Related Papers
Environmental Humanities
Down to Earth
2016 •
Gisli Palsson
Surtsey research
Human (boot) tracks preserved in volcanic deposits of Surtsey Island, Iceland
2022 •
Birgir Oskarsson
Down to Earth: Geosocialities and Geopolitics
Gisli Palsson
" Nature " and " social life " tended to be separated by Enlightenment thinkers, setting the stage for a long-standing tension between geology and social-cultural theory. Such a division suppressed the liveliness that humans have often attributed to material things. Several scholars and artists, many of whom would advocate new materialisms, have attempted to recapture this liveliness. Drawing upon these developments, we use the notion of " geosocialities " (the commingling of the geologic and the social and the sensibilities involved) to facilitate appreciation of the mineral and the alignment between geology and social cultural theory. While geosocialities overlap with nature-cultures and " biosocialities, " they are " harder " in the sense of drawing attention to geology and its relation to social life. Such a move seems timely, keeping in mind the popular claim that in the Anthropocene, humans have become a geologic force. At the same time, it opens up a down-to-earth form of geopolitics that exceeds classic notions of the term, attending to different geologic scales; to living bodies, human and nonhuman; to solid rock; and to the planet. We develop our argument through engagement with two sites. One concerns the inscription of human activities in volcanic rock, the second the embodiment of isotopes in living beings. These examples raise questions about the multiple scales of geosociality, which intertwine biography and Earth " itself. "
Journal of Aesthetics and Culture
Musical Aesthetics Below Ground: Volcanic Action and the Geosocial in Sigur Rós's "Brennisteinn"
2020 •
Tore Størvold
This article presents a musicological and ecocritical close reading of the song “Brennisteinn” (“sulphur” or, literally, “burning rock”) by the acclaimed post-rock band Sigur Rós. The song— and its accompanying music video—features musical, lyrical, and audiovisual means of registering the turbulence of living in volcanic landscapes. My analysis of Sigur Rós’s music opens up a window into an Icelandic cultural history of inhabiting a risky Earth, a condition captured by anthropologist Gísli Pálsson’s concept of geosociality, which emerged from his ethnography in communities living with volcanoes. Geosociality allows for a “down to earth” perspective that accounts for the liveliness of the ground below our feet. Likewise, in Sigur Rós’s “Brennisteinn”, we encounter a musical imagination of the geologic that poses a challenge to hegemonic concepts of nature founded on notions of equilibrium and permanence. The article culminates with a consideration of what such a geologically minded aesthetics can offer us in the age of the Anthropocene.
Operational report for the 2017 Surtsey Underwater volcanic System for Thermophiles, Alteration processes and INnovative concretes (SUSTAIN) drilling project at Surtsey Volcano, Iceland
2019 •
Tobias Weisenberger
In summer 2017, the ICDP SUSTAIN project (Surtsey Underwater volcanic System for Thermophiles, Alteration processes and INnovative concretes), drilled three cored boreholes (Table 1) through Surtsey at sites ≤10 m from a cored hole obtained in 1979. Drilling through the still hot volcano was carried out with an Atlas Copco CS1000 drill rig, whose components were transported by helicopter to Surtsey and re-assembled on site. The first vertical borehole, SE-02a, was cored in HQ diameter to 152 meters below surface (m b.s.) during August 7-16. It was terminated due to borehole collapse. A second vertical (SE-02b) cored borehole was then drilled in HQ diameter to 192 m during August 19-26. Wireline borehole logging in SE-02b was performed August 26. The anodized NQ-sized aluminum tubing of the Surtsey Subsurface Observatory was installed in SE-02b to 181 m depth on August 27. A third borehole, SE-03, angled 35° from vertical and directed 264°, was drilled from August 28 to September 4 and reached a measured depth of 354 m (~290 m vertical depth) under the eastern crater. The core is HQ diameter to a measured depth of 213 m and NQ diameter from 213-354 m measured depth. The core traverses the deep conduit and intrusions of the volcano to a total vertical depth of 290 m b.s. Seawater drilling fluid for boreholes SE-02a and SE-02b was filtered and doubly UV-sterilized at the drill site. No mud products were employed while coring SE-02a, while small amounts of attapulgite mud were used in SE-02b and SE-03. Core samples for geochemical analyses of pore water and microbiological investigations were collected on site from all three boreholes. About 650 m of core was transported by helicopter to Heimaey, 18 km northeast of Surtsey, to a processing laboratory where the core was scanned, documented, and described. Additional core processing has taken place at the Náttúrufraedistofnun Íslands, the Icelandic Institute of Natural History in Gardabaer, where both the 1979 and 2017 cores are stored.
Surtsey research
Vascular plant colonisation, distribution and vegetation development on Surtsey during 1965–2015
Sigurður Magnússon
Since Surtsey was formed in 1963–1967, colonisation of vascular plants has been recorded by locating the f irst colonists of each species within a 1 ha (100x100 m) quadrat grid system of the island. The abundance of individual vascular plant species was further recorded within the grid in 1996-1997, 2005-2006, and 2014-2015 using a three graded abundance scale from rare to common. During 1965–2015, a total of 74 vascular plant species were found on Surtsey. The colonisation was considerable between 1965–1979 followed by a stagnation period. After the establishment of a dense seagull colony on the southern part of the island in 1986, colonisation increased greatly and peaked between 1992–1995. The colonisation differed greatly between surface types, being highest on sandy lava and barren lava, relatively low on eolian sand and coastal sediments, and none on palagonite tuff. By classification and ordination six main vegetations types were identified over the period 1996–2015, forming ...
Formation of a bird community on a new island, Surtsey, Iceland
Ævar Petersen
Black Sun, High Flame, and Flood: Volcanic Hazards in Iceland
Andrew Dugmore, Orri Vesteinsson
Scientific Drilling
SUSTAIN drilling at Surtsey volcano, Iceland, tracks hydrothermal and microbiological interactions in basalt 50 years after eruption
Hannah Reynolds
Geosciences
Characteristics of Sub-Aerially Emplaced Pyroclasts in the Surtsey Eruption Deposits: Implications for Diverse Surtseyan Eruptive Styles
Thor Thordarson
The 1963–1967 shallow-to-emergent eruption in Iceland’s Vestmannaeyjar earned a place in the history of volcanology by creating the island of Surtsey while under close observation of volcanologist Sigurdur Thorarinsson (Sigurður Þórarinsson in Icelandic). This is an example of what is now called Surtseyan volcanism, and it included explosive and effusive phases from multiple vents that formed the island of Surtsey itself, as well as one fully subaqueous pyroclastic edifice and two additional, but ephemeral, islands. Sigurdur Thorarinsson identified tephra jetting and continuous uprush as characteristic types of subaerial explosive activity of Surtseyan volcanism. Subaerial cone-forming deposits of Surtseyan volcanism are typically poorly sorted, with fine-grained beds rich in sideromelane ash fragments, punctuated by larger, ubiquitously composite bombs, whereas deposits sampled by coring deep into the submarine edifice include fines-poor horizons dominated by vesicular coarse sider...
