The Blackener's Cave
Viking Age outlaws, taboo, and ritual in Iceland’s lava fields
By SAMIR S. PATEL
Tuesday, May 09, 2017
Surtshellir, a lava tube in western Iceland, is one of many with signs of human use, but presents a puzzle for archaeologists. Was it a hideout for bandits or the feared home of a mythical fire giant?
The Hallmundarhraun lava field—basalt dark, with great swells and a froth of white moss—looks like a stormy sea whipped into a frenzy and frozen in place. It begins under the Langjökull glacier in mountains to the east and winds some 30 miles to Hraunfoss—literally, “Lava Falls”—where a crystalline river of meltwater pours directly from its wide, stony face. It’s very Icelandic: fire and ice, water and stone. When the lava flowed at the end of the ninth century, shortly after the Vikings arrived on the island, it was probably the first volcanic activity of its kind that northern Europeans had ever witnessed. Those early residents of western Iceland may have heard eruptions, seen a fiery glow on the horizon, and tracked its spread across the landscape, a spread that ultimately consumed around 90 square miles.
http://www.archaeology.org/issues/255-1705/features/5468-iceland-surtshellir-viking-cave
