Idunn and the Fiery Heart of Iceland: A Tale of Resilience Amid Volcanoes and Earthquakes #Poetry #Iceland

For Idunn Hrafnsdóttir,
the volcano that gnashes its teeth in southern Iceland
is both wonder and wound.
She has wandered up close, into the dark mouth of its crater,
where molten rivers hiss down the mountainside,
and she watches it like a god or a ghost,
this fire-tongued mountain, this endless exhale.

She has stood on the cooled back of lava,
still scarred and smelling of sulfur,
stretching long fingers down toward Grindavík,
her town, her cradle, where she took her first breath,
where salt and sea lullabies sang her to sleep.

But now, this mountain, this dragon breathing deep and terrible
has driven her from her home, spit her out from her roots.

Last November, she was on the beach, her dogs yelping and running like mad creatures,
when the earth itself began to dance beneath her feet,
and she knew this was not a dance to keep time with.
This was the earth bucking like a wild thing.
One quake, then another — a heartbeat gone feral,
a rhythm only the rocks understand.

Her family moved fast, packing only what they could carry.
The line of cars, a slow pilgrimage, their headlights like glowing ghosts in the fog,
and she sat, silent, as the road took them farther from the place she loved
with a grip that was ancient, fierce, unyielding.

Like a scene from some terrible cinema,
where the hero never returns, where towns vanish under ash and ember.
For months, her house sat empty, a shell left behind,
the heart of Grindavík quiet, waiting, or maybe mourning.
Only a handful of souls returned.

Eight centuries past, Vikings tread this same ground,
felt the same tremor beneath their boots,
when Reykjanes’s dragons roused from their long sleep.
They walked where Idunn walks now,
this rugged peninsula stretching its arm into the sea,
where Reykjavik’s lights flicker just beyond sight,
and where people have settled, braving the uncertain earth.

Idunn and her people know these volcanoes are kin,
as much a part of them as their own blood.
They roar, they tear up roads, gulp down houses whole.
And yet, they breathe life into the country,
the hot veins of magma turning turbines,
sending clean, fierce power into every corner.

Iceland itself was born of such fire and fury,
rising from the water in a blast of molten earth,
an island stitched together by lava and longing.

#Iceland #VolcanoLife #NaturePoetry #Resilience #Grindavik #IcelandicCulture #GeothermalPower #NaturalDisaster #EarthquakeSurvival #VolcanoEruption