Askja, Iceland's largest volcano: with a description of the great lava desert in the interior: and a chapter on the genesis of the island

Front matter

■ ■ ■ ■ ASKJA, ICELAND'S LAKGEST VOLCANO. The original intention was to publish this monograph in November last year, with a small map of Iceland and a separate plan of the volcano ; but while it was in the press the author undertook to write a " Guide to Iceland," and therefore determined to compile a map of the Island that would serve for both works ; the publication of this volume being in consequence delayed until the map was completed. The map herewith is much superior to what otherwise would have been furnished, it being on a far larger scale than has hitherto been published in England. Thus, so far, the purchaser of this work is a gainer by the delay in its appearance ; and the author trusts that this will be taken as an atonement for the slight difference in type and paper of the Introductory Chapter from the remainder of the work, a reprint of that chapter having been rendered necessary by the substitution of one map for a map and plan.

May \U, 1882. WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE GREAT LAVA DESERT IN THE INTERIOR : AND A CHAPTEB ON THE GENESIS OF THE ISLAND BY W. G. LOCK, F.R.G.S., TRANSLATOR OF " SrORTING LIFE ON THE NORWEGIAN' FJELDS," AND AUTHOR OF "JOTTINGS ON SPORT IN NORWAY." Published by the Author at 16, Kingston Terrace, Charlton, Kent. 1881, J. s. levin, steam printer, 2, MARK LANE SQUARE, GREAT TOWER STREET, LONDON, E.C. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGES 1. PREFATORY 1 18 2. TO THE LAVA FLOOD IN THE MYVATNS ORÆFI 19 34 3. OVER THE ODaSaHRAUN TO ASKJA .... 35 70 4. THE PROBABLE GENESIS OF ASKJA, AND OF ICELAND 71 • " Come, wander with me," she said, •' Into regions yet untrod ; And read what is still unread In the manuscripts of God." And he wandered away and away With Nature, the dear old nurse, Who sang to him night and day The rhymes of the universe.' (Longfellow.)

Chapter I. Prefatoky

' 3Now the firm earth shakes like a frighted beast, And the island quakes from west to east ; And seas of fire come from the rent, As though in ire hy Heaven sent !' (John Mill.) iT is generally believed that Hekla is the chief volcano in Iceland ; but that this is AJjkcJi most certainly not the case will be shown in the following pages. In the desert interior of the island — the very fact of its being a volcano unknown even to the Icelanders themselves prior to 1875 — stands a volcanic mountain whose vast proportions dwarf HeJcla into utter insignificance. Its crater is between seventeen and eighteen miles in circumference, and consequently has an area of not less than twenty-three square miles ! There is ample proof in the condition of the volcano that it has erupted time after time since the settlement of Ice land, but owing to its distance from the inhabited coastal districts, no earlier eruption than that of 1875 B is recorded.

Eruptions that occurred there were placed to the credit of other volcanoes, or were said to have taken place amidst the icy wastes of the Vatna Jokull, a glacier-covered mountain region south of the volcano, having an area of 3,000 square miles. In the spring of the year mentioned, it may perhaps be remembered, all Europe was astonished by hearing that a large quantity of volcanic-ash had been wafted across the North Sea from the direction of Iceland and scattered over the Scandinavian peninsula as far inland as the central districts of Sweden. No news had been received from the Icelanders since the preceding November, the Danish mail steamers at that time not running in winter, and in March volcanic-ash brought the first tidings that a terrible eruption had taken place in that lone volcanic isle on the verge of the Arctic Sea.

Ash had been wafted from Iceland to Norway before, but never in such large quantities nor so far inland as upon this occasion ; and naturally considerable anxiety was felt in Denmark, until letters were received from the island, as to the fate of the inhabitants, the most fearful thinking it possible that Iceland, like ' Mark's Reef ' in Cooper's charming novel, had sunk again beneath the waves whence it had been upbuilded by prehistoric volcanic agency. The volcano which erupted in 1875 is the mountain ahove alluded to, the largest of a group named the Dyngjufjoll (Bower-mountains), the bower being the before-mentioned huge crater, which bears the name of Askja (Basket). This volcano stands nearly equi distant from the north, south, and east coasts, being PREFATORY. 3 situated a few miles to the east of the centre of the Odacfahraun (Misdeed-lava-desert), the large lava desert in the interior of the island.

The eruption, or more correctly series of eruptions, was of a most extraordinary nature ; a terrific explosion in the heart of the volcano on the 4th of January first notified to the Icelanders that a volcanic eruption of some magnitude was about to take place. Some idea of the violence of this explosion may be formed from its effects : in Askja an immense mass of the lava deposits, five miles in circumference and of unknown but immense thickness, was disrupted, and sank bodily to a depth of over 700 feet into an abyss that must have existed below it in the bowels of the mountain ! while the earthquake caused by the concussion was one of the most alarming ever experienced, immense rifts, ten to twenty miles in length, being opened in the north-east part of the island. The greatest disturbance at a distance from the volcano took place in a desert region known as the Myvatns Oræfi (Midge-lake Desert), and here from the largest of the rifts molten lava welled forth throughout its whole length nearly continuously for four months after the earthquake.

The rift commences at a spot distant thirty miles from the subsidence in Askja, and extends in a north-north-easterly direction for over twenty miles. It is evident from the nature of the eruptions at the two places that this lava came through a subterraneous channel from Askja, where prodigious quantities of pumice and volcanic-ash were ejected, but, it is believed, no lava. Beyond some brief newspaper paragraphs announcing b that volcanic-ash, presumably from Iceland, had fallen in Scandinavia, and two others, one of which said Hekla had again erupted, and the other that an eruption had taken place amid the icy wastes of the Skaptdr Jokull, on the western side of the Vatna Jokull, nothing was heard in England of ( this eruption until Mr. "Wight, of Edinburgh, on his return home published in the ' Glasgow Herald ' an account of his visit to the lava-flood in the Myvatns Oræfi, and of his futile attempt to ascend the volcano.

This enterprising old gentleman tried so hard to accomplish his object, that he deserved to be the first alien to set foot in the huge crater of this volcano, but it was not to be. He says : ' At about three-fifths of the ascent I had to cave in. Sixteen stones weight, and years a bit beyond the middle of man's span, were not equal to the task.' Notwithstanding that the well-known traveller, Captain Burton, with a work on Iceland actually in the press, sojourned for some time in the summer of 1875 within a two days' ride of Askja, and four hours' of the seat of volcanic disturbance in the Myvatns Oræfi (as also did the author of ' The Home of the Eddas,' an exceedingly pretentious work on the island, subsequently published), nothing more, in all probability, would have been heard in England of this volcano had not our adventurous fellow-countryman, Mr. William Lord Watts, chanced this summer to he successful in his second attempt to cross the Vatna Jokull — then, it is believed, crossed for the first time.

From its icy wastes he saw smoke ascending from a PREFATORY. large mountain amidst the lava desert to the northward ; and notwithstanding he had encountered a snow-storm of several days' duration while crossing the Vatna, he ventured into the then virtually unknown wilderness of the Oddcfahraun, and forced his way to the volcano while considerable disturbance was taking place. In the November of the following year, he read a short paper before the Royal Geographical Society, and also published a very readable little work, entitled ' Across the Vatna Jokull.' Mr. Watts, in both paper and book, gave a very interesting and detailed account of his journey across the Vatna and the desert interior of the island ; and also in his book a graphic account of what was going on both in Askja and the 31yvatns Oræfi at the time of his visit to those places.

His description of the volcano itself, however, is somewhat meagre, and in some very important particulars incorrect ; but this is not to be wondered at, as at this time it was impossible to examine the volcano closely: ' The sides of the crater were evidently falling in,' says Mr. Watts, 'and huge wide cracks even where we stood, showed us that our position was not altogether a safe one; .... sometimes scarcely a minute elapsed between the roar of the stony avalanches.' Having stated that Mr. Watts' account of the Dyngjufjoll and Askja is in some very important particulars incorrect, it will perhaps be as well, as their description in his paper read before the Royal Geographical Society does not quite occupy the whole of a page of ' The Proceedings of the Society,' to quote it, that those of my readers who are not in possession of the ' Proceedings ' for 1876, may see what that gentleman had to say about the volcano, and be in a position to judge when they have perused this little work whether I am justified in my comment. 'I "cached" two days' provisions and proceeded to the Dyngjufjoll.

I found these mountains to consist of a series of semi-detached sections, some of which had broken out in ancient times, and by their insignificant (!) lava-streams had helped to swell the widely -extending lava desert of the Odadahraun. ' These sections of mountains described a heart-shaped form upon the south, enclosing the Askja. This is a three cornered piece of elevated land 4,000 feet high, about six miles long and three or four broad ; it is easily reached by a glen upon the north-east side of the Dyngjufjoll. The principal crater, which erupted this year, is situated in the south corner of the Askja. ' The crater is enclosed upon the eastern and western sides by mountains rising in some instances 1,000 feet above the Askja plain ; they appear shorn of their inner faces by the violence of the eruption, forming perpendicular cliffs of great height.' I cannot pass this statement without observing that this is the case only on the eastern side of what Mr. Watts terms the ' crater ' (the abyss formed by the subsidence, now the bed of a thermal lake), as the encircling mountain-wall, save to the east and south, is four and a half miles distant, the plain of Askja lying between.

(See Map.) To continue : ' These cliffs are rapidly falling in, avalanches of stone occurring at frequent intervals, and had formed in two places steep slopes of pumice and debris, which it is possible to descend ; all access to the floor of the crater is prevented, however, by an interior rim of the precipice immediately at the base of the heights.' PREFATORY. I here omit a paragraph eulogising the view over Askja, as it is not descriptive. ' This volcano, which, perhaps, we may be allowed to call the Oskjagja (the chasm of the oval casket),* does not appear to have produced anything but pumice, mud, and water, copious floods of the latter having evidently flowed from its crater. It is curious to remark that although this volcano has ejected water, it is neither a glacial nor a snow-capped mountain, and it is situated more than 100 miles from the sea.' I must again pause for a moment to observe that even a glance at the map accompanying Mr. Watts' paper would have prevented such a misstatement as that Askja ' is situated more than 100 miles from the sea,' it being, as before observed, and as will he seen by the map of Iceland herewith, almost equidistant from the north, south, and east coasts, the distance in an air-line being about sixty miles.

It is also worthy of notice that Mr. Watts speaks of the moun tain here in the singular, as being ' neither a glacial nor a snow-capped mountain,' not as ' sections of mountains,' and he is quite right in doing so, though hardly consistent; but he is quite wrong, as we shall presently see, in asserting that the mountain is neither glacial nor snow-capped ; no doubt he meant to show that the floor of Askja was bare of snow and ice. He concludes his brief description as follows : * I regret to have to add that the poetical name ' chasm of the oval casket,' which Mr. Watts here asks to be allowed to call the volcano, is unknown outside of his paper and book, Odgugja (Ostym— genitive of Ashja, gjd— a rift) signifying Basket-rift. It will be noticed, moreover, that the word is spelt incorrectly by Mr. Watts. ' Leaving the volcano of Askja behind us and proceeding in a westerly direction, we perceived that the lava from the Odada-hraun had entered the Askja upon its most western side, having run for a considerable distance up hill.

Upon descending the Dyngjufjoll to the west, a broad plain, barren and black with sand and lava, opened before us; this was the Odada-hraun.' s I should fancy that the Fellows of the Royal Geo graphical Society were about as wise subsequent as they were prior to the reading and publication of the above, as to the exact situation, magnitude, and appearance of Askja. It most certainly does not convey an impression to one's mind of a vast, almost circular crater over seventeen miles in circum ference, lying at a depth of 800 feet at the least, within a mountain, its mountainous periphery broken by gaps to the present level of the floor of the crater in two places only; of a mountain that had been built up by the deposit of innumerable lava-flows around and above a volcanic-vent to the height of 2,300 feet above the plain of the Oclddahraun, equal to 3,800 feet above sea level, and subsequently height ened by the upheaval of the immense masses of these lava-deposits, and of the substrata that now form Askja's periphery, the outer circumference of which, at an altitude of 3,500 feet, cannot be less than twenty four miles.

The altitude given by Mr. Watts of the lava-covered floor of Askja, 4,000 feet, is correct within a hundred feet or so, as also is the height of the encircling mountain wall, ' rising in some instances 1,000 feet above the Askja plain ; ' in fact it varies in height from 800 to 1,500. I have never visited the PREFATORY. western gap, through which Mr. Watts says the lava has entered from the OdiiSahraun, therefore I cannot say whether he is correct or not, but I have examined the eastern one, and there, lava that has issued in Askja has streamed out, not entered in ; and, as the superficial lava in that crater lies at the least 2,300 feet above the level of the OddSaliraun, it is quite certain, if Mr. Watts is right, that the lava which entered the western gap had ' run for a considerable distance up hill.' Beside the mountain in which Askja is situated, the Dyngjufjoll consist of a number of minor semi-detached peaks, extending to the northward from the eastern part of the northern front of the chief of these mountains, and another large mountain on the N.W. (hitherto unshown on any map) whose eastern face is, I should judge, about five miles in length from S.S.E. to N.N.W., quite detached from the others, an isolated peak standing between it and the chief mountain.

With all its faults, Mr. Watts' description of Askja was the only one presented to the English reader prior to August of the present year, when a paper descrip tive of the volcano by the author was published by the Royal Geographical Society ; for, from the day Mr. Watts stood in its weird amphitheatre, until the author pushed across the deserts to it in the summer of 1878, it had remained unvisited, save by the Professor of Mineralogy at the Copenhagen University, Fr. John strup. This scientist was sent by the Danish govern ment in the summer of 1876 to ascertain the nature of the eruptions in tbe previous year. Upon his return, the Professor read a paper before the Danish Geographical Society descriptive of the volcano and its doings ; but of late years so little interest has been taken in the Icelandic volcanoes by English scientists, that not even a resume of Professor Johnstrup's interesting and instructive paper ever appeared in England, much less a full translation.

French scientists, however, had not so readily forgotten the volcano from which the previous year ashes had been scattered over the north of Europe, and a resume of the Professor's paper appeared in a French scientific journal. Thus French geologists were enlightened, while their English contemporaries remained virtually in the dark as to the exact position and magnitude of a volcano which, there is reason to believe, marks the focus of volcanic activity in Iceland, and which has certainly played no unimportant part in the construction of the island. I would here beg leave to digress for a moment to make a few comments upon the works recently published on Iceland, and to observe what a contrast to the pluck and energy displayed by Mr. Watts, almost out of provisions after a hazardous journey, pushing on footsore and weary over a pathless fire-blasted wilderness to an unknown active volcano, was the utter want of these characteristics shown by Captain Burton and Mr. C. G. W. Lock, the author of ' The Home of the Eddas,' both of whom, incredible as it may seem, actually sojourned, as previously stated, within a two days' ride of Askja, and four hours' of the seat of volcanic disturbance in the Myvatns Oræfi, without — as far as appears in their works — even visit- PREFATORY. ing the latter place during the eruption.

Mr. C. G. W. Lock and several others (I do not know whether Burton was of the number or not) certainly one day did set out for the Oræfi, but this is how the excursion ended. Upon the way, it seems, they met Mr. Watts' guide Pall, from whom, Mr. C. G. W. Lock says (p. 11), 'we learnt that the nearest volcanic vent was still two hours' ride further into the desert, and that the eruption of molten matter had ceased, to be followed with clouds of smoke. . . . The majority voted against continuing the ride forward, and we accordingly turned our ponies' heads.' What a vacillating set ! I would have gone on alone had I been of the party ; and therefore it is pleasing to be able to disclaim relation ship with one so wanting in firmness of purpose as the author of ' The Home of the Eddas ' appears to be from this and other incidents ; notably the abandoning of the ascent of Hekla after journeying to its very base.

The day turned out stormy, so instead of waiting until the morrow he turned his back upon this famous mountain, and in his book the whole matter is abruptly dismissed in the following words, which savour very strongly of the feeling that actuated the fox to make his memorable comment upon the quality of certain grapes hanging far out of his reach (p. 63) : ' We scarcely felt disposed to go to the top simply for the sake of saying we had been there, and every other inducement had disappeared ' ! — the 1845 crater and other ' inducements,' it is to be presumed, had taken wing. There was no hurry, for he tells us at the conclusion of the chapter : ' There followed a week of enforced idleness ' at Reykjavik, and yet our author ' had no intention of spending an hour in waiting for an eruption ' of the Geysir upon the return journey from Hekla, so that he failed to see a sight for which most tourists cheerfully wait three or four days.

We could not expect an individual who thus naively describes his failures to carry out his undertakings, as if he thought it nothing remarkable to fail in whatever he attempts, and vacillancy a commendable charac teristic, to accomplish much ; and therefore it is not to be wondered at that he did not distinguish himself by exploring ' the unknown region to the south,' or cross the Oddcfahraun to Askja during his lengthy sojourn in Iceland. But we might have expected that he would have taken the trouble to ascertain, as his knowledge of geography appears to be so limited that he does not know the relative position on the Globe of the island about which he writes and the towns of Norway, and thus have saved the expose of his igno rance in the following absurd statement based upon the fact that two newspapers are printed in Akureyri : — ' Thus the Home of the Eddas may claim the honour of possessing the most northerly printing press in the whole wide world ' ! !

One thing is certain, ' The Home of the Eddas ' cannot claim the honour of possessing the most learned author in the whole wide world, for Tromso, N. Lat. 69° 38' (Akureyri, 65° 40'), I know from personal knowledge, had as far back as 1874 at least one newspaper printed there ; and, as it is a town which even at that time had a population of 5,000, a High School (termed Latinskole as in Reykjavik), no PREFATORY. less than three Banks, an excellent Museum, and other public buildings, it is surely of enough importance to warrant one in the belief that no one really an authority upon affairs Scandinavian could possibly be ignorant of its existence. However, I believe, Ham merfest, N. Lat. 70° 40', claims ' the honour of possess ing the most northerly printing press in the whole wide world.' I hope the information may prove useful to Mr. C. G. W. Lock, should his work reach a second edition ; as also may a hint that it will be well in the future to abstain from penning such declamatory sentences upon other writers as the following, or he may again unwittingly plait a whip-lash for his own back : ' Ye gods, what a geographer and historian ! ' — ' Instances like these make one lean towards the prac tice ... of appending writers' signatures . . . that outsiders may judge of his capacity for the office, and know what value to attach to subsequent articles from one who has already shown signs of tveakness.' To return to Burton, and his work.

To judge from the gallant Captain's two bulky volumes he had drifted to the ultima Thule of literature, compilation ; the bourne, alas ! too frequently, of those afflicted with cacoethes scribendi, when, as in this instance, they lack the energy to push into virtually unexplored regions, even when standing upon the very threshold. Whether Sir H. C. Rawlinson intended to be ironical or not, when at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society he made the following comment upon Captain Burton's book on Iceland, he was exquisitely so : ' the well known encyclopædic tastes and acquirements of the author enabling him in addition to the narrative of his journey to bring together a mass of information ' ! Truly, choice of words is everything ! It being pro verbial that encyclopædias are invariably a century behind the age, it is not to be wondered at that amongst the ' mass of information ' brought together by Burton, there was only the following about a volcano that was active while his work was in the press, and the 'ubiquitous' Captain within a two days' ride of it : 'I wonder also how that queer elongated horse-shoe farther south, the "Askja" or "Dyngjufjoll hin SySri " came to be laid out ; hut my knowledge of the ground does not allow me to correct the shape,' and, in the form of a footnote, a letter which went the round of the papers, stating that the eruption in January had taken place in the Skaptdr Jokull.

After one failure to ' plant a lance in Iceland ' by ascending the mountain named Herdubreid, the ' veteran traveller ' appears to have rested content with the laurels won in sunnier lands, for he did not again venture into ' the unknown region to the south,' as he himself terms the interior south of Myvatn. It may be observed of Iceland that it is a country much written about but very little described ; as notwithstanding there have heen to my knowledge six books, besides the two criticised, published since the 1875 eruptions and a number of magazine articles, hardly a word is penned by any one save Wight and Watts, respecting the volcanic vents active in the winter and spring of that year. Although this appears strange at first sight, it ceases to be so when one PREFATORY. hears in mind that the majority of the writers made hut a two days' excursion inland to the Geysir, or confined themselves to other well-beaten and often before described tracks, diving — pretty deeply, too, some of them, to obtain matter for a volume or an article — into the pages of Hooker, Henderson, and other antiquated authorities for information respecting the eruptions and volcanic vents of Iceland, totally oblivious of, or ignoring the fact that volcanic eruptions take place in the island once or oftener in every decade (since 1821 thirteen eruptions are recorded, besides a number of earthquakes), not infrequently at spots where an eruption has never taken place before, or at least in historical times ; f.e. the Myvatns Oræfi in 1875.

One author brought out a work of close upon 300 pages, after having been ten days on the island, during which lengthy sojourn he safely performed the perilous journey inland as far as the Geysir, distant two days' easy ride from the capital ! In addition to the above comments upon the recent works on Iceland, I feel it incumbent upon me to repeat, that I think English scientists of late years have greatly neglected the volcanic vents of this island and to observe that it is not over creditable to the Fellows of our Geological Society that not one has followed in the footsteps of Mr. AVatts, after the Royal Geographical Society making known through its journal the existence of a vast active volcano in the interior of Iceland, which promised, if examined by competent geologists, to throw considerable light not only upon the volcanic system of that island, but also of Europe ; it being well known that most of the great European earthquakes and volcanic disturbances have been either followed or preceded by terrific eruptions in Iceland.

As it is, English scientists have rested content with the description of the volcano furnished by Mr. AVatts, and, as a rule, utterly ignore its existence, and continue, year after year, to treat Hekla as the most important of the Icelandic volcanoes ; whereas, to judge by the ' lay ' of most of the lava-floods around Hekla, they do not appear to have flowed from that volcano, or even from rifts radiating from the volcanic vent of that mountain, but to have issued from rifts above a subterranean channel, which— if such exists and runs in the direction S.W. to N.E., indicated by the ' lay ' of the lava — would intersect the Askja crater, and be in all probability connected therewith. Upon my return in the autumn of 1880 after passing two summers in Iceland, during which I crossed the OddSahraun to Askja twice, I forwarded to the Royal Geographical Society the paper published in August last.

It was impossible within the limits of a short paper to do justice to a volcano that has played a very conspicuous part in the formation of Iceland, and therefore I resolved to bring out the present work. I have spent considerable time and money, and spared no pains to make this monograph as complete as possible, venturing, as before said, across the great lava desert twice, besides devoting a considerable amount of time to the construction of a map of Iceland on a far larger scale than has hitherto been PREFATORY. 17 published in England, which shows every recorded site of volcanic disturbance and a number of places famous in Edda and in Saga. I was greatly assisted in the construction of my map, and in my explorations upon my second visit to the volcano, by a small map of Askja and a tract of the Myvatns Oræfi by Lieut, (now Captain) Caroc, of the Danish Navy, who accompanied Professor Johnstrup to Askja ; and as some slight return for the assistance, I will bring this somewhat discursive prefatory chapter to a conclusion by doing an act of justice to the Lieutenant, who is in danger of losing the credit of having made this survey.