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Arrived outside of Heimaey this morning and took the ship’s tender into port. After grabbing a quick bite at a cafe, we strolled around the small town and walked up on the lava field that covered most of the town during the surprise volcanic eruption in 1973. The eruption started around 2 AM and lava quickly rolled downhill toward the town. Luckily the entire fishing fleet happened to be in the harbor and the entire population was able to safely evacuate before the town was completely covered in molten lava. Now there is a park of sorts atop the lava flow where they’ve marked the locations of streets and buildings deep underneath the rock. After our stroll, we boarded a tourbus which took around to see islanders practicing rope swinging. Apparently rope swinging was used in years past to harvest eggs from bird nests high in the cliffs that make up most of the coast of the island. Today it is more of a sport enjoyed by teenagers. Next we drove along the coast and up to a puffin colony where we were fortunate enough to spot several of the small birds before continuing on to the Heimaey airport, where a flight to mainland Iceland takes less than 5 minutes. (Interestingly, that is not the shortest scheduled airplane flight in the world. That distinction belongs to a flight between two of the Orkney islands which clocks in at just over two minutes one way, and just under two minutes the other.) Next we hiked up to the caldera of the volcano that buried the town for fine views of the lava field below and most of the island. After returning to the ship, we sailed by Surtsey, the youngest island in the world. Surtsey is an island of about 1 square mile which rose out of the sea as a result of an undersea volcanic eruption in 1954. It has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and as such is not accessible to any but a few scientists who study the migration of plant and animal life onto the new island. Ordinarily no one is allowed within a two mile radius of the island, but our ship was able to pass within half a mile of the island, affording us a close-up look at it.
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