The Iceland volcano at night

amazingly cool...

Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano had been dormant for nearly two centuries before Ragnar Th. Sigurdsson, 51, flew to the scene on March 21 to photograph its first stirrings. Mr. Sigurdsson returned to the scene and made these dramatic photographs Saturday night and Sunday morning.

mr. sigurdsson...

This is not my first volcano, I’ve been shooting them for 30 years. We have an average of one eruption every five years but these eruptions are different from the rest. The first one in March, which stopped a few days ago, had very beautiful lava fountains and I could go very close and take beautiful pictures. It was what we call here a tourist eruption.

This one, last week, was different. It started underneath a glacier nearby the first eruption. It melted down a lot of ice and we had huge floods. When the lava hits the water you have a huge explosion and it explodes into thin dust . You cannot go close to this eruption because it’s on top of a mountain and the explosions are huge. The hole is about 5,000 meters wide and 2 kilometers long.

Standing in front of it at night is magnificent because you can really see the lightning that is at the center of the eruption. It’s incredibly exciting. The adrenaline flows and I was shouting ‘wow look at that’ over and over. I’ve never seen something like this before.

I just love volcanoes and the Northern Lights. I’m very happy to live here in Iceland even though we’re broke. We’re poor, with beauty.

ya gotta love that last quote...

(thanks to bro in mpls...)

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