The (ash) history of Iceland, in my backyard – Part I

This week I was lucky enough to have a recently dug square hole (10m per 10m, about 2 meter deep) some 200 meters from my house in Southwest Iceland.

Needless to say I spend the past bright summer evenings of Iceland inside this hole, which has nothing else but dirt and rocks. To us, volcano lovers, having such a hole in a volcanic land is like finding a mine of gold!

The soil shows many layers of colored material, which is nothing but the ash that has fallen from the many eruptions that happened in Icelandic history. This is a science called tephrachronology and it became my newest hobby.

Photograph and copyright belonging to Irpsit, used on explicit permission by Volcano Café. An excavation near home. And I stayed until late night to look at its strange layers.

When an eruption happens (if it’s the explosive type) the ash usually drifts according to local winds. In Iceland, the wind can blow from every direction depending on the kind of weather. This results in ash being deposited in a space-specific way for every different eruption.

A large eruption such as Askja in 1875 (VEI5) blew almost entirely to the northeast (so since I live to the southwest, I cannot find any Askja ash). In practice this means that the absense of a famous eruption does not mean it did not happen, just that the ash blew somewhere else. Likewise, a smaller eruption can deposit plentiful ash if the same wind keeps blowing in one direction (example of Eyjafjallajökull blowing southwards towards Europe in 2010).

In one single spot, the ash from different volcanoes accumulates over time, giving a profile of layers, that correspond to a time orderly of eruptions of different volcanoes. Usually, famous eruptions such Vatnaöldur in 870 (when the settlers arrived) can be used as markers for less known eruptions. The identity of a volcano can be roughly identified by looking at its color. We know that few volcanoes in Iceland produce white tephra, only Hekla and the rarer eruptions of Öræfajökull and Askja. Grimsvötn often produces brown ash, while Katla or Eyjafjallajökull black ash.

But enough of introductions! Let’s go for the real thing.

Photograph and copyright belonging to Irpsit, used on explicit permission by Volcano Café. The history of many eruptions is recurded as different ash layers.

The walls from the hole reveal, at instant glansing, two bright WHITE layers (figure 1). At close inspection, the upper white layer (at 25cm) is actually a double of two light colored layers, while the lower at (49 cm) is a single thick layer. Obviously these layers seem to come from Hekla.

The Hekla 3 white layer
To confirm whether or not these are from Hekla, there is a scientific paper of a soil profile done very near to where I live, around Grimsnes volcano (just 5km from where I live). They found only one large white layer at 50cm which corresponds to the largest eruption of Hekla during Holocene, the Hekla 3 eruption (a VEI5+) of 1000 BC. This is probably our second and largest layer.

Picture taken from Wikimedia Commons. Hekla is the source of much white ash in Iceland (as observe from the deposits on its flanks).

So, imagine, an eruption that deposited a layer of about 4cm thick ash here. That is pretty astonishing considering that a normal Hekla eruption barely deposits ash here (I am about 50km from it). This euption resulted in a 18 year climate change in Europe, observed in tree rings. It should have been one big huge eruption.

Now, if we look at the top white double layer, that is surrounded up and down by two thick DARK bands. These are actually a pinkish brown. Both are about 3cm thick ash (impressive too), the lower band is especially large at some spots.
The two dark Bardarbunga ash bands
According to other studies (and to Inge B), and also my conclusion, these are both the Veidivotn ash (1477) and the Vatnaöldur ash (870 AC), known as Settlement Ash (because it happen around the arrival of the vikings to Iceland). At least the Vatnaöldur ash is widepread reported everywhere in Southwest Iceland. Furthermore both have orange colored deposits underneath (actually light pink in Veidivotn ash, and bright orange in Vatnaöldur ash) which is expected. Both eruptions started with rhyolite ash from Torfajokull followed by the greyish/brown color of Bardarbunga fissures. The Torfajokull ash in 1477 was erupted from Brennisteinsalda, which is a mountain very colorful but mostly pink and orange.

Brennisteinsalda is the volcanic cone that erupted some colorfull rhyolite in 1477 (within Torfajökull).

The “double” white band of Hekla 1104 and 1341
If these are correct (I don’t confirm they are), then there are 2 white tephra eruptions in between. It’s easy to ascribe one to Hekla in 1104 (the largest eruption of Hekla since settlement (and second largest of all volcanoes), a very destructive one, but the ash during that one, was reported to go mostly northwards). The other one could either be the eruptions of Hekla in 1300 or 1341 (both with heavy ash) or less likely the 1362 eruption of Öræfajökull, which was the largest eruption of all, since settlement! Yes, larger (in tephra and intensity) than all Katla eruptions, Laki, Veidivotn, Askja or Hekla. Few of you know that Öræfajökull is a mamoth volcano, the largest in Iceland (and tallest).

However, I do think that this more recent white layer, was most likely the 1341 eruption. In 1300 the ash blew mostly northwards resulting in a famine, but in 1341 it blew westwards, and quite far away (towards Akranes). In 1362, the ash of Öræfajökull blew mostly to the southeast, opposite of where I am (and I know little ash felt to the west, in Vík – information from Skaftafell national park).

There is so much I write in a second part. All the minor layers in between (that you only see in close-ups) and all the broad bands below Hekla 3. Until then, let’s us discuss what we have so far.

IRPSIT