Geysers – as if volcanoes and glacier caves are not enough

I’m planing to visit Geysir in Haukadalur. This geysir is, in a way, The Geyser of the world because it was the first known geyser to modern Europeans and the one that all the others got a name after. English word geyser originate from the Icelandic verb geysa, “to gush” (gjósa).

Secret of a geyser is in pressure. But for geyser to form, we need two things. Water supply and heat supply. Water supply would be some underground river flow, and heat supply the most wondrous of them all – volcano. So, if you have these two under a surface mixing up, you have a great chance for geysir to pop out. As water is heated up by magma under the surface, on a very limited space, it starts to boil and expand. Pressure is growing and water is trying to come out. Once it finds its way up, it can reach remarcable heights. The biggest geyser ever known was Waimangu Geyser in the Taupo Volcanic Zone on New Zealand’s North Island. It was active for a very short period of time, between 1900 and 1904 and its eruptions were up to 450 meters high.
Back to Haukadalur. Although Haukadalur is a name for three different areas (in region of Snæfellsnes, peninsula Westfjords and Golden Circle) the one I’m planning to visit is valley Haukadalur which is part of the Golden Circle. This is the most popular locality for tourists. Haukadalur is geothermal area active since 1294 when local hot springs were activated by earthquake.
The Strokkur and the Geysir are two biggest geysers. Although Geysir is bigger it erupts rarely, unlike Strokkur which erupts every 5 to 10 minutes. There are also more than 40 other fumaroles, little hot sprigs, mud pots and nearby.

Strokkur right before it erupts

 

A fumarole (ultimately from the Latin fumus,” smoke”) is an opening in a planet’s crust, often in the neighborhood of volcanoes, which emits steam and gases such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen sulfide. The steam forms when superheated water vaporizes as its pressure drops when it emerges from the ground.

Fumarole

 

Glaciers and their secrets

Around 10.2% of the total land area of Iceland is covered by glaciers. Due to global worming, they are retreating at an accelerating rate. This alone would be enough reason to talk about them as much is possible and hope that appreciation for nature and its wonders will come from knowledge. Although you can find many interesting facts about glaciers on All about glaciers, I will not hesitate to tell you some of these facts myself.

A Glacier is formed when a huge amount of snow accumulate and can’t melt for very long period of time. Snow becomes so thick it turns into ice. The largest Icelandic glacier is Vatnajökull with surface area of 7764 km². Every glacier is slowly moving downhill like a huge icy river. Observing a glacier for some period of time, we could notice that while some years it’s going down, other years it’s retreating up. But, this is just an illusion due to a melting. Every glaciers is always going downhill, no matter what.

Center of the Earth

Snæfellsjökull glacier is a small glacier located in Snæfellsjökull National Park (one of three national parks in the country). It can be seen from Reykjavik on a clear day. Like many other glaciers in the country, Snæfellsjökull is also a volcano, a stratovolcano shaped like a cone. In Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, it is the entry point to the centre of the earth. In August 2012 the summit was ice free for the first time in recorded history.

One of the things I’m very eager to experience on Iceland are glacier caves, often mistakenly called the ice caves. The difference is in the way how they were formed. The ice caves are formed in “regular” caves where water has turned to ice and where temperatures are, at least in some parts of a cave, below 0°C all year round. Glacier caves are formed in glaciers, therefore in ice, where holes are carved by water running through or under the glacier. Scalloped, translucent walls that transmit a blue light are one of the most beautiful sights I’m expecting to see.Forming of these caves is due to ice melting or existence of a volcanic vents or hot springs underneath the glacier. When ice is melting and meltwater enters the glacier vertically (or almost vertically), well-like shafts, called moulins, are created (the term moulin is derived from the French word for mill). Moulins can be up to 10m wide on the surface and appear as really endless abyss.

Moulin

The geological wonder of Iceland

No wonder that Icelanders have such great respect for nature (Campers rip up moss to insulate tent) – they really have many reasons to be proud of it.

Iceland is geologically one of the most interesting places in the world. Geysers, thermal pools, lakes, fjords, ice caves and glaciers, all in one place? This is not a coincidence. Just a bit south of the Arctic Circle, Iceland is a unique compound of ice and fire. It lies on divergent plate boundary (where two tectonic plates are moving away from each other). As a result, Iceland has very interesting geology reflected in volcanoes and geothermal activities.

One of islands of Iceland, Grímsey, belongs to the Arctic Circle, but although Iceland is so far in the north, thanks to the Gulf Stream, it’s much warmer then we would expect. Average temperature during summer is around 10–13 °C (50–55 °F). During winter south of Iceland is not that cold (around 0 °C (32 °F)), but highland average is much less (around −25 to −30 °C (−13 to −22 °F)). The lowest temperature recorded was −39.7 °C (−39.5 °F). Icelanders would say: “If you don’t like the weather, wait  5 minutes.”. This is what I’m counting on during my winter visit.

The Eurasian plate and the North American plate started to separate and geological history of Iceland began. But this separation was not enough to create an island. If this was enough, we would have land following line of tectonic plates through the Atlantic ocean. Iceland is truly special place, were abnormal amount of magma rises onto the surface. There is more than 130 volcanoes, of which 18 have erupted since human settlement of Iceland began circa 900 AD. Thanks to its rich volcanic activity, this wonderful land is formed. Age of a surface is very diverse and interesting for studying. On the east an west we can find the oldest rocks. Through the center of land, rocks are significantly younger.

It is possible to walk through lava streams since the Holuhraun volcano is opened for hiking or maybe visiting inside of extinct volcano (link). There is just one question to answer: Which of these activities demands a greater daredevil? With progress of my research, indecisiveness about what I want to see first grows!

 

Aurora Borealis – the power of the Sun in the night sky

Flickering light that we call aurora or polar light is one of the most beautiful things I’m expecting to see on my trip to Iceland. Galileo Galilei gave name to Aurora Borealis in 1619. Aurora was the Roman goddess of dawn and Boreas was the Greek name for the north wind. This is how we call polar light appears on the Northern hemisphere. When it appears on the Southern hemisphere we call it Aurora Australis.

Aurora Borealis painted by Frederic Edwin Church in 1865

But what is causing this magnificent phenomenon? Storms on the sun send gusts of charged solar particles hurtling across space. We call this particles solar wind. If Earth is in the path of the particle stream, our planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere react. Most of these particles is caught in magnetic field but some of them manage to get to the Earth’s atmosphere. When the happens, charged particles from the sun strike atoms and molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, they excite those atoms, causing them to light up. What does it mean for an atom to be excited? Atoms consist of a central nucleus and a surrounding cloud of electrons circling the nucleus in an orbit. When charged particles from the sun strike atoms in Earth’s atmosphere, electrons move to higher-energy orbits, further away from the nucleus. Then when an electron moves back to a lower-energy orbit, it releases a particle of light or photon and there you have it – Aurora Borealis.

Image credit: NASA

Normally, the main region for this impressive display of light is the ‘auroral oval’, which lies at around 65-70 degrees north or south of the equator, encircling the polar caps. However, auroras can occur at even higher latitudes. One type is known as a ‘theta aurora’ because seen from above it looks like the Greek letter theta — an oval with a line crossing through the centre. You can find more about ‘theta aurora’ here.

This phenomenon is most likely to be seen during the night when there is no direct sunlight and when the sky is clear. Tracking weather forecast can be very useful and fortunately , there are some specialised websites where precise information can be found:

• en.vedur.is (gives forecast about cloudiness over Iceland)
• www.aurora-service.eu (uses data on solar wind collected from Nasa’s ACE spacecraft and magnetic field data to predict where and when is most likely for aurora to appear)