Westman Islands: the archipelago and the volcano that woke in 1973

At half past one in the morning on 23 January 1973, a two-kilometre volcanic fissure opened on the eastern edge of Heimaey — the only inhabited island of the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago — with no preceding seismic warning that would have allowed anyone to anticipate it. The luck, if it can be called that, was that the island’s entire fishing fleet was in harbour that night because of bad weather. Under normal conditions the boats would have been at sea. What the islanders did in the following five hours was the most efficient evacuation in the modern history of a settlement threatened by volcanic eruption: 5,300 people onto the fishing boats and across to the mainland, with no deaths from heat, lava or gas.

The Eldfell eruption

The volcano born that night is called Eldfell — “fire mountain” in Icelandic. What began as a fissure of liquid lava accumulated enough material to form a 221-metre cone within weeks. The lava flow advanced westward, towards the harbour — the reason for the town’s existence. Without the harbour there was no fishing; without fishing there was no Heimaey. For five months, the question nobody could answer was whether the harbour would survive.

The answer came from an idea that was experimental and untested at this scale: cooling the lava front with seawater. The project, known as Cooling 1973, was driven by geologist Þorbjörn Sigurgeirsson against initial scepticism from much of the scientific community. Forty-seven water pumps were installed along the lava front, pumping 6.2 million litres of seawater per day. The artificial ice formed where water met lava slowed the flow’s advance metre by metre. It worked with a precision nobody anticipated: the harbour was left almost exactly as it had been before the eruption, and in some respects improved, because the lava that filled part of the bay made the harbour entrance more sheltered from the north wind.

What was left beneath

When the eruption ended in July 1973, a third of Heimaey lay under lava or ash. Four hundred houses had vanished beneath metres of volcanic material. Icelanders returned to the island that summer and began rebuilding; by 1974, most had come back. The ground heat lasted for years: it was eventually used for direct district heating, piping water under the layers of recent lava.

The Eldheimar museum, opened in 2014 in the centre of Heimaey, is built literally around one of the houses buried by the eruption. The glass and steel building allows visitors to see the house intact beneath metres of solidified ash — furniture and domestic objects in the position the family left them when they evacuated. It is a museum of archaeology of the present, not of a remote past but of fifty years ago. The scale of what happened, which numbers and maps struggle to convey, becomes clear when you look at a living room with a standard lamp still standing in the ash.

The world’s largest puffin colony

Vestmannaeyjar holds between eight and ten million Atlantic puffins (Fratercula arctica) across the uninhabited islands of the archipelago and the cliffs of Heimaey itself. This is the largest puffin colony in the world. The puffins arrive in May, nest in burrows they dig into the soft earth of the cliffs, raise their chicks, and return to the sea in August. During those weeks, the cliff area to the south of Heimaey has a density of puffins that is difficult to believe before seeing it.

The Póngur tradition — sometimes called “puffin rescue” in English — happens in August: puffin chicks emerging from burrows for the first time orient towards the moon to find the sea. The town’s lights confuse them, and they land on the streets instead of the ocean. Heimaey’s children go out at night to collect them in cloth bags, keep them until dawn, and carry them to the coast to release them towards the water. There is no formal organisation. It is simply what you do.

Getting there

The ferry from Landeyjahöfn on Iceland’s south coast takes thirty-five minutes and runs several times daily. In winter, when weather is bad, the service can be cancelled and Vestmannaeyjar becomes temporarily isolated. There are also direct flights from Reykjavík (twenty-five minutes, Eagle Air). Heimaey has enough for a full day or two days taken at a slower pace.

The complete Far Guides Iceland guide includes detailed routes across the whole island, interactive maps and all the practical information you need to plan your Ring Road and beyond.