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Hot Springs, Glaciers and Volcanoes in Iceland

by gorfor on 09/08/10 at 7:28 am

Have a look at the beautiful landscapes that you can find in Iceland.

In recent months we learnt a lot about Icelandic volcanoes when the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano’s eruption. disrupted flights for several days. Iceland lies on the geological border between North America and Europe (the Mid-Atlantic Ridge)and that is why it is so geologically unstable: besides volcanoes Icelands has plenty of hot water geysers which are also used as a source of energy and heat. The biggest geyser releases nearly 200 litres of water per second.Iceland has about 200 volcanoes , in the 1960s one of them erupted at the bottom of the sea and created a new island: Sertsey. One tenth of the Icelandic land is covered by glaciers, Vatna is the largest and it is so big that is larger than all the glaciers found in continental Europe combin ed together.

The highest mountain in Iceland is only a little more than 2000 metres but the presence of so much ice is also explained by the fact that a part of the Island lies within the Arctic Circle. Iceland is among the northermost inhabited places on earth and if it is possible to live on that island is mainly thanks to the Gulf Stream. In fact only the coastal areas of Iceland are inhabited. Iceland has another important peculiarity: its population descends from Norwegian settlers that arrived about 1000 years ago as it was quite isolated most of the time its population is, unlike that of most country, very homogeneous and has been used to study some genetics conditions. Iceland is also the world’s oldest democracy.