Overview
About Vestmannaeyjar
A volcanic system extending beneath the sea
The islands form the visible part of a largely submarine volcanic system at the southern end of Iceland's Eastern Volcanic Zone. Basaltic eruptions have built islands and underwater cones on the continental shelf. Two twentieth-century eruptions demonstrate different stages of island building: Surtsey emerged from the sea during the 1963–1967 eruption, while the 1973 eruption added new land to the already inhabited island of Heimaey.
An island laboratory
Surtsey was protected from its earliest years to allow scientists to study how life colonises new land with limited human disturbance. Its plants, birds and marine organisms provide a long-running record of ecological succession. This scientific role belongs to one island within an archipelago that also contains an established fishing community and seabird colonies.
The name in a medieval account
Landnámabók connects the name with Irish enslaved men, called Westmen, who fled to the islands after killing Hjörleifur. This is the medieval settlement account behind the place-name, rather than a contemporary record of those events.
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