Скачать или смотреть The Place That Stopped A Volcano (also famous for the "world's loneliest house"!)

The Place That Stopped A Volcano (also home to the "World's Loneliest House"): Elliðaey, & Heimaey, Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland

I know you’ve seen this photo. It’s like, all over the internet (overload with images).

My friends at Atlas Obscura ​⁠​⁠​⁠‪@atlasobscura‬ did a post on it in April, and as they pointed out, despite the rumors, this is not Bjork’s house (that rumor isnt so crazy tho because The Icelandic PM did offer Bjork an island of the same name, which she refused, but also it wasn’t this island). But what’s even crazier than this lonely shareable house is what happened to this island chain in the 1970s. They stopped a massive volcano from destroying everything with water cannons.

But first, let’s clear up on this house to those that aren’t familiar: This is a hunting lodge on a small island called Elliðaey in southern Iceland in an archipelago called Vestmannaeyjar. (I feel obligated to tell you what they’re hunting but you may not like it: these guys). No one lives in this lodge permanently, but it is habitable. Youtuber Ryan Trahan went there last year actually. Getting there is treacherous. It’s also not the only lonely house out there either – there are other isolated cabins on nearby islands too.

What’s more amazing about Vestmannaeyjar though is what happened in 1973. A volcano named Eldfell erupted on the largest and only permanently populated island here called Heimaey. A giant crack opened up that split the island and spewed lava up to 500 feet in the air – which was all caught on camera. The eruption lasted for months and the lava flowed in waves over 30 feet high on its way to engulfing pretty much everything. (luckily, everyone was evacuated safely in the first few days. In a crazy fateful twist, all the boats in the harbor when it happened because there was a storm before that prevented them from going out that day)

Unbelievably, an Icelandic physics professor was allowed to try out his theory of using seawater to stop the volcano, and it worked. They brought in boats and pumps that sprayed 100s of gallons of water per minute into the flow. Workers built a network of pipes to spread it around and built up walls of solidified lava to steer it. About 2 billion gallons were sprayed nonstop over 4 months. The effort successfully diverted the lava and saved the town’s harbor. It is to this day the largest scale and most successful attempt to stop a volcano. Take that Tommy Lee Jones.

#iceland #elliðaey #volcano #eruption #1970s #eldfell #history #places #placestovisit
‪@atlasobscura‬ #atlasobscura
‪@ryan‬ #ryantrahan