The Massive Desert Hiding In The North Atlantic #Geography #Historyandculture

In the North Atlantic is a stretch of water notorious for its fury, a cold expanse separating the old world from the new. And right there, just South of the Arctic circle sits a massive anomaly, a landmass that looks like it's out of place because it is. This is Iceland and by all conventional rules of geography, it shouldn't be there. And more than that, it's hiding a geography that nobody would ever expect in such a place, a desert. So why is Iceland secretly a desert and how has that shaped the country we know and love today? To understand Iceland, you have to first understand that it's not a finished product. Most countries I talk about are geologically settled. The rocks are old, the mountains have mostly stopped growing and the ground generally stays put. Iceland is different. Iceland is still under construction. Geologically speaking, it's one of the youngest landmasses on earth and it sits in perhaps the most precarious position imaginable. You see, the Island straddles the mid Atlantic Ridge, the divergent boundary where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are actively pulling apart. In most places, this Ridge is deep underwater, a hidden seam of the planet. But here combined with a massive mantle plume, a hotspot of upwelling magma, the Ridge breaches the surface. The result is land besieged by volcanic eruptions. In fact, the Island is literally tearing itself in two at a rate of about two centimeters per year. That might sound slow, but in geologic terms, it's a sprint. This constant rifting creates a landscape that feels less like earth and more like a primordial testing ground. A fact that becomes unsettlingly obvious the moment you step off the plane. This isn't the passive beauty of a rolling French countryside or the ancient weathered stability of the Australian outback. Instead, Iceland is dotted with over 130 volcanoes, roughly 30 of which are active, but it's not just that these volcanoes erupt. It's how they erupt because Iceland is also home to massive glaciers. When a volcano blows beneath the ice, the result is a glacial outburst flood of biblical proportions where melted ice, ash, and boulders the size of houses are scoured across the landscape in minutes, erasing everything in their path. This means that you can be standing in a field of soft electric green moss that feels like memory foam under your boots, looking at a waterfall that seems torn from a fairy tale, but turn your head 45 degrees and you're staring at a jagged black scar of basalt lava that looks like it cooled yesterday because geologically speaking, it probably did. This volatility is the first clue as to why this Island is so strange. It creates a psychological tension for anyone standing there because the ground feels temporary. But if the ground is trying to kill you, the ocean is trying to save you, sort of. And this brings us to one of the most confusing aspects of Iceland's geography. If you look at Iceland's latitude, it should be a frozen wasteland similar to Baffin Island in Canada. By all rights, it should be encased in sea ice for most of the year. Yet the average winter temperature in Reykjavik is remarkably similar to New York City or even Vienna. This warmth is thanks to the North Atlantic current, a massive conveyor belt of warm water that pumps heat from the tropics, wrapping the Icelandic coastline in a surprisingly temperate hug. This creates what geographers call the coastal ring. The only part of the Island that feels somewhat hospitable. The coast is a series of fjords and lowlands carved by ancient glaciers, leaving behind pockets of land where grass can grow, sheep can graze and boats can launch. It's this coastal ring that gives visitors a false sense of security. You drive along the famous ring road, see green pastures and charming fishing villages. And you think this isn't so bad. You see the rain, the mist, the endless waterfalls, and you categorize Iceland as a wet country. This is the great deception of Icelandic geography. The coastline is a thin veneer of life wrapped around a core that is entirely different. The warm ocean air hits the mountains near the coast, dumps its moisture and leaves very little for the rest of the Island. Move just a few miles inland away from the comforting influence of the ocean. And the world changes instantly. You enter the Highlands. This is the vast uninhabited heart of the Island covering over 40,000 square kilometers. If the coast is the ice and green of Iceland, the Highlands are the fire and ash. Here the illusion of a temperate climate shatters. The Highlands are a plateau of volcanic deserts, jagged peaks and massive ice caps. The geography here creates a stark binary on the coast. You have soil that has taken thousands of years to develop nurturing that famous Icelandic livestock in the interior. The violence of the geography is too fresh. The soil is non-existent blown away by ferocious winds or buried under deep layers of volcanic debris. The ground is so porous from cooled lava that water doesn't pool. It instantly drains into the abyss below leaving the surface parched despite the snow. It's a place so geologically hostile that in the 1960s when NASA needed a place to train Apollo astronauts to walk on the moon, they sent them to the Highlands of Iceland. They reasoned that if the astronauts could navigate this alien shattered volcanic geology, the moon would be a walk in the park. So the physical geography of Iceland is a fortress. It's a place that actively resists habitation. It's a land where the elements are not just weather. They are geologic events and yet despite the volcanoes, the glacial floods and the complete lack of resources in the center of the island, people did eventually show up. So how did a civilization take root on what basically amounts to a giant volcano? To answer that, we have to first look back to the Vikings who first saw smoke rising from the bay. Navigating these volcanic coastlines requires gear that is tough, organized, and of course sustainably made. That's why I've come to rely on Bellroy for my travel. Now this is gear that I actually use. In fact, I have three different items that are completely integral to any trip I go on. My favorite of course is the Venture Ready Sling. This thing is essential. It's built from durable water-resistant recycled fabric and features a smart self-compressing strap that keeps the bag slim against my body while my hands stay free. To add onto that, I've also finally slimmed down my wallet with the Apex Slim Sleeve. It uses futuristic heat bonded pre-molded leather with no bulky stitching and the magnetic closure is incredibly satisfying to snap shut. Finally, because I work when I travel, the tech kit saves my sanity. It zips out completely flat for easy access and the magnetic slip pocket keeps my external hard drive secure while the elastic loop tames all of my cables. All of these items are incredibly durable, durable enough to last me a full year of travel. And if something does go wrong, everything is covered by a multi-year warranty. Also I appreciate that Bellroy is a certified B Corp dedicated to using recycled materials, which makes it better for this beautiful planet of ours. So if you need to upgrade your travel, you can get 10% off your order by clicking the link in the description below or scanning the QR code. And you can be sure that whenever I do make it to Iceland, Bellroy will be there with me. In the year 874 according to the Icelandic book of settlements, a man named Ingolfur Arnarson was fleeing Norway after becoming involved in a blood feud. As his ships approached this jagged unknown coast, he performed a ritual that seemed almost insane by modern navigation standards. He threw his high seat pillars, wooden logs that symbolized his chieftain status overboard into the churning Atlantic. His vow was simple. Wherever the gods washed the wood ashore, he would build his home. It took three more years to find the pillars, but when they finally did, they were washed up in a bay in the Southwest. Ingolfur saw steam rising from hot springs in the ground and named the place Reykjavik or Smoky Bay. It was a fitting name for a capital city founded on a literal hot plate and it marked the beginning of one of the most unique colonization experiments in human history. But Ingolfur wasn't the first to find the island, nor was he the first to give it its chilling name. That honor goes to a Norwegian named Floki Vilger Orsson. A few years before Ingolfur arrived, Floki had attempted to settle the island. He brought livestock and family hoping for a new life, but the summer was so bountiful and the fishing so good that he forgot to harvest enough hay for winter. When the cold set in, his livestock starved, frustrated, bitter, and defeated. He climbed a mountain in the spring and looked out over a fjord filled with drift ice from Greenland. In a fit, he named the island Iceland. There is a popular historic myth that you might've heard that the Vikings named it Iceland to discourage visitors and named Greenland Greenland to attract them. It's a great story, but the reality is much more practical. Floki was just having a terrible year and he was grumpy, but the name stuck. And despite the ice that does exist in Iceland, the settlers kept coming. They were mostly Norse chieftains and their Celtic slaves fleeing the consolidation of power by King Harald Fairhair in Norway. They weren't looking for riches though. They just wanted freedom. This desire for autonomy shaped the very structure of Icelandic society. By the year 930, they had established the all thing at Thingvellir. This was a national assembly held in a rift Valley where the tectonic plates meet. It became the world's oldest surviving parliament, creating a unique Commonwealth with no King, no central executive and a legal system based entirely on consensus and feuds. However, building a civilization on the literal edge of the world came with a heavy price. For centuries, the history of Iceland wasn't about conquest or expansion. It was about survival against a geography that seemed determined to erase the population. The golden age of the sagas eventually crumbled into civil war, leading Icelanders to sign away their independence to Norway in 1262 and later to Denmark. This ushered in centuries of incredible hardship. The island was hit by the black death, raided by pirates from North Africa who stole hundreds of people into slavery and subjected to a crushing trade monopoly by the Danish crown. But the worst enemy remained the land itself. The most devastating blow came in 1783 with the eruption of the Lackey fissures. It wasn't just an explosion. It was a planetary event. The eruption lasted for eight months spewing poisonous hydrofluoric acid and sulfur dioxide across the island. The resulting missed hardships killed 80% of the island's sheep, 50% of the cattle and 25% of the human population from famine and disease. It got so bad that the Danish king seriously considered evacuating the entire remaining population of Iceland to the heaths of the Jutland in Denmark. The island was almost abandoned, but the Icelanders refused to leave. This constant proximity to death and disaster forged a national character defined by a specific phrase you will hear often. If you visit today, set a red dust, roughly translated, it means it will all work out in the end. This resilience is what eventually led them back to independence. Throughout the 1800s, a nationalist movement grew fueled by a resurgence in the Icelandic language and literature. But ironically, it was the second world war that finally severed the ties with Denmark. When Germany occupied Denmark in 1940, Iceland was left in political limbo, realizing the island's strategic importance for controlling the North Atlantic. The British, and later the Americans, invaded and occupied Iceland. It was a friendly invasion, but it changed everything. The influx of money, infrastructure, and technology catapulted Iceland from a subsistence farming society into the modern era almost overnight. In 1944, while the war still raged, Iceland declared full independence, finally becoming a republic. Today, Iceland is a cultural powerhouse. It has a literacy rate of 99%, publishes more books per capita than anywhere else, and has harnessed that violent geothermal energy to power a modern high-tech society. But despite all of this, if you look at a population map of Iceland today, you'll notice something very strange. Almost everyone lives on the coast and the center of the country remains a blank spot on the map, a void where no towns, no villages, and no farms exist. You might assume this is because of the mountains or the glaciers, but the reason is actually much more specific and technically fascinating. It turns out that the heart of Iceland isn't just rocky or cold. It's a desert. When you think of a desert, your mind almost certainly jumps to the Sahara or the Mojave. You definitely don't think of an island in the North Atlantic famous for its massive glaciers and thunderous waterfalls. In the popular imagination, Iceland is wet. And for the most part, that reputation is well-earned. If you visit Reykjavik or the South coast, you are likely to be rained on, snowed on, or hailed on, sometimes all within the same hour. But this wet reputation hides a geographic secret that explains why the map of Iceland looks the way it does. If you were to drive inland, past the glaciers and up onto the high plateau, you would find yourself in a landscape that is technically as dry as some of the most arid places on earth. The reason for this lies in a phenomenon known as the rain shadow. And in Iceland, it happens on a massive scale. The prevailing weather systems in this part of the world come from the South and Southwest, carrying heavy moisture from across the Atlantic ocean. As these moisture laden clouds approach Iceland, they slam into the massive topographic barriers along the South coast, specifically the giant ice caps like Vatnajökull and Myrdalsjökull. Physics take over from there. The air is forced upwards, it cools, and dumps almost all of its moisture as rain or snow on the Southern slopes of the mountains. By the time the air descends on the other side, into the Northern territory, it's bone dry. This creates a shocking disparity in precipitation. The Southern coast of Iceland can receive up to 3,000 or 4,000 millimeters of precipitation a year. Just a few hours drive North, in the shadow of the Vatnajökull glacier, that number plummets to under 400 millimeters. In some parts of the Northeastern highlands, it drops below 250 millimeters. That is the technical definition of a desert. The area North of Vatnajökull, specifically the Örebron lava field, is a cold desert. It's a vast gray expanse of pumice and black sand where the wind howls across the landscape that looks utterly dead. But the lack of rain is only half the problem. Even in deserts like the Sonoran in Arizona, you have scrub brush and cacti. In the Icelandic highlands, you often have nothing but black rock. This is because the ground in the interior is made up of a porous volcanic lava and layers of loose tephra or volcanic ash. It acts like a giant sieve. Even when the winter snow melts, the water doesn't pool on the surface or soak into a fertile topsoil. It instantly drains deep underground, disappearing into the porous bedrock. This creates a phenomenon called edaphic drought. The water is there, deep down, but it is completely inaccessible to plant roots. This creates a vicious cycle. Because there is no water retention, plants can't grow. Because plants can't grow, there are no roots to hold the soil together. When the winds pick up, and in the highlands the winds are always blowing, it whips up the loose volcanic dust into massive sandstorms. Yes, Iceland has sandstorms. They can be so abrasive that they strip the paint off cars and turn day into night. This erosion makes it nearly impossible for vegetation to ever take hold, locking the interior into a permanent state of barrenness. This geologic reality is the definitive answer to why nobody lives in the middle of Iceland. Throughout history, humans have settled in some pretty extreme places. From the high Andes to the Siberian tundra. But humans need two things to establish a permanent settlement, a source of freshwater and a way to produce or gather food. The Icelandic highlands offer neither. You cannot farm on a pile of loose volcanic rocks that drain water like a colander, and you can't graze sheep on land that has no grass. For over a thousand years, the interior of Iceland has served only as a barrier. It was a place you crossed, usually at great peril, but never a place you stayed. In the old sagas, the highlands were the realm of outlaws. Men who had been banished from society would flee into the desert interior because it was the only place where no one would follow them. The most famous of them, Fjalla Eivindur, managed to survive in the highlands for 20 years in the 18th century. But he only did so by finding a tiny rare oasis near a hot spring where a patch of angelica roots grew. He survived, but he was the exception that proved the rule. The interior is not meant for human life. Even today, with all of our modern technology, the interior remains empty. There are no towns, no gas stations, and no permanent residents. The roads that cross it, known as F-roads are really just gravel tracks that are only open for a few months in the summer. For the rest of the year, the highlands are locked away under snow and darkness, returning to their natural state as a forbidden wilderness. The government has no plans to develop cities there. In fact, the entire area is slowly being turned into one of the largest national parks in Europe, protecting it as one of the last great wildernesses on the continent. So Iceland's interior isn't a desert in the conventional sense, but given that some areas get very little precipitation combined with the fact that any water that does make it there disappears, it's safe to say that Iceland is home to perhaps Europe's largest desert. This week I'm in Istanbul where I'm exploring the world's only true dual continent city. So what does a European and Asian city look and feel like? Come find out over on my travel channel. I hope you enjoyed learning all about Iceland and its weird interior desert. If you did, be sure to check out this video all about how America's tiny ocean breaks geography. Thanks for watching. See you next time.