As every child does, I went from one fascination to another before reaching ten years. There was some continuity, however, in my particular attraction by natural forces since I started to eagerly observe thunderstorms at the age of five. At the beginning of 1973 I knew what volcanoes were and I knew that they emitted molten rock named "lava", and I had learned that they spread terror and devastation, but that was it. The event that finally converted me and made me become a volcanophile was among the most particular volcanic eruptions I have learned of. It was a volcanosocial event rather than only an eruption. Rarely has a major community been so close to a volcano at the time of the eruption's beginning, and rarely has man interfered to such a degree with the natural forces manifested by an eruption.
All over the world, the newspapers' headlines carried the news of a sudden volcanic eruption from the "Holy Mountain" of Iceland, after 6000 years of repose, that Wednesday 24 January 1973. The day before, they reported, a volcano named "Helgafjelud" had erupted together with a new fissure, threatening the city of "Kaupstadur" on an island of whose name there were a confusing variety of names circulating in the news, ranging from Haimaey over Heymey to Hymäy. In spite of the obvious problems with Icelandic geographic names, the story was thrilling, even though the news that Helgafell (not "Helgafjelud") erupted was not correct. One or two days later, I was over a number of German newspapers my mother used to carry home from her work at a radio station in Cologne, and the story entered into my blood. VOLCANOES. I imagined that fateful "Holy Mountain" blazing flames and smoke, looming above the doomed town whose 5000 residents had miraculously escaped the disaster. I imagined the ships with the evacuees leaving the harbor, passing close to the row of incandescent fountains, with nobody knowing whether there would ever be a return home. I thought about the coincidence of several factors which helped the population escape completely unharmed. That volcano did not seem only something acting arbitrarily. There was too much coincidence.
As much as by the eruption phenomenon itself I was thrilled by this particular encounter of volcano and man. The story that was to develop in the course of the following weeks and months did never lose its exciting potential. It became the struggle of man against the forces of nature. Helped by a number of factors, the residents of Heimaey and its town (named Vestmannaeyjar instead of "Kaupstadur") successfully defended their home against the effects of the eruption. Interfering with volcanic eruptions is almost always a controversial issue, but it was barely so in the case of Heimaey.
The fascination I felt when reading the Heimaey story (and later, when seeing the images on TV) was difficult to explain. For many years I just collected any data on volcanoes and their eruption I could obtain. When I saw active volcanoes for the first time in my life (in Italy), sixteen years after the Heimaey eruption, I knew the names of all the places and could explain to my companions when the craters we visited on Etna's flanks erupted. It was right there that I learned how active volcanoes are in reality. They are not what you imagine them to be. One of the most impressive experiences was that even close to an erupting volcano you can freeze to death, like on a late September evening on Etna. Still more, as an amateur volcano admirer you hear a lot about volcanic gases but they are much more obtrusive than you ever imagined.
After my return from my first visit to Stromboli and Etna and other Italian volcanoes, I was infected again by the volcano virus, but in a very different manner. Staying at an active volcano is an encounter with the essence. The few visits to the craters of Stromboli made me understand a lot about myself and about my life. It's when you recognize that you are right on the border and at any moment you might be vaporized. It gives you a feel of dimensions and values that is difficult to have under different circumstances. I strongly appreciate the experience but I do not recommend any "just for fun" close visits to the Stromboli craters or other volcanoes in eruption.
In the past 7 years, I have made the experience of volcanoes as something "alive". I never had the feeling that volcanoes are acting arbitrarily. Even though this does not quite seem a scientific approach, I admit that much of my drive towards volcanoes is powered by philosophical reasons. But who would ever be able to scientifically explain why Stromboli had its most intense activity in many years when I first got there with Giada...? We surely did not decide to get there only when we learned of the unusual activity, but we had made that decision several months earlier, and far away from Stromboli.
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Continue with Regional and geological setting of Heimaey (still very incomplete)