On January 13, an Icelandic volcano in the Reykjanes peninsula erupted near the town of Grindavik, spilling lava into the small town. This eruption comes in close succession of a previous volcanic eruption in the region that started on December
18 and lasted three days. While the population had been evacuated, the volcano has engulfed several houses in the town. Professor Holli Frey of the Geosciences department, who is currently teaching ‘GEO-206: Volcanology’ talked to Concordiensis about this eruption, sharing valuable insights on the mechanism, history, and impacts of this recent volcanic
activity.

Could you tell Concordiensis a little bit about yourself and your work with volcanoes, particularly in Iceland?

My field of Specialization within Geosciences is what we call Igneous Petrology and Volcanology. I am interested in how rocks form particularly how volcanoes form and why they erupt the the way they do, why they change their eruptive styles, and that type of thing. As part of my research, I get to visit different volcanoes around the world and I have done research in many differ-
ent places. I had the opportunity to visit Iceland in 2007 right before I started as a professor here, at Union College. I was co-leading a group of 30 University of Michigan students and we spent 3 weeks in Iceland basically exploring different types of volcanoes. There was no active volcanism in Iceland at that time.

What can you tell us about the recent Volcanic activity in Grindavik?

Iceland is a land of contrast – you have the black volcanic rock and basalt, and you have the white snow and ice and glaciation. The combination of those two can make for a very explosive interaction when you have the fire and ice. Iceland is one of the most volcanically active regions in the world because it’s a combination of both an oceanic hotspot and a rift zone. So there’s a lot of heat flow and a lot of magma that can make it to the surface, and it does. The organization that is in charge of overseeing the volcanic activity in Iceland is the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO). In the case of the impending eruption in Iceland, there were actually warning signs in October of 2023. There was heightened seismicity, which was sort of the first clue. There were more and more small earthquakes and they were sort of in a linear array and Iceland was getting up to a thousand earthquakes a day. These earthquakes were increasing in frequency and there was also deformation observed. That alarmed the scientists and they said, “Whoa- an eruption is possible.” These warning signs began to escalate and by mid-November, they called for the
evacuation of Grindavik, which is a coastal town of about 4000 people.

How did you find out about this explosion?

This is funny. So, I don’t use social media, but I have friends and family who are active on Instagram, X (for-
merly Twitter), and Facebook. Often, I find out about eruptions from friends and family because they know I am a volcanologist. About the eruption that happened in early December, I think it was one of my parents who actually texted me because they had visited Iceland and were looking at a lot of current events in the news. This recent eruption, I think it was a friend of my husband’s who texted him. It was a faculty member at Union who told us “It’s happening again.”

According to BBC, Volcanologist Evgenia Ilyinskaya that the peninsula could be entering a period of frequent eruptions. Would you agree with this?

I think that that’s definitely valid. What we have observed is that there is heightened seismicity, so even when there aren’t 800 earthquakes per day, there are still 200 earthquakes per day. If the magma is close to the surface of the earth, it will find a way. Given that not too far away there were major eruptions in 2020 and 2021 and you have magma that’s migrating through the system and taking advantage of the crustal weaknesses in coming to the sur- face and it also creates its own cracks so it’s just a matter of when and where. It will not be surprising if these kinds of eruptions keep happening for the next ten, fifty, or hundred years.

How has this eruption impacted Iceland and its people and what actions are being taken to overcome these?

This particular eruption is fairly localized. The town of Grindavik may never be the same because several houses were engulfed. As of Monday, the number of houses destroyed was more than a dozen. But the flows have stopped so there are a number of people who could return to their homes. The question is, is it viable to return to the homes? And this is always a question after
eruptions. It’s a personal choice whether the people are going to go back or not. You can try and stop the lava but there is too much pressure behind the flow of lava and it generally overtops or undermines barriers. So, once the lava starts moving into
an area until it stops, there’s really nothing you can do. Obviously, it’s devastating. But the last Icelandic eruption that had a more national scope was in 2010. The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010 actually shut down the Keflavík airport for two weeks and caused great havoc, particularly in northern Europe since that airport is a hub when you are flying to the UK. So, eruptions in Iceland can cause a lot of damage to homes and concerning air traffic. Frequent eruptions near the airport and major tourist attractions like the Blue Lagoon will cause these places to be closed if there is danger to human health which can come in the form of ash and the form of volcanic gases and pollution coming from the volcanoes.

Any final remarks on this eruption or volcanoes in general? Is there anything that makes this eruption stand out to you?

Every volcanic eruption has a unique character to it and volcanologists are trying to understand why eruptions happen they are getting much better at reading the signs of unrest and making the appropriate remarks to government officials who are then evacuating people. The number of fatalities as a result of eruptions is generally decreasing as we learn more and
more about volcanoes and can communicate that risk better to government officials.