Everyone's heard of Pompeii, the ancient city destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius. Far less famous, but no less amazing, is the tiny Icelandic town of Vestmannaeyjar, known as the "Pompeii of the North." On January 23, 1973, a fissure ripped the island of Heimaey open, releasing a fountain of lava. Lava and ash and debris rained down on the town and surrounding countryside, destroying nearly 400 buildings and forcing everyone to flee for months.
Peter Holliday first visited Vestmannaeyjar while touring Iceland in the summer of 2014. "I immediately became fascinated by the island’s stark landscape as the product of an ongoing geological violence that originates from deep within our planet," he says. The remarkable story inspired him to return in January, 2015, to photograph the island and the people who live there.
The gorgeous photos in Where The Land Rises are remote and ethereal, and feel a bit melancholy even if you don't know the story of what happened there. They convey the vast desolation of a tiny island in a vast sea, and the quiet of the snowy landscape.
Heimaey Island covers just five square miles and is the largest island in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago, an arc of 15 tiny islands off the southern coast of Iceland. The archipelago sits in a region of 70 or 80 volcanos, many of them below the sea. The fissure that opened on Heimaey followed several tremors, and the resulting eruption lasted five months and left a 660-foot volcano, called Eldfell, in its wake.
Not all of the 5,300 people who lived there at the time returned, and those who did returned to find the island decimated. They rebuilt—in some cases using cooled lava as construction material and geothermal heat to warm their homes—and even now parts of town remain buried beneath ash. Archaeologists started excavating in 2008.
Holliday spent seven months on the island. He shot on film with a medium format Mamiya 7 rangefinder and tripod, which was essential during the winter, when there is but four to five hours of sunlight. His landscapes are breathtaking, as are the portraits he made of 15 people, some of whom lived there when the eruption occurred. Kristín Johansdóttir, recalls seeing 'fire' raining down the hillside and thinking a nuclear war had begun. "When I first looked out the window of the house towards the eruption, I thought it was the end, that the Cold War had suddenly turned hot," she told the photographer. Páll Einarsson, described it as "the night everything disappeared."
Today, Edfell looms over the town and draws tourists. Vestmannaeyjar's official website describes the town as "not only exciting, but also volcanic!" Eldheimar, a museum dedicated to the eruption, opened in May, 2014, and visitors can tour a cottage preserved in ash. The museum is a reminder of how close the island once came to destruction, and that the earth is always changing. "When you visit Heimaey, you are reminded that landscape is an eternal process," Holliday says.
Where the Land Rises is showing at the Reykjavik Museum of Photography until January 26, 2016.
