The Blue Lagoon spa, one of Iceland’s most popular tourist destinations, has been evacuated as a volcano erupted, spewing lava and smoke and creating flaming fissures in the ground.
Iceland has had 11 eruptions south of its capital, Reykjavik, since 2021, when dormant geological systems reactivated after 800 years.
The Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa resort and hotel in the southern peninsula district of Iceland, about 50 km from Reykjavik, remains closed after the eruption early on Tuesday. The nearby fishing town of Grindavik was also evacuated in the hours before the eruption, RUV, the Icelandic public broadcaster, reported.
Helga Arnadottir, manager of the five-star Blue Lagoon hotel, said guests were woken and moved to other hotels as the eruption began, MailOnline reported. Reykjavik is so far unaffected and there has not been any disruption to air travel.
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The Icelandic meteorological office said: “An eruption has started on the Sundhnuksgigar crater row just south of Hagafell.” It said an “earthquake swarm” began at about 6.30am in a similar area to previous eruptions.
Two fissures have opened in the earth since the eruption began. One is 700 metres long and is still growing, according to the meteorological office. Another is just 500 metres away from the town, according to RUV. Photos show lava bubbling out of the fissures and flowing along the ground.
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Earthquakes have also hit the area, probably due to “stress release” related to the volcanic activity, the meteorological office said.
Rikke Pedersen, head of the Nordic Volcanological Center, told Reuters it was a “very limited eruption so far”, but similar in size to the eruption in January last year, which spewed lava into Grindavik. Most of the town’s 4,000 residents were evacuated in November 2023 and have not returned, but there have been regular evacuations since then for those who have remained. The most recent eruption was in November last year.
Local experts predict that the fissure eruptions, in which lava flows out of long cracks in the earth’s crust rather than a single opening, could continue for decades or even centuries.
