Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Fumaroles are places where superheated water reaches the surface as steam - the weird-
est Icelandic examples are at Hverir, where gases literally scream their way from sulphur-
ous vents in the earth. Lazier, messier bloops and bubblings take place at mudpots, for ex-
ample at Krýsuvík on the Reykjanes Peninsula, where heated water mixes with mud and
clay. The colourful splatterings around some of the mudpots are caused by various miner-
als (sulphurous yellow, iron-red), and also by the extremophile bacteria and algae that
somehow thrive in this boiling-acid environment.
For background information about the country's diverse geology, check out the revised
2nd edition (published mid-2014) of Iceland - Classic Geology in Europe, by Þór Þórdar-
son and Armann Hoskuldsson.
In 2002 scientists discovered the world's second-smallest creature, Nanoarchaeum equit-
ans, living in near-boiling water in a hydrothermal vent off the north coast of Iceland. The
name means 'riding the fire sphere'.
Ice & Snow
Glaciers and ice caps cover around 11% of Iceland; many are remnants of a cool period
that began 2500 years ago. Ice caps are formed as snow piles up over millennia in an area
where it's never warm enough to melt. The weight of the snow causes it to slowly com-
press into ice, eventually crushing the land beneath the ice cap.
Iceland's largest ice cap, Vatnajökull in the southeast, covers about 8% of the country
and is the largest in the world outside the poles. This immense glittering weight of ice may
seem immovable, but around its edges, slow-moving rivers of ice - glaciers - flow imper-
ceptibly down the mountainsides. Like rivers, they carry pieces of stony sediment with
them, which they dump in cindery-looking moraines at the foot of the mountain, or on vast
gravelly outwash plains such as the Skeiðarársandur in southeast Iceland. This can occur
very quickly, if volcanoes under the ice erupt and cause a jökulhlaup (glacial flood): the
jökulhlaup from the 1996 Grímsvötn eruption destroyed Iceland's longest bridge and
swept Jeep-sized boulders down onto the plain.
Several of Iceland's glaciers have lakes at their tips. Jökulsárlón is a stunning place to
admire icebergs that have calved from Breiðamerkurjökull. Luminous-blue pieces tend to
indicate a greater age of ice, as centuries of compression squeeze out the air bubbles that
 
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