Published in the 2010 summer issue of Iceland Review – IR 48.02. By Bjarni Brynjólfsson, photos by Páll Stefánsson.

Barley growing up from the thick ash at Thorvaldseyri, the largest farm under the Eyjafjallajökull volcano.

“Oh, that is just thunder, caused by the electricity from the eruption,” said Gudni Úlfar Ingólfsson, farmer at Drangshlídardalur, located west of the Skógá river next to Skógar municipality. Like there was nothing more mundane. We were standing right under the erupting volcano, about four miles from the fissure, and the thunder was so intense everything vibrated. “This is nothing. You should hear when the volcano roars and the shock waves come. Then even our house trembles.”

We were visiting the farms in the Eyjafjallasveit region on 17 May—the area which was hit the hardest by the ashfall from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. The sky was blue and Ingólfsson’s grass fields were getting green. Yet the sky roared at us. Then the ashfall suddenly started. It was not fine dust like at the beginning of the eruption, but like a hailstorm. Only this was no ice but pure glass, magma ground to grain size by the explosions inside the volcano, triggered when the magma meets the glacial ice.

“Let’s go inside for a coffee. It’s impossible to stand outside in this rain of glass,” said farmer Ingólfsson. He was raised on this farm and now lives there with his wife Magdalena Jónsdóttir and their two young kids.

A white plate had been placed on a chair right next to the main door of the farmhouse to detect ashfall; an old method developed by the farmers here in this vicinity of volcanic disasters.

The farmers in the Eyjafjallasveit district had been under enormous strain when we visited. They had been trying to cope through the darkness of the ashfall which was copious for the first weeks of the eruption and then continued on and off depending on the direction of the wind.

On the third day of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption we drove from Skógar to Hvolsvöllur in total darkness, a distance of 18 kilometers. It was frightening, the darkness being so impenetrable that we could hardly see out the windows of the car. We could see faint lights from the farm standing right next to the highway. It was hellish darkness and the images of birds fluttering their wings, like bats flying in the dark, and horses with drooping heads in the ashfall will never leave my mind. It’s no wonder that some of the farmers experienced nervous breakdowns trying to cope with this springtime catastrophe—spring is usually a merry season for farmers.

You can read the remainder of this article in the 2010 summer issue of Iceland Review – IR 48.02. Four times a year the print edition of Iceland Review brings you a wealth of articles on all aspects of life in Iceland including Páll Stefánsson's latest images of the country's majestic landscape. Click here to subscribe and here to browse through a selection of pages from the current issue.