A november 14, 1963, fire broke out 425 feet beneath the sea in the Atlantic just off the south coast of Iceland. By the next day an island had been reared above the waves. It continued to grow despite the savage seas that resented this rude intrusion and attempted in the following months to erase the rising cone of ash and stones that was being blasted up from the depth of the earth by the new volcano. Four and one-half months after the birth of the island, now called Surtsey, lava blanketed a major portion of it and hardened into a protective shield against the angry sea and ensured the permanence of this speck on the map of the North Atlantic.
Eruptions continued periodically until June, 1967, when they apparently ended. Jon Jonsson, principal of the Icelandic Seventh-day Adventist School, and I had the opportunity to visit the island in July, 1967, about a month after the last eruption.
Those who claim the earth to be young compared to the millions of years generally accepted by evolutionists do not believe that the theory of uniformity, the interpretation of the past on the basis of the present, is a valid tool for understanding the history of the earth. We believe that many geological activities have happened rapidly and On a scale not witnessed in the world today. The island of Surtsey, built up in a short time, might be helpful in developing a true understanding of activities in the past. It may be possible to discover how fast sediments can accumulate, how quickly rocks may harden, and the rate pounding seas can cut cliffs and wear down boulders.
The northwest side of the island rises to over 500 feet above sea level and is composed of ash and rocks that piled up around the eruption centers during the initial activity. This material is hard enough to hold up in high banks but soft enough to erode rapidly under the attacks of wind and rain. Somewhat rounded pebbles of volcanic material lay here and there in the ash. Such stones would normally be interpreted as having been subjected to erosion in a stream bed or along a beach, but these missiles had never been exposed to this kind of abrasion. They evidently came out of the volcano in this partly rounded form. Thus geologists should exercise great caution lest they jump to incorrect conclusions about geological processes and the amounts of time involved.
The bulk of the island to the southeast is a rugged, chaotic plain of lava punctuated by two ugly craters. Steam hissed loudly from numerous fissures and holes or boiled out of small cones that dotted the broken surface and the flanks of the hills.
The lava was too hot to touch in many places and hot gases were capable of burning the corner of my wind breaker where it draped over a crack. But considering the recency of eruptions, it was surprising to find no location where we could not walk. Lava tubes, formed by streams of lava cooling and hardening on the outside while the liquid inside drained away, wound like giant serpents over the surface or just below. Fortunately none of them were large enough to more than jar and startle us with a drop of one or two feet when their roofs collapsed under our weight. We slept overnight in the cabin that had been built for the accommodation of visiting scientists, but if such quarters had not existed, we would have had no difficulty finding a tunnel, carpeted with soft sand and supplied with radiant heat, in which to spend the night out of the wind and rain.
At the time of our visit, only about thirty plants had managed to gain a foothold on the sand near high tide. No animals were seen except birds and a few insects that must have been carried there by the winds.
We wandered over the island, often in silence, fascinated by the starkness of this new land. It was as though we were on the moon—the earth lay far away and forgotten. Occasionally the cry of a sea gull or the drone of an airplane high overhead brought us back to reality. Even hunger pangs were not strong enough to break through the absorption and concentration that gripped us.
Of all the features, the rate of erosion along the shore was the most surprising. How difficult it would be to determine, if it were not known, that this land had not been in existence long. The broad beach of fine black sand and the high cliffs of basalt and lava suggested a mature land form. In a matter of months the sea had changed hard lava and basalt into abundant sand, and had cut back the strong rock into high cliffs. In one area where the most recent flow of lava had spilled into the sea only a few weeks before, the blocks and boulders already had been much rounded and eroded. During the months when lava cascaded down the slopes to the sea, water-worn boulders were sometimes thrown by giant breakers back upon the cooled and hardened surface. These would be subsequently covered by the next flow of lava. Today the wave-cut cliffs show beds of rounded boulders wedged between sheets of hardened lava. If this had not been seen happening, few would have imagined that these layers were formed during the same eruption with only days or weeks of time involved.
In the excellent little book, Surtsey, the New Island in the North Atlantic, Dr. Sigurdur Thorarinsson says, "An Icelander who has studied geology and geomorphology at foreign universities is later taught by experience in his own homeland that the time scale he had been trained to attach to geological developments is misleading when assessments are made of the forces—constructive and destructive—which have molded and are still molding the face of Iceland. What elsewhere, may take thousands of years may be accomplished here in one century. All the same he is amazed whenever he comes to Surtsey, because the same development may take a few weeks or even a few days here. On Surtsey, only a few months sufficed for a landscape to be created which was so varied and mature that it was almost beyond belief."
Surtsey has been a geological laboratory where the cataclysmic forces of nature can be studied on a small scale. Surtsey teaches us that the concept of uniformity is unrealistic and that catastrophism, which the Bible supports, is a much better basis for interpreting the history of the earth.
