Mountain kings
When you’re brought up on a mixture of fairytales of wolves that speak, trolls that live under bridges, and monkeys that fly, seeing a landscape such as that in Iceland coupled with tales of stunning lakes that make people pass out and then drown can open possibilities of myth and wonder combining with leafy paths and nature. Volcanoes are so at the epicentre of this. Life On Fire, subheaded as Icelandic Volcanoes: Who Is Next?, mixes breath-taking landscapes with ancient stories and brand new science to write new stories of wonder and danger, as farmers literally live on the edge of volcanoes that are mighty gods both threatening and nourishing the land and its people. This is good stuff. A countryside peppered with magma boulders hundreds of years old, on the same island as a farmer in his first year running the family business. He has stories from his grandfather and great-grandfather of huge volcanic eruptions of bygone years and what was left behind. There’s got to be a grandma in the next cluster of woods we come to.
“There’s got to be a grandma in the next cluster of woods we come to”
Even the science sounds and looks wonderous, as ‘caldrons’ are created on the glacier lids of giant volcanoes, seen as whirlpools in the snow and ice as the heat from the magma below rises giving clues to the imminency of the next eruption.
When the 2010 unpronounceable volcano in Iceland erupted and stopped air flights across most of Europe it cost airlines over $1 billion. And that was a relatively small one in terms of what Icelandic people are used to dealing with. Eat your heart out Dr Evil. During that time I had reason to travel to the Midlands and one of the spookiest things I’ve ever experienced was driving up to that ash cloud and then directly under it so that we were surrounded on all sides. When something steals your horizon you’ve got to give it respect, and when something is that absolute to the sky it’s bound to conjure up ideas of Mordor, Dune and any other otherworldliness you may have encountered. Well, it certainly did with me.
Seeing these marvellous landscapes brought it back and then some. Individually examining the four volcanoes most likely to go off next, their scientific results and their legends – mixing myth and discovery felt a lot like magic. As does the fact that these mighty tempers provide hot water and clean energy for the country, and that the fallen ash actively helps the farming on the land. It’s almost a whole different eco system.
Even scarier stuff comes with the possibility of a ‘big’ eruption, with the climate of the planet likely to be affected for a while, loss of life instead of simply loss of finance, and maybe not quite the dawn of a new age, but definitely one that would inspire a whole raft of new literature, films, political priorities and holiday destinations.
Enticing as the Snow Queen in Narnia, and with a soundtrack to match the majesty, this documentary paints a picture with detailed strokes and vibrant colours. As one of the farmers that lives near the huge volcano Katla says: “Katla is in her place and she will wake up when she is ready”. He then snapped me out of my Grimm fairytale revelry with the sidebar: “But it’s probably less dangerous to live here by Katla than in the streets of Reykjavík”. Proving that city paranoia continues even from the edge of Hell. Some things are destined never to change.
Life On Fire, Eden, Wednesday 9 May
