The island the volcano swallowed — the 1973 Eldfell eruption buried a third of the town, and the lava is still warm enough to bake bread in the crust
Heimaey is the only inhabited island in the Vestmannaeyjar (Westman Islands) archipelago, 10 km off the southern Icelandic coast (population 4,500 — the largest fishing community in Iceland). The defining event of modern Heimaey is the 1973 Eldfell eruption: on January 23, 1973, a fissure opened and began erupting lava over five months, eventually burying approximately 400 buildings. The island's 5,000 residents were evacuated by fishing boat in the first 24 hours; a heroic pumping campaign (500,000 tonnes of cold seawater onto the advancing lava front) slowed the flow enough to preserve the…
The Vestmannaeyjar islands were settled by Norse in the 9th century and named 'Islands of the Westmen' (the Irish slaves who fled there after the Norse settlement of Iceland). The archipelago's most notorious historical event before 1973 was the 1627 'Turkish Raid' — Algerian corsairs from Algiers raided the islands, killed 37 people, and enslaved 242 of the 500 inhabitants. The slaves were transported to Algiers; 13 were eventually ransomed by the Danish Crown.