Straddling the Mid-Atlantic Ridge just south of the Arctic Ocean, Iceland is a place of extremes. It’s a country where active volcanoes, aggressive glaciers and sandy beaches sit side-by-side. The difference between winter and summer is quite literally the difference between night and day.
Those extremes come into sharp relief on the top of Eldfell, a volcano on the offshore island of Heimaey, The product of one of the best-known volcanic eruptions in the world, Eldfell appeared unexpectedly in 1973, spewing lava and ash across Heimaey’s once gentle, grassy meadows. Now, over forty years later, it looms red and rocky above the orderly streets of the fishing town below. From its peak, you can see how the fields of lava flows abruptly end where the rows of white-painted houses begin. The smooth, aquamarine waters of the harbor – a hub of Iceland’s fishing industry – lap against the rough lava rubble. Grass from stabilization projects planted by the islanders cuts a bold line across Eldfell’s southwest slope, green against the red moonscape slopes. To the north, the 1973 fissure that created Eldfell runs like a jagged rope.
View of Heimaey town and harbor from peak of Eldfell
Images by author, except as indicated
Boundaries between lava flows and grass stabilization projects
The intense contrast between volcanic action and verdant, pastoral town is a window into how Heimaey’s residents have negotiated the dramatic changes Eldfell enacted on their island. Rather than permanently abandoning Heimaey, many chose to return once the worst of the eruption had passed. Using a new technique of cooling the flowing lava with seawater, they mitigated its movement across the island, saving the harbor and much of the town. By cultivating the volcano’s lava flows and ash debris to suit their fishing-based society, they struck a tentative balance with powerful geologic forces. They found a way to take shelter in actively shifting ground.
The speed and agility with which they did so reflects a particularly Icelandic attitude towards change. Rather than something to be feared, Icelanders generally approach the concept of change in their landscapes as a fact of life. Volcanic eruptions will come and should be accommodated when they do. Earthquakes are accepted as par for the course. Such is life along the Mid Atlantic Ridge – they understand and accept the landscape dynamics that come with living there.
Compared with much of the rest of the world, this Icelandic attitude is an anomaly. Since the rise of industrialization provided the tools for larger-scale engineering, humans have increasingly built as if landscape change were a non-issue. Tenets of the machine age – simplicity, efficiency – have been absorbed into urban planning and design, giving rise to developments that largely disregard the natural processes of the landscapes in which they’re built. Manhattan’s marshes were filled in and shored up to make way for rising levels of international trade. Following devastating losses from the 1953 flood of the Rhine River, the Netherlands launched the Deltaworks project, one of the most extensive systems of dikes and dams in the world.
Given the realities of climate change and accelerated sea level rise, it’s time to let that approach go. As evidenced by events like Hurricane Sandy, the legacy of the machine-age city has resulted in highly vulnerable developments. With sea levels slated to increase at least 4 ft. 7 in. (1.4m) meters by the end of the 21st century, damage wrought by natural disturbances in coastal urban centers will only increase. The climatic changes spurring sea level rise –- a two-fold process of melting polar ice caps and expansion of warmer ocean waters -- will result in greater climatological uncertainty across the board. The severity of storms like Sandy, with its storm surge levels of thirteen feet, and the current paralyzing drought in California, will grow, leaving coastal cities vulnerable to a further array of natural hazards in the years to come. Consistent, largely unpredictable landscape change is the base condition our development must be able to negotiate.
As there’s no way to predict exactly how and when climate change will impact our landscapes, negotiating the coming changes calls for an embrace of uncertainty and instability. If we’re to live and thrive here in the centuries to come, we have to learn how to negotiate change in our modern societies and, in so doing, embrace it into the planning and design of our cities, networks and systems. Like the residents of Heimaey, we have to learn to take shelter in shifting ground.
In this light, the concept of resiliency becomes a valuable analytical framework. The study of the amount of change a given system can accommodate before it shifts state, resiliency is a key to understanding how we can embrace landscape change rather than defend against its impacts. In this essay, resiliency – particularly social resiliency -- is used as a lens for understanding how we can better embrace the concept of change into our built environment, and the shifts in societal mores and connections we will need to do so. By exploring the example of Heimaey in the context of resiliency, I’ll explore the importance of landscape and culture in cultivating a more resilient built environment.
Defining Resiliency
Resiliency is a slippery term, with many meanings. In engineering, resiliency refers to the ability of a structure to “resile,” or recover its original shape after being distorted by stress. In psychology, resiliency is a factor of a person’s ability to deal with stresses. Systems theory, with its base in ecological science, defines resiliency as the ability of a system to absorb disturbances by re-aligning itself. By re-organizing following the impact of a disturbance, the system is able to carry out the same basic functions it did before the disturbance occured.
In this context, resiliency becomes a powerful means of understanding change. That it stems from the view of ecological systems as consistently changing is a large part of that power. It’s a dramatic departure from the other primary definition of resiliency presented in ecological literature, which refers to the time it takes for a system to return to a steady-state following a disturbance.5 Unlike the former, this definition understands systems as existing close to a stable steady state. Far from static entities, however, ecological systems are constantly in flux.
Resiliency, therefore, is a dynamic process that enables a system to negotiate change. It indicates that some change will happen within a system when faced with a certain magnitude disturbance.6 Depending on the level of resiliency of that system, it can face a higher or lower degree of disturbance before changing states. It also infers that there are limits to resiliency. Each system can only accommodate so much change before things turn catastrophic and the system “flips,” the scientific term for breaking down. At a certain point or magnitude of change, no matter how resilient a system, it will either adapt into a new form or die.
The Power of the Social
Resilience as a general framework for understanding change is all well and good, but how to identify it? What are the qualities that make for a more resilient system? In regards to the human built environment, the simple answer lies in the interplay between three factors: infrastructure, institutional capacity, and social mores. The shape, redundancy and flexibility of infrastructural networks – from power grids to water resources – are a key baseline of more adaptable development. Institutional frameworks – from economic investment to public health sectors – provide crucial drive, funding and large-scale support. The focus and quality of that development is largely shaped by social mores and attitudes.
These last two aspects make up the backbone of social resiliency, an increasingly important factor in the cultivation of resilient systems. When institutions are more knowledgeable, nimble and connected to their constituents, the likeliness that they will respond quickly and appropriately to a given disturbance increases astronomically. A tighter-knit community, where members know and trust each other, are better equipped to work together in adverse situations, preparing them physically and psychologically to embrace the shifts of change. Both of these factors – institutional character and social ties – are direct reflections of a particular society’s culture.
Investigating the context of social resiliency in scientific literature sheds valuable light on the qualities that make for a more resilient culture. Of particular importance is the concept of self-organization, the ability of a system to reorganize at critical points of instability. The concept derives from C. S. Holling’s research on social-ecological resilience and its relationship to nonlinear dynamics. Again, nonlinear dynamics are very important in this context as landscape change, like sea level rise, is a nonlinear, complex and unpredictable process.
The ability of a system to self-organize is further dependent on two factors: the “ability of a system to build and increase capacity for learning and adaption” and “the degree to which the system is capable of self-organization.” Important to the process of self-organization is the aspect of what Holling calls ‘memory.’ Here, memory refers to collective, accumulated experiences that form a shared history. That shared history creates a common understanding of how to respond to shifts in resource supply, distribution and composition over space and time.
Like other animal communities, humans are highly capable of these kinds of feats of self-organization, and rely heavily on collective 'memory’ to do so. Following the 2011 tsunami in Japan, for example, certain communities had the embedded cultural memory of retreating to high ground. With Japan’s long and well-documented history of negotiating tsunami, the memory of what to do was passed down through cultural tools, such as paintings, storytelling, photographs, etc. For humans, these cultural means of communication, of strengthening their shared ‘memory’, serve an important purpose in cultivating aspects of self-organization.
Future conditions are inherently unpredictable and therefore can’t be planned in a rational fashion. As such, scientists at the forefront of the field are emphatic that the best bet for creating resilient systems is to enhance the second and third characteristics of resilience -- a system’s capacity for learning and adaptation and its capacity for self-organization.
Cultivating these factors is dependent as much on social dynamics as it is on infrastructural and ecological factors. In the case of cities, the resiliency of institutions and social communities are vital to handling stresses. In his 2013 article, “Adaptation: How Can Cities be Climate-Proofed?”, Professor of Sociology Eric Klinenberg illustrates this fact through the story of the 1995 Chicago heat wave’s impact on two neighboring communities. A serious event, the heat wave caused the death of over 700 people across the city. Yet in two adjacent neighborhoods, alike in socio-economic status, microclimate and demographics, the effects of the heat wave were strikingly different. Both were poor with many older residents, yet one – Englewood – had a death rate of 33 out of every 100,000 people, while the other, Auburn Gresham, had a death rate of 3 out of every 100,000.
What made the difference? Klinenberg identifies one key factor – social ties. The Auburn Gresham neighborhood was characterized by small commercial establishments. These businesses draw older people, who are particularly vulnerable to things like heat waves, out into the public realm. They generally had more regular interactions with fellow community members, creating the base for more robust social infrastructures.
Just as important as strong community connections, however, are the cultural mores of a given group. As Christine Wamsler points out in Cities, Disaster Risk and Adaptation, “Humans have always adapted to environmental changes, including variations in weather and hazards.” That longstanding capacity for adaptation, she notes, is dependent on the cultural influences of a particular locality. Societal connection to the landscape dynamics of a place provides fertile ground for understanding how to adapt to its changes. Which is why the town of Heimaey was perhaps the best place for an unexpected and violent volcanic eruption to occur.
Returning to Heimaey
On the morning of January 23rd 1973, Eldfell erupted on Heimaey without warning. Tremors in the earth opened large fissures across the island, letting loose explosive fountains of 2000 degree F lava. Farmers shot their cattle, fishermen abandoned their boats in the harbor and everyone fled to the mainland. For some, it was their first time off the island. The eruption continued for five months, creating a scene right out of the Old Testament as fire rained across Heimaey. Houses burned and ash fell as deep as twenty feet. By the time Eldfell finally fell quiet on July of that year, Eldfell rose almost 200 meters high, transforming a former green meadow into a red, raw mountain.
Eldfell exploding
Source: Centrum
Projects to cultivate the eruption’s impact on the town had already begun. By mid February, the Icelandic government began an initiative to cool the flowing lava with seawater. Proposed by physicist Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson, the idea was initially disregarded as a pipedream. As the volcano spewed more lava across the island, however, people reconsidered. Heimay’s harbor is a major center of Iceland’s fishing industry, one of its key economies. Fish are caught for miles around the island, and all of them are processed and shipped from Heimaey. As John McPhee noted in Control of Nature, “Proportionally, Heimaey was more valuable to Iceland than downtown New York is to us [Americans]” . Losing the harbor to the encroaching lava flows would hurt not just Heimaey’s residents but the rest of Iceland as well.
The $1.5 million intervention worked. By pumping harbor water across Eldfell’s smoking lava fields, the lava cooled and its movements slowed, saving the harbor and mitigating some of the damage done to the town. Manipulating the lava flows also had the added benefit of making much needed harbor improvements, the estimated cost of which exceeded the $30 million worth of heating benefits the process likewise provided. Publicity from the volcanic event has also resulted in a boost in tourism, adding to Heimaey’s economic vitality.
Lava flows at the edge of Heimaey's harbor today
Tying it together
The residents of Heimaey faced a frightening event and found ways to not only accommodate but thrive from its impacts. How did they do it? Assessing the case through the lens of resiliency helps identify two important factors: regular exposure to and understanding of landscape dynamics, and a culture that generated strong institutional capacity and social ties.
Like the rest of Iceland, Heimaey is characterized by intense landscape forces. While it’s not regularly hit by the sandstorms that blow off the volcanic center of the Iceland mainland, and prior to 1973 didn’t have a history of heavy earthquake activity, Heimaey still gets its fair share of intensity. Hurricanes regularly hit the area, bringing with them all the violent wind and rainfall they do in lower latitudes. Even the simple transition from winter to summer is an intense change. The long, white nights of summer shift to the cold, dark winter every year, crafting a completely different context for daily life.
Heimaey’s residents have had to find ways to cope. Take the shepherds, for instance. As grazing land is in short supply on Heimaey – the only inhabited island in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago -- shepherds move their sheep to the neighboring crags come summer. Although other islands in the Vestmanneeyjar have fertile green meadows, unlike Heimaey, they also have steep, sheer cliffs, rising high above the ocean. To graze their herds during the short summer months, shepherds lift their sheep up these cliffs one by one, in baskets or by hand. When winter approaches, they make the painstaking move back to Heimaey, moving the sheep one by one.
Vestmanneeyjar Islands surrounding Heimaey
Like the rest of Iceland, daily life on Heimaey necessitates negotiation of significant, intense change. Forces there aren’t the kind that thicker walls and a stronger dam can keep at bay. Living on an island like Heimaey requires both an understanding of and an embrace of the forces that shape it.
Heimaey’s close-knit society was equally important to the way it negotiated the impact of Eldfell, a closeness that extended to its relationship with the Icelandic mainland. Had the government not had such great economic investment in Heimaey’s harbor, the lava-cooling project would not have happened. Without that, more of the island and town would have been subsumed and the harbor – the island’s economic engine – would have been destroyed. Without that source of income, it’s highly likely that the island would have been abandoned. Yet that didn’t happen. Heimaey’s population, while smaller than it was before Eldfell appeared, is still alive and strong because it reaped the benefits of Iceland’s close-knit society.
With 320,000 citizens, Iceland is a small country. It is also one of the most homogenous. Most people are descended from the Norwegian Vikings who colonized the island in the 900s, and the Irish and Scottish slaves they brought with them. People are so genetically homogenous, in fact, that three University of Iceland students developed a smartphone app to help people avoid accidental incest. With the app, users can ‘bump’ their phones with a potential mate; if they’re closely related, the app issues a warning sound.
Such extreme homogeneity sets the stage in Iceland for a tight-knit society. As many studies have shown, differences in cultural and social norms impede trust and communication. Many historical events are proof that such impediments lead to outright violence. Only with a certain base degree of trust can a human begin to build with another. Shared backgrounds generally lead to shared values, priorities and organizational systems, all of which serve to cultivate more trust, enabling the development of more cohesive, integrated societies. When adverse conditions strike, it’s the group that knows how to trust and communicate that will be best prepared to respond. When Eldfell appeared, Heimaey -- and the rest of Iceland – was far better prepared than most.
Conclusions
Increasingly, social resiliency is recognized as a crucial factor in the amounts of change that communities, neighborhoods, cities and countries can negotiate. The societal factors outlined in the passages above -- regular exposure to and understanding of landscape dynamics, and culture that cultivates strong institutional capacity and social ties – are its key building blocks.
They’re inextricably intertwined. Allowing for opportunities to engage with changing landscapes allows us to engage with a world larger than ourselves and better understand the people we share that world with. The shift towards seeing ourselves in the larger world helps to better root us in the places in which we live, the institutions that shape our cities, and the social characters of our communities, all of which is key in cultivating development robust enough to handle uncertain and variable stresses.
This is not to say that doing so is the automatic solution. Much of Heimay’s success in negotiating Eldfell’s eruptions was luck. If the volcano had had a different geological composition, for example, the flows could have been too explosive to stop. But the fact that the islanders were connected to the forces that shaped their landscapes meant that the residents had a strong understanding, even before the event occurred, of what a volcanic eruption meant and what they might have to do to deal with it. Their robust ties with national institutions ensured that social structures were in place to provide shelter when residents had to evacuate, creating a context of support and trust that could have only helped. The community’s strong social ties cultivated a base context for more efficient collaboration and understanding.
There is much to learn from Iceland’s cultural embrace of change. It’s hard to say precisely where it comes from – does the tight knit community allow for greater embrace of change? Does its intense landscape dynamics cultivate tighter knit communities? It’s a chicken or the egg type of situation.
What is certain, however, is that all three of these factors are vital to Iceland’s cultural attitude towards change. Their connection to the country’s landscape dynamics, the robustness of their institutional frameworks and the tight-knit nature of their populace make it a highly resilient society. That social resilience, if they are able to maintain it, puts them in a strong place from which to negotiate the uncertainties climate change is throwing our way. The rest of us can learn something from that: only by cultivating connection to our landscapes and the people with share them with can we find ways to take shelter in our shifting ground.
A version of this piece was published by the Daily Climate, October 2014 https://www.straight.com/news/757301/our-world-shifts-lesson-icelandic-town