Category: Thingvellir

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Loose rocks fall down at Thingvellir national park

Today (02-November-2013) loose rock did fall down at popular hiking router in Thingvellir national park in Iceland. The rocks that did drop have estimated weight of around 2 tons for the largest ones. No damage took place and nobody was hurt following this rock slide. While not common it does happen that rock fall down in Thingvellir since frost and water slowly crack the rock and make it loose with time.

grjothrun_0.svd.02-November-2013
The rocks that did drop down. Copyright of this image belongs to Rúv and the original person who took this picture.
img_1245_2.svd.02-November-2013
The rocks have been marked off. Copyright of this image belongs to Rúv and original person who took this image.

There is a reaming risk of more rock falling down in this area. When they might come down is impossible to know for sure. Currently the employees of the Thingvellir national park are estimating the risk of more rock coming down at this location.

Icelandic news about this

Stórgrýti hrundi úr barmi Almannagjár (Rúv.is. Icelandic)
Meta líkur á frekara hruni (Rúv.is, Icelandic)

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Update on the crack in Þingvellir (Thingvellir), Almannagjá fissure

Tonight Rúv did have a news about the fissure that did open up in Þingvellir (Thingvellir) few weeks ago. Now scientists have started to explore this new fissure. So far they have measured that it is about 10 meters deep. It is still unclear how long it is. The current theory is that this new fissure started to open up after the Mw6.8 and Mw6.7 earthquakes in SISZ in the year 2000, or the Mw6.3 earthquake in the year 2008. But that is however unclear at this time.

What appears also to have happened is that ground water have cleaned out loose material in this new fissure. This might possibly have deepened the fissure. But this aspect of this new fissure is still a bit unclear one. But what is the most amazing thing is that the road has not started to collapse earlier then it did. Due how big this new fissure appears to be.

News on Rúv about this. Use Google translate at own risk, as Google does not know what Icelanders are saying.

Furðulegt að ekki hafi hrunið fyrr (Icelandic, video (Windows Media Video), picture, Rúv.is)