A young land, with an old relative to the west
Iceland is only 16 million years old. The oldest rock found in Iceland, at Gelti in Súgandafjördur, was formed during a volcanic eruption at that time, meaning that Iceland is one of the youngest lands in the world. The next land to the west of us, Greenland and Canada, are the oldest. The world’s oldest rock was found in southwest Greenland in 2007, dating 3.8 billion years. Scientists suggest that life on Earth may have emerged during those upheavals. That’s 1.3 billion years after the Earth and our solar system formed in the way we know it… or maybe we don’t know.
Currently, there’s yet another eruption happening on the Reykjanes Peninsula, the third in as many years. But in the past hundred years, since 1923, Iceland has seen 43 eruptions, almost one every other year. In 1923, there were two eruptions, in Askja and Grímsvötn, while the largest eruptions in the past hundred years were Hekla in 1947, Surtsey in 1963, Vestmannaeyjar in 1973, Gjálp in 1996, Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, Holuhraun in 2014, and most recently Fagradalsfjall from 2021.
