08/08

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Wonder bread

One of the areas we have always been keen to explore is whether or not there can be a positive side to living on a fault line. This is obviously a delicate area, and one that requires careful negotiation. However, today we came across three brilliant, if somewhat different examples of a positive relationship with seismic activity.

The first was a visit to Krafla geothermal power station. Krafla, as well as being a 818m high mountain is also a system of north-south trending fissures underlaid by a great magma chamber. Here the earth’s energy has been harnessed to generate approximately 60 megawatts of electricity for the surrounding area. It’s pretty impressive. And pretty smelly.

Just near the power station is another example – A cinder-brick factory making building blocks from volcanic ash. The blocks look and work a bit like breeze blocks.

Best of all, near the cinder-brick factory, we came across a series of mysterious lids resting on the ground. It turned out this was actually an underground bread oven where Hverabrauo – fresh bread was being baked.

The bread bakes in these small ovens for 22 hours so we didn’t dare open a lid and disturb it!