A few weeks before my July 2017 artist residency in Laugarvatn, Iceland, I spent a few days on the offshore island of Heimaey in the mini-archipelago of Vestmannaeyjar (also known as the Westmann Islands) southeast of Reykjavik and a short ferry ride from the mainland. Vestmannaeyjar is one of the country’s many active volcanic zones; it includes the island of Surtsey, formed only in 1963, and on Heimaey the volcanoes Eldfell and Helgafell which have inspired two recent worldviews. (Incidentally the double “l” in Icelandic is usually pronounced “tl.”)
Eldfell (left) and Helgafell in the background, looming over the village.
Jagged profile of Heimaey in the distance, seen from the Ring Road near the southern coast of the mainland. (The island has a lot of dramatic topography aside from the volcanoes.)
Eldfell seen from the summit of Helgafell. Located on the outskirts of a village rather than a major city, these volcanoes are less strictly “urban” than those in Auckland, but they don’t feel at all remote.
I rarely buy souvenirs anymore, but I was tempted by these volcano hats….
Heimaey is the largest and only inhabited island in the archipelago, with a population of about 4,000. On January 23, 1973, the volcanic vent that was to soon to become Eldfell (“Fire Hill”) without warning began erupting fountains of lava in a resident’s backyard. The entire population of the island was safely evacuated and the lava flows were slowed by water hoses, but a large portion of the village was buried in lava and ash, and at the end of the five-month eruption about a square mile (a quarter of the island’s area at the time) of new land had been added. Today, the majority of Heimaey’s population has returned, and Eldfell is a dark 200m-high cinder cone looming over the village.
For reasons I went into in my last post on volcanoes in the city of Auckland, small volcanic cones in human settings fascinate me; I was particularly drawn to the tension between Eldfell’s “domesticated” quality (its accessibility plus its backyard origins) and such recent evidence of its destructive power. Home Island below, named for the English translation of Heimaey (there’s something inspiring about the island’s population returning home to a place now so strongly defined by an active volcano), captures this strange and slightly ominous juxtaposition of volcano and village. The work includes one small fragment, near the center, recalling the eruption itself—the first instance that I’ve played with fracturing time in addition to space.
Home Island, watercolor on aquabord, 24”x36,” inspired by Eldfell.
Sacred Hill, watercolor on aquabord, 30”x22,” inspired by Helgafell. The triangle of brown in the lower left is the summit of Eldfell.
Heimaey’s second volcano, Helgafell (“Sacred Hill”), is located a short walk away from Eldfell and rises to about the same height. It formed about 5000 years ago and is dormant, but its juxtaposition with the village is still striking—seen from town its profile is more perfectly conical than Eldfell, the top few meters are still bare gravel and boulders, and the trail to the summit begins randomly between a farmhouse and a soccer field. The sensation of the island spiraling around the volcano in the worldview wasn’t planned, and in real life Eldfell is much more the center of attention because of its newness to the scene. But I found Helgafell at last equally alluring, probably because it’s been pushed into the background by its more famous neighbor and yet could one day erupt again.
Darren