LAVA Centre

As the land of fire and ice, Iceland embraces and attempts to understand and interpret the dangerous combination of volcanoes and glaciers. It’s cool science and dramatic stuff, and it’s really valuable to get folks to think in geologic time…not “what’s for lunch” or even human history, but the clock ticking within and around planet Earth. Just FYI, Iceland is growing by 2cm per year. Which means someone’s farm is gonna be a lot bigger in a few thousand generations! If it doesn’t get blown away by a volcano…

The LAVA Centre provides a nice interactive experience and is located within <75 km of numerous volcanoes, all visible from the roof on a clear day, so the potential danger is very tangible and present.

There’s a hot bubble of magma beneath Iceland which is why has so many active cones. 

So, gotta give Tom some credit here…he did his masters research on volcanism and was actually a wealth of information while we fished, especially in the rugged, volcano-defined Highlands.  

But, when Tom was describing the two types of lava flows to Nonni and I, after scratching his head in remembrance for a second, and then coming up with “Pahoehoe” and “Aa lava,” you don’t even have to know Tom, to know that we just kinda winked and said “right Tom, got it, thanks.”

But decades later, he was absolutely right!