Old rift zone in Iceland

Here are two pictures of an old rift zone in Iceland. This rift zone was active until about 7 million years ago or so. This cliffs that I show here on this picture are from this old rift zone. It was volcanic long time ago. But not any more. This area however holds an good amount of unknown fissures and fault lines that might become active one day and create earthquakes in this area. But the years that I have been in this area I have never felt an earthquake. But I have recorded earthquake somewhere in this area. But it was an minor one. Less then ML1.5 in size. This area also used to be under ocean for several million years before it became dry land.


This is the old rift zone that was active until 7 million years ago. Click on the picture for full size. This picture is released under Creative Commons Licence. See the licence page for more details.

There is still an chance of this area to get new volcanoes in far future. Like did happen on Snæfellsnes. But this rift zone did pass trough there also. In this old rift zones there are several old volcanoes. I have covered them before on this blog. But that blog post can be found here.

More articles on this area

The Iceland Hotspot (academic.emporia.edu)
Iceland 2003 Keck Junior Research Project Geology of an Abandoned Oceanic Rift: The Skagi Area, North-Central Iceland (people.usd.edu)