyone lives around
the coast, especially the southwest
corner. The Gulf Stream keeps this part
of the country relatively barmy. Winter
temperatures rarely drop below -5° C,
leaving harbors ice free year round.
Combine that with rich codtock seas, and
why wouldn't you want to stay here? Over
time, small settlements grew into towns
and cities, pulling in even more people.
I really can't state enough that this
area is the nerve center of the nation.
80% of the population lives within an
hour's drive of Recuik.
Icelanders have cleverly leveraged the
country's geological activity here to
their advantage, too. Over 85% of homes
are heated by geothermal water,
underpinning Iceland's position as a
green energy leader. High temperature
geothermal fields where hot water and
steam circulate above shallow magma
bodies are tapped by bore holes.
Housing, swimming pools, and even
pavements are warmed by the earth
itself.
Imagine that. Underfloor heating while
you walk to the shops. That's my kind of
luxury.
But with this growth comes new
vulnerabilities. More people means more
infrastructure now sits in places that
will be affected by future eruptions.
And by future, I don't mean in hundreds
of years. I mean as soon as tomorrow.
because something even more sinister is
brewing below the surface.
In late 2019, something changed.
Earthquakes shook the ground beneath
Farraha,
an area less than an hour's drive from
Recuik. And I'm sorry for my
pronunciation here, Icelanders. Let me
know how I get on. They started small,
but soon multiplied and strengthened. By
early 2021, more than 40,000 earthquakes
shook the region in a matter of weeks in
what's known as seismic swarms.
Terrifying, absolutely, but also a
geological warning. Something was going
on just a few kilometers below the
surface.
Seismic swarms can be caused by magma
forcing its way up through cracks in
Earth's crust in what's known as an
intrusion. Rock fractures, magma floods
in, pressure builds, and it's often only
a matter of time until it reaches the
surface.
In March 2021, the ground finally gave
way, and a fisher ripped open in
Floroshi.
A surreal glowing curtain of lava,
180 m long, fountained into the air
before flowing into a sheltered valley.
It was the first eruption on the
Rekiness Peninsula in 8 centuries. I
said I'd come back to this place and it
went on for nearly six months before
suddenly stopping. But that was not a
return to dormcancy. That was just the
start. Further eruptions followed in
2022 and again in 2023.
Then the activity began to migrate,
shifting a few kilometers southwest to
Sparteni along the Suns Nuke crater row.
It was closing in fast.
On the 10th of November 2023, the
decision was taken to evacuate the town
of Grintovvic, home to 3,700
people. The telltale seismic swarm
showed that a major magma intrusion was
propagating beneath the town.
Days after the evacuation, fissures
opened, destroying homes and damaging
infrastructure.
It was described as Iceland's most
severe natural disaster in 51 years, and
Grintovvic remains largely uninhabited
today. For geologists, this was the
final confirmation needed that a long,
quiet volcanic system had awoken, the
starting pistol for a centuries long
eruptive cycle. But how do they know
this is only the beginning? By bringing
Viking sagas into the satellite age.
This, my friends, has happened before.
you want your digital life a bit more private. As we head back to the video,
the Norse Vikings first settled in
Iceland in 874 AD and lucky for us in
this instance were impeccable record
keepers. Their annals and sagas describe
fire coming out of the sea and darkness
during daytime in Urekunez area between
1210 and 1240.
During this period, now often referred
to as the Rekines fires, the peninsula
was gripped by repeated fisher
eruptions. Widespread environmental
destruction led to devastating effects
on livestock and farming, pushing the
medieval communities here to the very
edge of survival.
Eight centuries later, what was once
recorded as folklore have become a
critical guide for modern science and
potentially survival.
Beneath soil and lake sediment in
volcanic regions are layers of volcanic
ash. When analyzed, these tiny shards of
essentially glass carry a chemical
fingerprint with a precise mix of
silica, iron, magnesium, calcium, and
sodium. Now, crucially, these
fingerprints vary from one volcanic
system to the next. When paired with
radiocarbon dating of the sediments
above and below the ash layers, as well
as observations from old lava flows, the
timing and sequence of historical
eruptions can be pieced back together.
In March 2020, Christian Simutson from
the Icelandic Geo Survey and his
colleagues published evidence of at
least three major rifting and eruptive
episodes over the last 4,000 years, each
lasting a few hundred years and spaced
roughly 800 to a,000 years apart. Now,
to be honest, this would have been quite
good to know before Iceland set up the
majority of its economy, infrastructure,
and housing in this area. But even so,
what on earth was causing them? The
timing of all these cycles comes back to
that uniquely Icelandic geological
boiling pot that we talked about at the
start. Yes, Iceland as a nation sits on
the mid-Atlantic ridge, but the
Rekineses Peninsula in particular sits
directly astride. There is no single
centralized volcano here. The plate
boundary itself is the volcano. As the
North American Anurasian plates slowly
pull apart, lateral strain builds within
the crust, it stretches and over time
fractures. This creates underground
networks of fishes that are invisible to
us at the surface. As magma rises from
below, it intrudes into any nook and
cranny it can find. At first, it stalls
at depth, not erupting, but building
pressure. For centuries, this process
unfolds quietly, steadily, relentlessly.
The apparent calm above ground is
deceptive.
Eventually, the combined force of plate
motion and magma pressure just becomes
too much, and the crust gives way.
Existing fractures are forced open. New
ones tear through rock and magma surges
sideways for kilometers at a time
through networks of thin underground
dikes, triggering these seismic swarms
that signal what comes next. When those
intrusions finally break the surface,
long fishes open and eruptions ignite
along the rift. Each eruption releases
some of the accumulated stress, and the
rift switches on and off over decades
until centuries of tension are relieved.
Then the system quietens, and the cycle
simply resets. And terrifyingly, the
most recent seismic swarms and eruptions
fit the expected cycles uncannily well.
This activity is right on schedule. But
when this cycle last played out, it was
medieval communities who were pushed to
the brink. What can modern Icelanders
really do in the face of a cycle that
cannot be stopped? Well, they're going
head-to-head with the lava. Obviously,
modern GPS and intererometric synthetic
aperture radar or INSAR from satellites
show that before eruptions, the land
inflates as magma accumulates. In 2021,
some areas rose by tens of centimeters
before subsiding again.
Taken together with thousands of small
earthquakes, magma pathways can be
mapped in real time. This allows
geoysicists to estimate the volume of
magma involved as well as the depth and
shape of the reservoirs. And all of this
gave Iceland time to plan. Well, as much
planning as you can do when it comes to
huge impending lava flows.
When seismic activity first returned to
the Rekineses Peninsula, Iceland's
Department of Civil Protection and
Emergency Management recognized its
significance. To prepare for the looming
period of increased vulcanism, they
established the Infrastructure
Protection Group, which feels like it
sort of needs its own Avengers style
superhero fanfare, doesn't it? The IPG
does pretty much what it says on the
tin. This crack team of engineers,
scientists, and emergency planners
worked to protect people and critical
infrastructure from lava. As the 2021
eruptions near Farraha unfolded, lava
eventually spilled beyond shelter
valleys and began creeping towards
roads. The Department of Civil
Protection made a pivotal decision. They
would try and hold it back. With no
recent president to draw from, this
response became a realtime field
experiment in lava flow engineering. And
the first challenge was deceptively
simple. Where to put a barrier? And
that's where engineers like Horn come
in. And thank you so much to her. She
helped us massively in researching this
video. With a background in hydrarology
and hydrodnamics, Horn's expertise was
in modeling floods and river ice, both
slow and fastm moving destructive flows
shaped by gravity and terrain. Yeah,
those fundamental principles, it turned
out could be applied to lava. By using
flood simulation software originally
designed by the US Navy, she was able to
quickly predict with remarkable accuracy
where molten rock was most likely to go
next.
Teams rushed to build the first
experimental barriers using whatever
they could find in situ. Literally
anything, mud, gravel, soil from past
eruptions. Crews worked around the clock
and they were close enough to feel the
burn from the encroaching lava. This is
serious stuff. Now, the aim here was not
to stop the lava outright, but to delay
it, restrict it, and essentially buy
time. These early tests show that this
approach could actually work. But they
also revealed some critical lessons.
Firstly, lava type matters, and it
matters a lot. R lava is chunky and
rough. When this hit a barrier, it
thickened and piled up like a sort of
geological porridge. So, if you want to
stop it, your walls need to be built
like a medieval fortress.
PHO hoy lava, on the other hand, is
smooth and much runnier, behaving more
like honey, if we're doing the breakfast
metaphor thing. Interestingly, drone
surveys showed that it flowed over dams,
but could be redirected using angled
BMS. And it was this piece of
information that immediately suggested
that a barrier doesn't have to stop lava
flow. It just needs to guide it. These
initial field trials made up as they
were going along led to the most
ambitious lava defense project ever
attempted. And as volcanic activity
shifted further west, closer to towns,
the lessons became more critical.
Multicometer barriers up to 24 m high
have now been built across the Rekineses
Peninsula. Such is the scale of them
that two new quaries have been opened to
provide enough material. The new
barriers are built with compacted
bassalt gravel to resist heat and
pressure. And they're armored with
boulders and stabilized to prevent
erosion and collapse. They're carefully
shaped, too, based on lava modeling to
steer lava away from towns, key roads,
and crucially, the Sparteni geothermal
power station.
Of course, there are gaps in these
barriers, too. Strategic openings for
roads, pre-cast concrete bridges for
pipelines, and emergency access. But
each one also comes with pre-positioned
earthworks in place so they can be
sealed within hours if necessary. And
trust me, it's been necessary. Behind
the scenes, the IPG works in constant
coordination with the Department of
Civil Protection and Emergency
Management and Universities. For
engineers like Horn, being on call is
the new normal. As seismic swarms
propagate, she can have as little as 15
minutes warning before lava reaches the
surface. In that time, she has to rush
to her office, be there to receive the
first data, which she uses to model the
flow, and then she has to tell the team
on the ground which gaps to close off.
After the immediate threat is over, so
follows more modeling, more barriers,
and more refinement, and so on and so
on, again, and again, again. But the
good news is, so far, these models have
been incredibly accurate. Each time Horn
and her team have built new barriers or
increased the height of current ones,
they very quickly be needed. But that
job does come with tough decisions. They
can't save everything. In late 2024,
lava overran the car park of the famous
Blue Lagoon Spa. This wasn't a failure
of defenses, but a reminder of
priorities. Newly installed barriers
were designed to protect the power
station and the spa buildings. And the
car parks, well, those were sacrificed.
RIP cars for Grintovvic. However, the
limits are laid bare. No barrier on
Earth can protect a town from fishes
that open directly beneath the streets.
Beyond this system of physical defenses,
scientists and authorities are looking
at how else they can prepare for a circa
200-year eruptive period. Plans include
everything from relocating electricity
mass and burying pipelines deeper within
bedrock. Major road networks are being
redesigned to allow for rapid rrooting
and AI is being drafted in to further
improve forecasting.
Civil protection agencies around the
world are closely watching this all
unfold. This is the first time a modern
nation has tried to engineer its way
through an ongoing volcanic crisis. If
it works, this will become the blueprint
for a new form of geological urban
defense. One that fights against the
slow, relentless forces of Earth itself.
Iceland truly is the ultimate land of
fire, and it's as captivating as it is
deadly. And that really isn't likely to
change anytime soon. As the latest cycle
of the Rekin fires takes hold, Iceland
will once again brace itself and the
world will watch the latest round of
humans versus nature. Whatever the
outcome this time around, the feeling is
that at some point something will have
to give. And for the sake of the people
of Iceland and beyond, all we can do is
hope it's not them.
Just before I leave you, I'd love your
feedback on the pronunciation of some of
these words because oh wow, were these
ones tricky. I committed. I tried really
hard. I think it went okay. If you got
this far in the video and we did a good
job, leave us an Iceland flag in the
comment to let us know. And if you're
from Iceland, wouldn't that be amazing?
I'd love to know your feedback. Thanks,
and I'll see you in the next one.