I’d always wanted to live under a glacier so I was lucky when I met my husband Ólafur whose family had farmed here for three generations.
At the beginning of a short documentary on Þorvaldseyri, the farm directly below the Eyjafjalljökull volcano, which famously erupted in 2010, shutting down all air traffic in northern Europe for a about a week, Guðný A. Valberg, explains why she came to live and raise a family in such a potentially life-threatening place.
Throughout the 20-minute film, shown regularly at the Þorvaldseyri Visitor Centre in southern Iceland, Guðný discusses the eruption and her family’s response to it in a phlegmatic, no-nonsense manner, singularly lacking in the hysteria that engulfed the rest of the world at the time. Indeed, she expresses surprise and amusement at all fuss in other parts of the world caused by their “little volcano.” Continue reading