742 



The National Geographic Magazine 



uring several hundred thousand square 

 miles Greenland. Iceland is not a bleak, 

 arctic region, embedded in thick-ribbed 

 ice, though its northernmost peninsula, 

 Rifstangi, projects a mile north of the 

 Arctic Circle. Though situated between 

 63° 24' and 66° 33' north latitude, its 

 thermic anomaly is such, owing to the 

 Gulf Stream, that the mean temperature 

 of the month of January on the west 

 coast of Iceland is 34.5° F. higher than 

 it should be in that latitude. It is sur- 

 prising that January at Reykjavik is 

 milder by 13^° than at Milan, north 

 Italy, or 1° F. milder than at Munich, 

 which is 3/4° farther south than London. 



Grimsey, off north Iceland, cut in 

 two halves by the Arctic Circle, is 5° F. 

 wanner in January than Stockholm. The 

 coolness of the summer, however, owing 

 to the nearness of polar ice drifting down 

 from Greenland, reduces the annual 

 mean. It will thus be seen that Iceland 

 has a temperate climate, while the clear- 

 ness of its atmosphere rivals that of Italy. 

 It is freer from microbes than the air 

 of any part of Europe, and, according to 

 the researches of Dr W. L. Brown, the 

 blood of the Icelander on an average con- 

 tains more hemoglobin than that of other 

 inhabitants of Europe. 



No country on earth of equal size con- 

 tains so varied and wonderful phenomena. 

 The glaciers of Switzerland ; the fjords, 

 salmon rivers, and midnight sun of Nor- 

 way; the volcanoes, grottoes, and sol- 

 fataras of Italy, on a grander scale; the 

 mineral springs of Germany ; the gey- 

 sers of New Zealand ; the largest water- 

 fall, next to Niagara, in the world — all 

 are here. Nowhere has nature been so 

 spendthrift in giving a geological lesson 

 to man. If there be sermons in stones, 

 volumes lie unread here. Here we see 

 her Titanic forces at work building up 

 a country. Nowhere is it possible to 

 study so well the geological conditions 

 prevailing toward the close of the Glacial 

 Epoch in Europe. 



Iceland is the center of a suboceanic 

 volcanic region, and no region of the 

 earth has an equal title to be called the 



"Land of Fire." It owes its very exist- 

 ence to volcanic agency continued today, 

 and may be truly called the abode of 

 subterraneous heat. No spot on the sur- 

 face of the globe of its extent exhibits 

 marks of fire in such a multitude, in such 

 a variety, and of such a magnitude. None 

 contains an equal number of volcanoes. 

 Nowhere have eruptions of such magni- 

 tude occurred. Dr Thoroddsen has 

 counted 107 volcanoes, 83 of which are 

 a series of low craters or crater chains, 

 8 are of the Vesuvius shape, and 16 of 

 the Sandwich Islands lava-cone shape. 

 Five thousand square miles of land are 

 covered with lava. The post-Glacial lava 

 alone would cover Denmark with a layer 

 16 feet in thickness. The largest lava 

 desert is the Odaoahravm, which covers 

 an area of 1,700 square miles and is from 

 1,600 to 3,500 feet above sea-level. This 

 lava field has been formed by the erup- 

 tions of about 20 volcanoes. The cubic 

 capacity of the lava ejected here would 

 make a solid cube, each side of which 

 would measure about 50 miles. The 

 most frequent form of manifestation of 

 volcanic eruption is the formation of a 

 series of low craters, offer several miles 

 in length, along lines of cleavage in the 

 crust of the earth. The longest is that 

 of Laki, 20 miles long, containing about 

 100 craters. 



Sometimes lava has welled up out of 

 fissures without craters. The largest of 

 these is Elvgja, north of Myrdalsjokull, 

 19 miles long, 434 feet deep — in one 

 place, 656 feet deep — the bottom being 

 468 feet wide. The volcanoes are not, 

 as was formerly supposed, limited to the 

 regions of palagonite breccia. On the 

 Faxa Bay are many small volcanoes 

 which have broken through the basalt. 

 About 25 volcanoes have been active in 

 historic times (900-1900). Vesuvius is 

 dwarfed into insignificance, for the lava 

 flood of the last eruption in Iceland, in 

 1875, has been computed to contain 

 31,000 millions of cubic feet, while in the 

 largest eruption of A^esuvius on record, 

 that in 1794, only about 7,000 millions of 

 cubic feet of lava were ejected. 



