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WONDERS OF NATURE
Iceland island. Nature miracle
When you start a story about Iceland, it's hard to decide what to write about first. Miracles and beauties of nature for this distant island - the "hermit of the Atlantic" - clearly did not regret: among them are geysers and hot springs, glaciers and icebergs, waterfalls and mountain lakes ... But the main attraction of Iceland is, of course, volcanoes, so unlike the fire-breathing mountains of other areas Earth and so effectively showing their temper on land, and under water, and even under the ice.
Through the window of an airplane flying up to Iceland, high cones of volcanoes, dressed in white covers of snow and ice, are already visible from afar. The tongues of glaciers descending into the valleys look like giant frozen waterfalls from above. They are striking against the background of black basalt lavas covering the mountain slopes. In no other European country do ice fields take up so much space: an eighth of the entire territory! The largest sheet glacier - Vatnajekull (in translation - "a glacier that gives water") - is located in the southeast of the island. This is a vast ice plateau, pierced in eight places by the tips of extinct and active volcanoes. The Icelandic glacier is the largest area of modern glaciation in Europe. But the first thing you see when you get off the plane is the mountains. Of European countries, only in Switzerland they occupy a large area. The mighty icy domes and cones of Icelandic volcanoes sometimes rise up to two kilometers. Almost always their tops are covered with clouds, and in the rays of sunset the mountains seem crowned with golden crowns. Already in the capital of the country, the volcanic island begins to demonstrate its natural curiosities. The ancient Vikings, who explored Iceland in the XNUMXth century, named the bay where the city is now located, Reykjavik ("Smoking Bay") - because of the white puffs of steam rising from numerous hot springs. The bay gave its name to the first settlement in the country, which became its capital. Springs now heat the houses and greenhouses of the townspeople, so in Reykjavik today you will not find a single chimney: the whole city is heated by underground heat. The island also has its own valley of geysers - Haukadalur. It is located a hundred kilometers east of Reykjavik, at the foot of the Laungjekull Glacier. It is here that the famous Big Geyser is located, which hit the first settlers of Iceland at one time. It was the first natural hot fountain that Europeans saw. Subsequently, all gushing hot springs began to be named after him. The three-meter vent of the Big Geyser opens in the middle of a bowl-shaped pool of white calcareous tufa. It is filled with turquoise boiling water, which then splashes to the bottom of the bowl, then again goes into the hole. Finally, the geyser gathers strength and throws a powerful jet 40-60 meters high into the sky three times in a row. This "fireworks" lasts ten minutes, and then the water and steam seem to be drawn back into the vent. The Great Geyser has been erupting less and less lately. But its neighbor - the Shtokkr geyser - is still full of energy and punctually pleases tourists with its jets, soaring 30-40 meters up. Another geyser valley is located at the northern edge of the already mentioned large Vatnajokull glacier, next to the Kverkfjedl volcano. And in total, 250 groups of thermal springs have been discovered in Iceland, including 7000 hot springs - more than anywhere else in the world. This is not surprising - after all, the temperature of the bowels of the island is very high. In some places, it increases by half a degree with each meter of depth. (For comparison: in Moscow this figure is one hundredth of a degree per meter.) Another wonder of Iceland is its waterfalls. Anyone who visits here at least once will never be able to forget their literally jubilant beauty. Among black rocks, green mosses, white snows and blue glaciers, short and turbulent Icelandic rivers break down from lava ledges, giving rise to an amazing variety of shapes and outlines of waterfall jets. These waterfalls are sung in Icelandic sagas, poems, fairy tales and novels. The most beautiful of all they consider Gullfoss ("Golden Falls") on the Hvitau River, not far from the Great Geyser. With two steps 20 and 36 meters high, the river falls here into a narrow gorge 70 meters deep and rushes along it for five kilometers to the exit to the plain. On a sunny day, the spray cloud in the gorge is framed by a bright rainbow, through the arch of which you can come close to the falling wall of water. The picturesqueness of the water jets especially benefits from the contrast of the colors of the finely white stream (Hvitau in Icelandic - "white") and the blue-black basalt rocks, on which Gullfoss noisily collapses. And the highest waterfall in the country - Hauifoss, located on the neighboring river Fossad, has a height of 130 meters. In one long leap, Phossad flies off the lava plateau here and falls into the valley in a snow-white ribbon, expanding downwards. But the king of all the waterfalls in Iceland is undoubtedly the mighty Dettifoss - the most powerful waterfall in Europe. It is located far in the north of the island, and it is not easy to get to it. But a traveler who decides on a difficult and long journey to the icy shores of the Greenland Sea, along which icebergs sometimes float in summer, will certainly be rewarded for his perseverance. One of the largest Icelandic rivers with a long name, Jekulsau au Fjedlum, falls just before the exit to the plain from a 44-meter ledge with a mighty water wall, somewhat reminiscent of Niagara. The Icelandic poet compared the elastic, springy jets of Dettifoss with tightly twisted girlish braids. Due to glacial feeding, the color of the water in the waterfall is brown-brown, which is unusual for Icelandic rivers. A huge mass of water with a roar disappears into a giant crevice 30 kilometers long and 100 meters deep. In the summer, when the glaciers melt, two hundred cubic meters of water per second passes through the waterfall! Above and below the river there are five more waterfalls, though smaller than Dettifoss. The lakes of Iceland are also amazing. Many of them do not freeze all winter due to the abundance of warm springs at the bottom. Such places are usually inhabited by numerous colonies of birds. The pearl of the island is located in the very north of Iceland, Lake Myvatn ("Mosquito Lake"), famous for the abundance of trout in its waters and wild ducks on the shores. There are a good ten thousand of the last here, and all of them have enough food in the warm, ice-free waters of Lake Myvatn. But the large Lake Tourisvatn at the foot of the Hekla volcano is absolutely lifeless. Its waters, dammed by a frozen lava flow, are poisoned by volcanic gases. Hekla is Iceland's most popular volcano. Its ideally correct gentle cone is clearly visible from Reykjavik, and for the Icelanders it is the same national symbol as for the Japanese - Fujiyama. And just like in Japan, thousands of tourists strive every year to climb its peak and look into the dark depths of the crater. But Hekla's temper is very restless. Its first eruption known to people occurred in 1104. Subsequently, the volcano woke up more than twenty times at intervals of twenty to one hundred and two years. The last time this happened was in 1991. And in total, over a thousand years of Icelandic history, more than one hundred and fifty volcanic eruptions have been recorded on the island! During the Middle Ages, Hekla was the most active and most famous volcano in Europe. Rumors of an Icelandic fire-breathing mountain circulated throughout Europe, terrifying the Christian world. Legends were made up about Hekla, one more absurd than the other. In any monastery in England or Germany, learned monks told the flock that it was in the crater of this volcano that the entrance to hell was located. And in the writings of the Italian Jesuits of the XNUMXth century, one can find, for example, the following lines: There were "eyewitnesses" who claimed that already at a distance of one mile from Hekla one could hear the cries of sinners, weeping and gnashing of teeth, when great ravens drive sinful souls into these hellish gates. When in 1700 two naturalists who arrived in Iceland wanted to climb Hekla and explore its crater, they could not find porters: none of the locals wanted to voluntarily go to visit the devil. It must be said that there were quite good natural reasons for the fear inspired by the formidable mountain. Not only was Hekla erupting frequently and spectacularly, but also close to the densely populated area of Reykjavik, each burst of activity caused tangible damage, not comparable to the harm caused by more distant volcanoes. The most powerful eruptions of Hekla occurred in 1300, 1510, 1693 and 1766. At the same time, she threw out abundant clouds of ash and ruined the meager harvest of the Icelanders, and at the same time destroyed sheep pastures. In 1766, ash and volcanic bombs flew southwest, just in the direction of Reykjavik, and the eruption that lasted two years brought the greatest damage to the inhabitants. The strength of the eruption can be judged by the fact that a peasant who was eighty kilometers from the volcano was killed on the spot by a volcanic bomb! After 77 years, in 1845, a new eruption of Hekla began. This time the ash drifted east, and was soon seen to fall in the Orkney Islands and the north of Scotland. The mountain pastures of the Icelanders suffered again, but Reykjavik was spared trouble. Hekla then dozed for more than a hundred years, but in 1947 an explosion of enormous power announced a new eruption. Within ten minutes after the first tremors, a column of volcanic ash and gases 30 kilometers high rose from the crater of the volcano. Explosions were heard even at the opposite end of the island. The entire area south of the volcano was plunged into darkness. Eight newly formed craters poured fiery lava flows. The snow melted on the summit, and streams of mud, mixed with stones and ash, rushed into the valleys. The whole area was covered with a thick layer of ash. The wind carried it thousands of kilometers away, and after 51 hours it was recorded falling in the capital of Finland, Helsinki. However, classical volcanoes of the central type are not very characteristic of Iceland. Here another - fissure type of volcanism. A striking example of this is the terrible eruption of the Laki volcano in 1783. In fact, Lucky is not even a volcano, but a giant crack in the earth's crust, filled with solidified lava. In June 1783, a strong earthquake caused people to run out of their houses. Then three fountains of steam and smoke rose from the ground. Soon they turned into columns of fire, and then merged into a solid wall of fire. In the bowels there was a roar, crackling and rumble. A few days later, a deafening explosion thundered and a gigantic thirty-kilometer crack formed. More than twenty pillars of fire rose from it, which then connected, forming a continuous curtain of fire along the entire length of the crack. Then liquid lava poured out of the crack in a wide stream, filling the surrounding valleys, blocking the way for rivers, destroying villages. Local residents in a panic fled wherever they looked, leaving their houses and property. One of the rivers, dammed by a lava flow, formed a new lake. And ash, slag and bombs continued to fly out of the crack. There was no sun for weeks. It got even worse when it rained. The ashes were washed away from the mountains and carried to the fields and pastures. Rain moisture, which absorbed volcanic vapors and gases, turned into acid, which charred clothes and burned the body. That's when it was time to change your mind about where the gates to hell are. Heat gave way to cold, acid rain to hail, snowstorm to ash. Finally, the eruption began to subside. The flames of the fiery pillars faded and took on a bluish-greenish hue. It seemed like you could take a breath. But it was only a respite. The volcano again gained strength, and everything repeated, only the power of the eruption increased even more. Lava flows demolished the surviving houses, churches and even rocks, and the water from the melting glaciers washed away everything that the lava did not destroy. Monstrous lava flows up to a hundred meters high slowly crawled across the island in three directions, forming fiery lava falls on steep cliffs. In terms of power, they exceeded the flow of large European rivers, such as the Rhine or Elbe, by 2-3 times. Only after five months the eruption began to subside, but only after another three months Lucky finally calmed down. For a whole year then the sun did not shine over Iceland at full strength: the ashes hung in the air interfered. Ashes from the eruption of Lucky hauled even in North Africa. The disaster killed half of the cattle, three-quarters of the horses, and four-fifths of all the sheep on the island. Almost all the birds and many fish in the lakes and coastal parts of the sea died. The famine that began on the island, and the diseases that followed it, mowed down the population of the country. In less than a year, it decreased by a third (from 30 to 20 thousand people). For half a century, Iceland could not recover from the consequences of a terrible cataclysm. Volcanic eruptions sometimes occur not only on Iceland itself, but also on the ocean floor off its coast, as well as on small islands off the coast. So, in 1973, the eruption of the Helgafell volcano began on the island of Heimaey off the southern coast of Iceland. It lasted a year and a half, and during this time the area of the island grew one and a half times due to the lava that poured into the sea, the flows of which reached three hundred meters in height. The important fishing port of Vestmannaeyjar - the fourth largest city in the country - was destroyed and covered with ash and volcanic bombs like ancient Pompeii. The inhabitants, however, managed to be evacuated in time, and after the end of the eruption, they, unlike the Romans, managed to dig up the streets and houses of the city drowned in ashes. Now Iceland's fishing capital is back to normal. Underwater eruptions are also a formidable and majestic sight. However, it is extremely rare to observe them from beginning to end. The exception was the fiery epic off the coast of Iceland in 1963. At the end of November of this year, a column of smoke over the ocean was noticed at dawn from a fishing schooner. Deciding that some vessel was on fire, the fishermen rushed to the rescue. But soon the smell of sulphurous gas, powerful jolts resounding on the deck, clouds of steam and a thick black cloud rising higher and higher into the sky made it clear to the crew that a volcano was erupting at the bottom of the ocean. By evening, a black island appeared from the water. In the center of it gaped a crater, from which a stream of lava, heated to 1200 degrees, fell like a fiery waterfall into the ocean. The water boiled and churned. And above it rose a huge cloud. Soon it reached a height of ten kilometers and covered the sun. Lightning flashed in black clouds of ash. The next day, black rain poured out of the water with ashes. The cloud that hung over the island was visible from Reykjavik, from a distance of 120 kilometers. Scientists observed the progress of the eruption from aircraft and ships, although at the same time they risked falling under a direct hit from a volcanic bomb. The island that emerged from the ocean grew rapidly. On the first day, he rose ten meters above the water and reached a length of half a kilometer. In two days he reached a height of forty meters, in another three days he rose a hundred meters above the ocean. Two and a half months later, the new island towered almost two hundred meters and had a diameter of one and a half kilometers. He was given the name Syurtsey, in honor of the Old Norse god of fire Syurtur. And in May 1965, six hundred meters from Surtsey, as a result of a new underwater eruption, another island appeared, but was soon washed away by waves. Meanwhile, the activity of the volcano on Surtsey did not decrease. New lava flows continued to expand the area of the island. It was not until June 1967, after three years and seven months, that silence fell on Surtsey. The new island retained the heat of the cooling lava for a long time. But a year later, birds began to settle in it, then the first plants appeared, and then flies and butterflies. The earth's crust in the area of Iceland is constantly under stress. After all, the island is located exactly on the crest of the Mid-Atlantic global tectonic seam, along which there is a divergence of lithospheric plates that carry North America and Eurasia. Every year they "drive off" from each other by two centimeters, and this process is accompanied by new underground cataclysms. Volcanic eruptions in Iceland happen every five years, and earthquakes even more often. And for tourists who love truly thrills, there is no country in Europe more attractive than this island of fire and ice, where two hundred volcanoes and one hundred and twenty waterfalls, dozens of hot geysers, blue lakes and spacious glaciers await. And besides, who would refuse to visit a country where you can walk along the streets of "modern Pompeii" and set foot on the shore of a freshly baked (literally) island that is not even forty years old. Author: B.Wagner
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