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January 2011 74 January 2011 75
WORDS OLIVER SMITH | PHOTOGRAPHS DAVID NOTON
Descend
into the
crater of
Snfellsjkull
and you
will reach
the centre
of the
Earth
xyxyxyxyxyxyxy
77 Xyxyxyxy 2010
iceland
January 2011 76
A
JET of water erupts off the
starboard side of our boat,
and the spray splashes the
deck. Theres barely time to
understand whats happening
before a ash of silver whales skin breaks
the surface, dips beneath a wave and
plunges down to the dark fathoms of the
North Atlantic. Out here, within sight
of Reykjavk, whale spotters and whaling
boats scour the seas for these mighty
beasts. The minke whale, notorious for its
bad breath; the blue whale, whose tongue
alone outweighs an African elephant; and
the leaping humpback whale, all have
patrolled the depths beneath our boat.
These may not be the sea monsters Jules
Verne describes in Journey to the Centre
of the Earth, but Iceland is the setting for
his famous novel. Vernes heroes the
eccentric Professor Lidenbrock and his
W
E are not talking about
pregnant ladies,
barks the professor.
We are talking about
volcanoes; there is no
due date no timetable for an eruption.
Professor Haraldur Sigurdsson is
something of a celebrity in this remote
corner of Iceland, a volcanologist who
grew up in the shadow of Snfellsjkull
and who has set up a volcano museum in
Stykkishlmur, his hometown. Little more
than a cluster of timber houses huddled
around a natural harbour, Stykkishlmur
is one of the last staging posts before the
Arctic Circle. Pacing the quay are sturdy
shermen with thick woollen jumpers and
rambling beards. Seagulls stalk the
rooftops swooping down on discarded
scraps of sh but otherwise, signs of life
here are scarce.
Stykkishlmur
How can we know for certain that Snfells isnt
about to erupt? The fact that this monster has slumbered
since 1229 does not mean that it will not wake. And if it
does, what will become of us?
Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
Reykjavk
See the great fns! shouts the professor. See the air and water
sprouting from the blowholes! We stand, shocked, astonished,
terrifed at the sight of a shoal of sea monsters, the smallest of which
could split our raft with a snap of its teeth.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
long-suffering nephew, Axel discover
a clue encrypted in an old Icelandic
manuscript that sends them to the island
in search of a passage to the core of the
planet. The adventure follows the characters
as they navigate underground seas lled
with prehistoric sea monsters, dodging lava
ows and crossing bottomless chasms.
The strange subterranean world that Verne
describes isnt too far removed from the
landscapes on the surface in Iceland.
This, after all, is a place where lightning
storms ravage volcano craters; where the
ground can crack open and gobble up the
farmland; where new islands have popped
up overnight in the surrounding seas.
Pulling into Reykjavk harbour, just as
Vernes characters did, it seems remarkable
that anyone could make their home in this
forbidding land. Huge cliffs loom all around,
looking like they might lurch forward at
any moment and push the tiny town into
the sea. Reykjavk sits on the edge of the
Arctic Circle with a deance that would
make its Viking founders proud. In the
summer, revellers ock to the streets for
the runtur the bar crawl famous for its
excess and irreverence (one nightclub even
has the faces of failed Icelandic bankers
plastered over its urinals). In the winter, the
crowds disappear inside cosy cafs, while
the corrugated-iron houses shudder in
thundering Arctic winds.
Guarding over the city is Hallgrmskirkja,
the church where, from high up in the bell
tower, the outline of Snfellsjkull can
just be seen. This snow-capped volcano,
scarcely visible behind a veil of mist, was
Professor Lidenbrocks destination the
mountain where an ancient riddle spoke
of a crater at the summit that leads to the
centre of the Earth. The volcano strikes an
ominous presence on the horizon one of
countless sleeping giants in Iceland that
might one day stir, sending torrents of re,
rock and ash raining down. Lurking in the
fog, Snfellsjkull seems to dare me to
trace the footsteps of Vernes heroes to
scale its slopes and nd out if the summit
really does hide a gateway to a world
beneath our feet.
In the darkened hall of the professors
museum, paintings of volcanoes hang
alongside antique geological instruments
used by Vernes contemporaries. At the
time Jules Verne was writing, some people
believed the earth was hollow, he says.
For readers in those days, a trip to the
centre of the Earth, with dinosaurs and
cavemen, was quite plausible. Not that
geology has lost its sense of adventure:
Professor Sigurdsson recounts how his
helicopter was rocked by the sonic boom
of exploding gas bubbles as he hovered
over the crater of Eyjafjallajkull. The
eruption that brought European airports
to a standstill he shrugs off as barely a blip.
Haraldur Sigurdsson is touched by an
eccentric genius common to Icelanders.
Visitors to these parts might hear about
the optician erecting homemade wax
stalagmites in caves; the record producer
building his own troll garden beside a
waterfall; the adventurer who has tweaked
a Soviet missile launcher to transport
tourists across the Langjkull glacier (and
who one day hopes to build a concert
venue out of the ice at the top). There is
something about this empty land of lonely
roads and rusting barns that seems to breed
a peculiar resilience in its inhabitants.
We step out into the daylight in
Stykkishlmur, and birds are circling
above as a boat leaves the harbour. The
professor points to the huge white mass
beyond the tiny town. Snfellsjkull isnt
dormant, he says, its just taking a break.
Arnarstapi, a hamlet nestled
between the Arctic waters
and a gnarled lava eld in the
Snfellsnes Peninsula, is the
best place to begin the climb
to the glaciers summit.
BELOW Volcanologist
Haraldur Sigurdsson
The radical design of
Hallgrmskirkja church is
said to resemble the
basalt lava ows of
Icelands landscape.
RIGHT Molten lava has
shaped the landscape
in the Snfellsnes
Peninsula, west Iceland
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January 2011 79 January 2011 78
iceland
F
ROM Stykkishlmur, the road
winds along fjords and over
mountain passes to the foot of
Snfellsjkull and up to Vernes
fabled passage to the centre of
the Earth. Driving towards the peninsulas
tip, its clear that human settlement has
hardly made a scratch on this barren
landscape. Horses watch the few cars
speeding past with the attentiveness of
spectators at a tennis match. Sheep amble
the roads, meeting drivers with looks of
horror. Nameless waterfalls tumble down
from the plateau above, while the shadows
of clouds dance across treeless slopes.
A dirt track leads to the summit and the
mist thickens as we ascend. Theres
something hallucinatory about climbing
these mountains drivers on one road have
talked of sensing an extra passenger in the
back seat. Mystics, too, have ocked to the
volcano, claiming it as one of the planets
seven sources of spiritual energy.
Snfellsjkull
A sheet of snow gleamed on the slopes of these distant mountains
the peaks brazenly pierced the grey cloud to reappear above the
shifting vapours like reefs, suspended in the sky
Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
It was on the summit that Professor
Lidenbrock and Axel made their camp,
waiting for the shadow of a nearby peak to
pinpoint the crater where they were to begin
their descent. Following their route is easier
said than done. Parked directly on top of
the mountain is a vast Ice Age glacier that
Jules Verne, who never visited Iceland,
neglected to mention in his novel. Any
crater would have to be buried deep beneath
thousands of tonnes of dense ice, so its
difcult to know where to start looking.
Im about to leave empty-handed when
the clouds break and, as Verne wrote, it
seems Snfellsjkull has sprung straight
up from the seabed. Here, Axel claimed he
was so engrossed by the exalted rapture of
these soaring peaks I forgot who I was
and where I was. Expanses of black rock
swoop down to the shore, where lighthouses
look little more than golf tees perched on the
cliffs. Despite their presence, a glance at a
map reveals the surrounding cape is strewn
The church at Ingjaldsholl,
below the towering peaks
of Snfellsjkull, was built
in 1903, though it houses
some older tombstones
and a wonderful painted
wooden altarpiece
with shipwrecks: Anne Dorothea in 1817,
Solven in 1857 and Brilliant Star in 1882.
Far below, on the peninsulas southern
beaches, stands the Hotel Buir, a place
where Professor Lidenbrocks party passed
through on their journey to Snfellsjkull,
and a popular retreat for Icelandic writers
and artists. Night closes in as I descend the
mountain. The reections of shooting stars
light up the saltwater pools around the
hotel, and the glacier glistens a brilliant
white in the moonlight.
While staying at the hotel in the 1960s,
Icelandic author Halldr Laxness wrote
Under the Glacier, a story in which
Snfellsjkull induces hypnosis in a small
community, leading them to believe that
they could bring the dead back to life.
Another legend tells of a half-troll whose
daughter was pushed onto a passing
iceberg by her cousin. The half-troll then
murdered his nephew to avenge his lost
daughter, unaware that she had drifted to
safety in Greenland, before he retreated
inside the mountain, where he hides
broken-hearted to this day. Silhouetted
against the night sky, it seems that this
strange mountain has always ercely
guarded its secrets. I will just have to nd
a different way of getting inside.
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80 January 2011 January 2011 81
iceland
LP
Drangahraun
Little did I realise what awaited us on the Snfells peninsula,
where the damage wreaked by impetuous nature had created
a frightening chaos though the volcanoes were extinct, the
debris that remained bore witness to their former violence.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
Oliver Smith and ranger
Gubjrg Gunnarsdttir are
dwarfed by the powerful
rock formations below the
lava elds of Snfellsjkull.
LEFT The barren, rugged
lava elds of Staarsveit
M
AYBE this is your passage
to the centre of the Earth,
maybe it isnt, says
Gubjrg Gunnarsdttir,
the park ranger, pointing
into a gloomy cave. Its not somewhere
Id want to go on my own anyway.
We are in the lava elds, the strangest
and saddest parts of the Icelandic
landscape. In Drangahraun, the fury of
Snfellsjkull is recorded in stone it
feels as if every tide of molten rock had
frozen still barely a moment ago. Black
basalt steeples watch over sheep tracks,
a labyrinth of alleyways that pick their
way between convulsing rock formations,
scorched earth where there were once
green meadows.
We tell children that this is where the
elves live, so they keep away, says Gubjrg
gesturing over the eld. It takes little
Hraunfossar (hraun means
lava and fossar waterfall
in Icelandic) is a series
of waterfalls formed by
rivulets streaming out of
a lava eld into the Hvt
river from ledges of less
porous rock in the lava
imagination to spot strange gures in the
distance clumps of rock scattered across
the land by eruptions but Gubjrg is
serious. People laugh at Icelanders belief
in elves and trolls, but its not so simple.
Its like radio waves you know theyre
there, even though youve never seen them.
Even without elves, theres more to the
lava eld than meets the eye. Buried under
the rock are hidden caverns where, it is
said, outlaws banished from Icelandic
society took shelter hundreds of years ago.
To the east at Hraunfossar, underground
streams ow beneath lava elds. The cave
beneath us is a dried-up watering hole for
cows on the slopes of Snfellsjkull, only
recently emptied of tonnes of mud and
snow to reveal a gaping tunnel beneath.
We descend into the Earth. Shining
a torch into the gloom reveals boulders
swept away in the lava ow, and shelves
of rock running downhill and out of sight.
The sunlight fades, and our footsteps echo.
Vernes world of yawning crevices and
subterranean monsters seems close by.
We go further, before Gubjrg points to
a second, deeper chamber, reached only by
a rope. The dripping of water resonates
around the cave, and Im reminded of Axels
words in Journey to the Centre of the Earth:
I had not yet peered into the fathomless pit
into which I was about to venture. A rush of
vertigo overcame me, and dizziness rushed
to my head like wine. Nothing could be
more intoxicating than the lure of the void.
Its possible there are other tunnels yet
to be explored, perhaps a whole network
running deep beneath Snfellsjkull and
down into the innards of the planet. Its
almost tempting to step into the pitch black,
snatch a burning torch and begin our own
subterranean adventure but we turn back.
After all, who would ever believe that what
lies beneath our feet could be any stranger
than the landscapes on the surface above?
Oliver Smith is a journalist who was named
AITO Young Travel Writer of the Year for his article
In Search of Lawrences Arabia, in the May issue
of Lonely Planet Magazine.