July Iceland an alluring place

By way of a brief introduction .... Historically Iceland is believed to be home to one of the oldest surviving parliaments in the world and the first in Europe. The Althingi saw the first assembly at Thingvellir (meaning assembly fields).  But geologically speaking Iceland formed about 25 million years ago and so is one of the youngest landmasses on the planet, and home to some of the world’s most active volcanoes. 

The island owes its existence to a volcanic hotspot, a magmatic plume, created by a fissure, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR), where the Eurasian and American tectonic plates meet and slowly but continue to diverge. As a result, the Icelandic landmass is still growing. At the time of writing, the last volcanoes to erupt were Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, Grímsvötn in 2011 and Fagradalsfjall in December 2021.

Discovered in the 1950s, the mid ocean ridge systems are the largest geological features on the planet. It is a mostly underwater mountain range in the Atlantic Ocean that runs from 87°N - about 333km south of the North Pole - to Subantarctic Bourvet island at 54°S and is about 3 km in height above the ocean floor and 1000 to 1500 km wide. These plates are still moving apart, so the Atlantic is growing at the ridge, at a rate of about 2.5 cm per year in an east-west direction.

The red dots indicate earthquake centres (M4 and above) between 1964 and 2003

The orange and red parts are volcanic systems with a volcanic centre. The oldest parts of Iceland are dark grey and you can understand why that is so by looking at the direction of tectonic plate movement.