Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

to see Hekla or the Westman Islands. They
followed Route 1, the national highway known as ‘the Ring Road’ that circled Iceland. The road was good and straight and Magnus drove fast.
    Eyjafjallajökull was the nearer of the two glaciers that lay on either side of Fimmvörduháls, the site of the first volcano. On a clear day they would have had a perfect view of
the glacier and the eruption, but that morning all they could see was grey moisture. They sped through Hvolsvöllur and in a few more minutes they approached the Markarfljót, the broad
river that flowed down behind the northern slope of Eyjafjallajökull and curved around its western edge down towards the sea. Only the bottom couple of hundred feet of the ridge of mountains
that supported the glacier and its volcano were visible beneath the cloud on the other side of the river. A narrow stream of water slipped down a cliff out of the clouds.
    The river itself looked normal. It was broad and powerful but not in full spate. Magnus had a soft spot for the Markarfljót. It featured in one of his favourite sagas, Njáll’s Saga . There was a wonderful scene where Njáll’s son Skarphédinn slid across the ice from one side of the river to the other, swinging his axe and
decapitating one of his father’s enemies as he did so. All that had happened only a few kilometres to the north.
    A white jeep with the word Lögreglan emblazoned on its side was parked across the road in front of the modern bridge. Magnus stopped beside it and got out of his own car. Although
there was no visible sign of the volcano, he could hear a distant rumbling. He recognized the patrolman as one of the officers from Hvolsvöllur police station.
    ‘Any sign of a flood yet?’ he asked the policeman.
    ‘Not yet. But we’re expecting it.’
    ‘Can you let me across?’
    ‘Sorry, Magnús. The road is closed.’
    ‘But the bridge looks fine.’
    ‘The bridge might be fine but see that guy in the Caterpillar over there?’ The policeman nodded over the bridge towards a lone yellow backhoe perched on the raised dyke which carried
the road, waving its bucket in the air. ‘He’s making some holes in the road so that when the flood does come it doesn’t take out the bridge.’
    ‘Is there no way across?’
    ‘There’s a little bridge a few kilometres up from here. We are not letting the public across, but I guess it’s OK for you, as long as you don’t try to cross if there is a
flood.’
    ‘Thanks.’ Magnus climbed back into his Range Rover and headed up a dirt track along the western edge of the river.
    ‘Shame we can’t see anything,’ said Mikael Már, nodding towards the clouds under which Eyjafjallajökull was apparently erupting.
    ‘They say it’s bigger than Fimmvörduháls,’ said Magnus.
    They reached the bridge, a narrow stone construction of one vehicle’s width, and crossed the river, turning south. In a few more minutes they had reached the main bridge and the
Caterpillar, and headed eastwards again on the national road.
    ‘Are we going to be OK if there is a flood?’ Mikael Már asked.
    ‘Sure we are,’ said Magnus. He wouldn’t mind seeing one of those famous jökulhlaup . But what he really wanted to see was where the man Mikael Már had spotted
was standing.
    ‘Have you noticed there aren’t any cars?’ Mikael Már asked.
    ‘Yes,’ said Magnus. ‘There are probably police roadblocks ahead.’
    ‘And the farms look very quiet.’
    ‘Probably evacuated.’
    ‘Oh.’
    Magnus could tell his passenger was nervous. He could also tell he didn’t want to admit to it.
    The best way to reach the Fimmvörduháls volcano, and the way that the Freeflow team had used two days before, was to drive eastwards along Route 1 to the south of
Eyjafjallajökull, and then turn north on to Mýrdalsjökull and double back to the saddle between the two glaciers. Skógafoss was to the southeast of Eyjafjallajökull,
just a little way off the Ring Road.
    They reached it in a few minutes. Skógafoss was one of Iceland’s many spectacular waterfalls, a broad sheet of water pouring over the edge of a cliff two hundred feet into a pool
below, transporting glacial water down to the sea. Partly because of its proximity to Route 1, there were a number of tourist facilities nearby: a car park, some toilets, a hotel.
    All quiet.
    Magnus pulled off the main highway and on to a little paved road that led to the falls. ‘OK, where was this guy?’
    ‘We stopped