National Geographic: Born of Fire Page #2

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ancient volcanic crater

they build a tent city where the

people of the town rediscover

each other in a quite different setting

Side by side, they celebrate

many things

home rule

won from Denmark more than a century ago

the inheritance of their Viking past

their survival of dangers

that sometimes rise from

the Earth itself

At midnight

young men set fire to a great wooden

structure built on the hillside

As the flames flare against the dark

they summon varied emotions

among the watchers

To their Nordic forefathers fire

brought warmth in the numbing cold

It was a symbol of life, of rebirth

But the people of Heimaey

have long known

that it also can bring destruction

and death

In the winter darkness of

January 1973 it brought disaster

Just beyond the town's edge a fissure

cracked the earth

abruptly spewing molten lava and

ash hundreds of feet into the air

Roused from their beds

by the sudden threat

most of the population was evacuated

to the nearby mainland

but volunteers would fight a five-month

battle with the new volcano

now called Eldfell, "Fire Mountain."

Within a week Eldfell

had raised a black

smoldering cone six hundred

feet high

and covered the town in ash

More than a hundred buildings

had been burned

or crushed under the advancing wall

of lava

In early February the lava threatened

to block the entrance to the harbor

Desperately, emergency teams fought

to dam the flow

by hardening the lava

with great streams of cold seawater

At last, by heroic effort

the harbor was saved

But as the eruption continued

through ensuing months

the lava would add almost one

square mile to the island

while much of the town lay buried

under cinders and ash

It would take years to dig out

But at last the precincts of the

dead are tidy again

Elsewhere in Iceland life goes on

Under the shadows of the volcanoes

that remain a perpetual enigma

farmers gather crops, prepare

for the winter to come

They are doing more

Boldly, Icelanders are making use of

the very forces that threaten them

In the north of the mainland

near the Krafla volcano

they are attempting to harness the

heat of a great geothermal field

to power homes and

industrial installations

Recent eruptions have reminded

Icelanders of the unpredictability

of the powers they are trying

to employ

With Dr. Haraldur Sigurdsson

vulcanologist from the University

of Rhode Island

Dr. Ballard visits a site where

recent lava flow

has threatened a newly-built

electric power plant

"There's the power plant below

us here

and if you look over this way..."

"Yeah. You can see the recent flows."

"The entire caldera, recent lavas..."

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