Surtsey

On the morning of 14 November 1963 the cook of the trawler Ísleifur II, fishing off the south coast of Iceland, saw a column of dark smoke rising to the south-west. An eruption that had begun on the sea floor 130 m down had broken the surface. Iceland's naming committee called the new island Surtsey, after Surtr, the fire giant of Norse mythology.

The eruption lasted three and a half years, until 5 June 1967, and the island's highest point reached 174 m above sea level. At first it was a loose pile of tephra, but from 1964 lava flows laid down a hard cap that kept the waves from washing it away. Erosion has since removed almost half of its area and lowered the summit to 155 m.

Surtsey was declared a nature reserve in 1965, while the eruption was still going on, and only a few scientists may land. The first vascular plant was found on the north shore in the spring of 1965, and by 2008 69 plant species had been recorded. A tomato plant that sprouted from human waste was removed. The island was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2008 as a record of how life colonises new land.