Flying low over Eyjafjallajökull and Katla Volcano - Iceland

Sightseeing flight from Vik over Iceland's dominating Katla and Eyjafjallajökull volcanoes in the south of the country.

Eyjafjallajökull is an interesting volcano, not least because of its relationship with its near neighbour, Katla. This much larger volcano lies less than 30 km to the east of Eyjafjallajökull, beneath the Myrdalsjökull icecap. Katla is, the Global Volcanism Program reports, ‘one of Iceland’s most active [volcanoes] and is a frequent producer of damaging jökulhlaups, or glacier-outburst floods’. Katla, with more than twenty confirmed eruptions since the sixth century AD, has a much more active eruptive history than Eyjafjallajökull, which has just three eruptions over the same period. It seems, however, that there is a connection between these two closely-spaced volcanoes. Eyjafjallajökull’s most recent eruption, December 1821 to January 1823, was followed by an eruption of Katla in June and July 1823. More recently an intrusion at Eyjafjallajökull in 1999 appears to have been followed by a small subglacial eruption in the Katla caldera.