Grindavik: Vignir Kristinsson smiles as two women, the only customers all morning, enter his gift shop filled with handmade things of oak. After perusing decorations ranging from animals to kitchen cutting boards, one woman bought a small black-stained tree.
After decades of making cabinets for a living, Kristinsson, 64, said his daughter persuaded him to turn his passion for woodworking into a business. Five years ago, he and his wife opened the shop in Grindavik, a coastal town of 3,800 people about 50 kilometres (30 miles) southwest of Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik. Business was good.
Since December 2023, nine eruptions near Grindavik have forced residents to repeatedly evacuate, with authorities closing the town for periods ranging from a few days to months.
“I’m supposed to run a business when people are told they should not come,” Kristinsson said. “How is that possible?”
Icelanders are no strangers to eruptions. The ones near Grindavik have come from the Sundhnuksgígar crater row, a series of volcanic fissures that are part of the Svartsengi volcanic system, in the Reykjanes Peninsula.
Before the first eruption nearly two years ago, the system had been dormant for 783 years. Scientists say the volcanic activity is not over. The Icelandic Meteorological Office, which monitors volcanoes, said in September that a 10th eruption was likely in the months ahead. It’s impossible to know how long the activity may last.
“When we had to leave, we had five minutes to get our stuff,” said Kristolina Osk Guajonsdottir, 18, recalling the first evacuation in November 2023.
Since then, Guajonsdottir has been going to a high school in Keflavik, about 23 kilometres (14 miles) north of Grindavik.