down to earth Before you start to read this book, take this moment to think about making a donation to punctum books, an independent non-profit press, @ https://punctumbooks.com/support/ If you’re reading the e-book, you can click on the image below to go directly to our donations site. Any amount, no matter the size, is appreciated and will help us to keep our ship of fools afloat. Contri- butions from dedicated readers will also help us to keep our commons open and to cultivate new work that can’t find a welcoming port elsewhere. Our ad- venture is not possible without your support. Vive la Open Access. Fig. 1. Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools (1490–1500) down to earth: a memoir. Copyright © 2020 by Gísli Pálsson. This work car- ries a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license, which means that you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and you may also remix, transform and build upon the material, as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors (but not in a way that suggests the au- thors or punctum books endorses you and your work), you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form whatsoever, and that for any remixing and transformation, you distribute your rebuild under the same license. http://cre- ativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ First published in 2020 by punctum books, Earth, Milky Way. https://punctumbooks.com ISBN-13: 978-1-953035-16-5 (print) ISBN-13: 978-1-953035-17-2 (ePDF) doi: 10.21983/P3.0306.1.00 lccn: 2020947754 Library of Congress Cataloging Data is available from the Library of Congress Copy Editing: Rachel Katz Book Design: Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Cover Photograph: A “time-lapse” photo taken during the Heimaey eruption, 1973. Courtesy of the Science Institute, University of Iceland. punctumbooks spontaneous acts of scholarly combustion gísli pálsson down to earth Translated by Anna Yates & Katrina Downs-Rose Contents Habitat · 19 On Top of Glowing Magma · 31 The Mountain Erupts · 67 The Battle for Heimaey · 117 Epilogue · 203 · · · Timeline · 223 Bibliography · 227 ix Acknowledgments The environmental challenge that accompanies the Anthropo- cene, the Age of Humans, is the greatest problem that human- kind has faced, and it is important that it is discussed frankly and in language that people understand. This book, about living through a natural disaster, has its own long history. The idea was born some years ago, shortly before I revisited the library in Manchester to look for that first news article about the Heimaey eruption, but its content and emphasis have changed over the following years. My experience of volcanic eruptions where I grew up in the Westman Islands is the catalyst for the autobiographical anec- dotes that are recalled here in a wider context, with reference to eruptions elsewhere in Iceland and abroad, as well as other natural disasters. The content, however, has to do with the sub- ject matter that I have worked with as an anthropologist over the decades. I have long been interested in the ideas of people in different societies and different times, about the relation- ship between humanity and nature, science and science history, and connections between the world of experience, society, and environment. Most of this is encompassed within the field of environmental anthropology, in which comparisons and direct experience in the field are important research tools. Here, my many disparate fields of interest — personal experi- ence, nature, and society — have coalesced in my approach of what I have called geosocialities. I thank Marianne Elisabeth xi Lien and the residential research group that she convened for rewarding and creative collaboration — not least Marisol de la Cadena, John Law, Andrew Mathews, Benjamin Orlove, Hugh Raffles, Heather Anne Swanson, and Sverker Sörlin. My collab- oration with Heather Anne on “geosociality” was particularly stimulating and productive. I am most grateful to numerous friends and colleagues. My research assistants, Björgvin Agnarsson and Sigurður Örn Guðbjörnsson, gathered historical sources and took some of the interviews that I make use of, and Kristín Harðardóttir dealt with applications and reports. Hjalti Elíasson generously lent me the substantial collection of newspaper reports that his mother, Liljan Þórarinsdóttir, had conscientiously collected during the Heimaey eruption. Magnús Bjarnason granted me access to his unpublished memoirs (“Privatissimo”) from the time of the Heimaey eruption, a real boon. He says there that although his story is very ordinary, he had to retrace it “if only to add flesh to the big story that will undoubtedly later be told.” I hope that this book can become part of that big story, and part of an even larger one as well. Many other people have been helpful, including colleagues, writers, and specialists in the field of sociology, philosophy, and geoscience. Some who have provided me with informa- tive interviews and others with good advice include: Aðalbjörg Jóhanna Bernódusdóttir, Ari Trausti Guðmundsson, Arnar Sig- urmundsson, Atli Ásmundsson, Ásdís Jónsdóttir, Björn Bergs- son, Dominic Boyer, Einar Gylfi Jónsson, Einar Örn Stefánsson, Guðmundur Karlsson, Gunnlaugur Ástgeirsson, Helga Hall- bergsdóttir, Cymene Howe, Ingibergur Óskarsson, Jóhanna He- lena Weihe, Jóhanna Ýr Jónsdóttir, Júlía Andersen, Karl Sigur- björnsson, Kolbrún A. Sigurgeirsdóttir, Kristinn Hermannsson, Kristín Jóhannsdóttir, Kristín Vogfjörd, Kristján Stefánsson, Leó Kristjánsson, Páll Einarsson, Páll Zóphóníasson, Ragnar Bald- vinsson, Sigríður H. Theodórsdóttir, Sigrún Inga Sigurgeirsdót- tir, Sigurður Högni Hauksson, Sigurður Þ. Jónsson, Steindór J. Erlingsson, Svala Hauksdóttir, Svavar Steingrímsson, Sveinbjörn Björnsson, Sverrir Magnússon, Valdimar K. Jónsson, Valdimar xii Leifsson, Þorsteinn Vilhjálmsson, Þórður Tómasson, and Þórir Ólafsson. I thank Kári Bjarnason and Sigurgeir Jónasson espe- cially for their assistance in searching for photographs in the latter’s vast collection. Various financial and moral support must be mentioned, especially from the University of Iceland Research Fund, the Westman Islands culture center Safnahús Vestmannaeyja, and the Center for Advanced Study (CAS) in Oslo. My sister Auðbjörg read over a draft of the manuscript and made several comments, and my late brother Karl joined me on mountainous walks and assisted with scanning photos. I thank Guðný Guðbjörnsdóttir, Helgi Bernódusson, and Sigurður Ós- karsson for lively discussions about the project, its scope, and content. Helgi and Sigurður Örn Guðbjörnsson studiously read drafts, tactfully indicated potential improvements, and directed me to important sources. My sincere thanks go to my editor Guðrún Sigfúsdóttir at Forlagið in Reykjavík and her colleagues who patiently and creatively nurtured this work from the begin- ning, and to Katrina Downs-Rose and Anna Yates who skill- fully translated the Icelandic text. My friend and independent editor Nancy Marie Brown did a fantastic job critically revising the English manuscript, ensuring a much smoother flow and sharper focus. Last but not least, I thank Eileen A. Joy, Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, Dan Rudmann, Rachel Katz, and their col- leagues at punctum books for taking interest in my book and for pulling it through the production process. xiii In the memory of my brothers, Sigurður Þór (1953–1971) and Karl (1961–2017) Novels are no use at all on days like these, they deal with people and their relationships, […] with society, etc., as if the place for these things were assured, the earth for all time earth, the sea level fixed for all time. — Max Frisch, Man in the Holocene (1980) The words are eruptions within him, magma that has to come out. — Jón Kalman, Eitthvað á stærð við alheiminn [Something the Size of the Universe] (2015) You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog large as myself. […] They are better than beings because they know, but do not tell: and the noise in the pool at noon excels my piano. — Emily Dickinson, Letter to Mr. Higginson (1862) habitat BÓLSTAÐUR The haunts of my youth have vanished, in two senses — they rest under layers of mental debris, accumulated along life’s way, and under the lava that flowed from the flanks of Mount Helgafell, “Holy Mountain,” in Iceland’s Westman Islands in 1973. These facts evoke in me both pure curiosity and a poignant sense of loss. Where is my home? As have so many others throughout history, I long for a world that is no more, for a place of be- longing that can never be regained. Can I have something in common with a lava field? Can I identify with a mountain, or connect with a contemporary event in the geological history of the Earth, the way other people identify with their generation, genetic fingerprint, or zodiac sign? In the terms of the Christian burial ceremony, what is this earth, these ashes and dust, from which we come and to which we return? For most people, the place where they live is significant; it defines and shapes them. Birth certificates, passports, and offi- cial reports require an address, a village, a country. But place, as a word, rings rather flat, referring to geographical coordinates, to two-dimensional space. Habitat implies something deeper: a three-dimensional home supplying roots and groundedness, an intrinsic bond between a person and the earth. In a sense, con- 19 down to earth Fig. 1. Heimagata, Westman Islands, in 1942, Bólstaður is down to the left. sciously or unconsciously, where you live becomes your habitat, the center of your universe, your vantage point. My first habitat was a small, wooden house on the isle of Heima ey in the Westman Islands, forty-nine square meters in size and built on bare rock that thousands of years ago had been hot lava, welling from deep below the Earth’s surface. The house had the name of Bólstaður.