Sólný Pálsdóttir tries in vain to emulate the sound that emerged from under her home before she fled it on Friday night. “It was like a big animal coming, it was like a lion – and of course we saw the Earth moving,” says the teacher and photographer.
Having lived through weeks of nightly earthquakes, and three years of volcanic eruptions, Sólný had been planning to cook a quiet dinner for her son and heavily pregnant daughter-in-law. But when the 53-year-old heard that sound, she knew it was time to leave.
All 3,800 residents of the Icelandic town of Grindavík would be evacuated that night.
“I had a bad feeling,” says Sólný. “I was born in Grindavík and I am used to earthquakes since I was little but this was something else. Everyone who was there knew.”
So conditioned were her family and neighbours to life in the shadow of the Fagradalsfjall volcanic system, which has erupted three times in the last three years after lying dormant for eight centuries , that although the ground outside was moving and bookcase shaking, nobody rushed.
But the cause of the latest disruption was different. It started on 25 October with a “seismic swarm” centred on Sundhnúk, a fissure 3-5km under Grindavík. Where exactly the magma will erupt is unknown, but at the moment it looks most likely that it will make its path along an opening in the town, according to Marc Reichow, a geologist at the University of Leicester.
Quite when that will happen, though, nobody knows.
Many of Grindavík’s residents thought they would be back home the next day. But the emergence of huge cracks in the road and damaged homes is making them realise that their return is a long time away – if it happens at all.
Some people say they could not go back, even if it is deemed safe, for fear of the threat returning. Others, despite their trauma, are determined to move back. Many are in a state of shock, having had to abandon their homes, and in many cases jobs, so suddenly.
Residents have been allowed to return for allocated five-minute slots – timed by a waiting official – to pick up essentials and keepsakes. In the meantime, life goes on: Sólný’s seventh grandchild was born in hospital on Wednesday and she has found a new school for her two younger sons. Grindavík’s school is closed for the foreseeable future.
But they still have to find a temporary home.
Sólný is especially concerned about the impact of the abrupt move on her 12-year-old son, who has Down’s syndrome, because the residents of Grindavík are “family” to him. “All these people in Grindavík took care of him. He was so independent, he could go everywhere, he has a lot of friends, he plays sports,” she says. “For him it’s the most change.”
Kristín María Birgisdottir, 43, the head of information and marketing in Grindavík, bought a new flat in the town only a month ago after getting divorced. Now she is looking for somewhere temporary to live with her three young children for six months.
Kristín does not know whether they will be able to return. “Some people say the whole peninsula has woken up, so we might be expecting eruptions frequently now.”
All her family, friends and colleagues live in the town and the idea of not returning is “unthinkable,” she says. “But of course your home is supposed to be a safe zone. You want to be safe. And if you can’t feel safe at your house then it’s really difficult to live.”
Many residents will not have anywhere to go at all, especially members of the town’s immigrant community, says Grindavík library director, Andrea Ævarsdóttir. She is aware of several Polish families who have already left Iceland.
The 46-year-old was in Reykjavík on Friday night but managed to rush back during the evacuation to collect her three cats and her medication. “I felt like I was in a dystopian novel,” she says.
Life in her mother’s one-bedroom apartment is cramped – she is working from a coffee shop and her two teenage sons are not at school – but soon they will be moving into a friend’s home.
When Andrea left on Friday she thought the earthquakes would simply die down like previous times. But when on Saturday she saw pictures, she realised it was “much worse than we had originally thought”.
To have their fate at the mercy of something so powerful and unpredictable is surreal, she says. “Knowing that my house is still there and my place of work is still there, but in an instant, it might be gone, is a very sobering thought. On Friday I had a full-time job that I loved and an apartment that I was really happy with, and now I have neither.”
If there is no eruption it could still put people off moving back, she adds, now that they know they are living above a magma chamber.
David Ingi Bustion, 31, whose family has lived in the town for three generations, said he would return no matter what. But the architect and town planner, whose family works in the fishing industry, says the trauma people had gone through would require emotional rebuilding as well as physical reconstruction.
While the town’s population is resilient, he is already seeing signs of post-traumatic stress.
“We can always rebuild, we’re quite good at that [in Iceland]. But where we’ve lacked often is putting the emphasis on emotional rebuilding and realising that it’s a big shock and it has a big impact.”
