Originally I was going to write more about the roadtrip next but Iceland itself decided otherwise. It habitually throws surprises at the people living here and one such happened yesterday: a larger than usual earthquake very near the Capital City area. As most earthquakes here stay below the level of 3 they’re hardly noticeable at all, but this one shook houses and apparently managed to drop small items off shelves at places. Yet at other areas of Reykjavík like Kópavogur it wasn’t felt at all.

The centre of the earthquake has been located at Brennisteinsfjöll (= Brimstone Mountain), some kilometres south of Reykjavík. Technically speaking it’s an active volcano but the last time it erupted was in 1341 and even then the size of the eruption was small, strombolian. The summer’s been unusually quiet on the side of volcanic activity with the exception of Katla burping a little bit now and then and Krýsuvík alternately inflating and deflating, so the earthquake got quite a good coverage in the media.

The size of the earthquake was around 4,2. In the recent years the largest one has been size 6,5-6,6 (the 2000 earthquakes in the south Iceland) and 6,3 (2008 earthquake, same area). In the 2000 ones there were no fatalities although a small number of people were injured and a large amount of sheep died. The latter one, despite being slightly smaller, caused about 30 reported injuries and no fatalities except for the sheep again. They also caused considerable damage to houses and roads. In comparison, yesterday’s earthquake mostly managed to shake up the Facebook: my friends, both local and foreign, flooded their reports on it the second they felt the ground move.

There’s an interesting article about the earthquake in Jón Fríman’s blog here. According to him there has been over 30 aftershocks so far. Can’t say I’ve felt a single one of them but then again, most of them are tiny and unnoticeable. Besides I may have grown a little bit used to earthquakes after all the time that I’ve lived here. Nowadays I don’t wake up to them any longer but I still remember how well I could feel them during the first year I spent here. Occasionally I sprung up at night and began to give my boyfriend a good telling-off for jumping in his sleep or shaking the bed, only to find out in the morning that it had actually been an earthquake… it’s lucky that he’s a good sleeper! XD

More about earthquakes as they happen can be found on the Icelandic weather reports page over here (click on the bar that says jarðskjálftar). It shows all earthquakes larger than 3 with a green star. The rest of the dots have a colour code depending on how long ago the earthquake has been.

Here are some news articles concerning the earthquake:

Verra er safnið hefði skemmst.

Jörð skalf í dag.

Jarðskjálftinn var 4,6 stig.

Fólk hljóp á dýr í Litlu Kaffistofunni.

Snarpur jarðskjálfti á höfuðborgarsvæðinu – Stærsti skjálftinn í 3 ár.

Jarðskjálftafræðingur: Ekki búið að losa um neina spennu að ráði.

Má búast við nokkrum eftirskjálftum.