Miles Lilley

“I need to get my kids right now,” Teresa says.

Earthquakes are constant by now, shaking the small town, rattling homes, and leaving a trail of destruction. A massive crack runs through town and snaps the main road in two.

It’s Friday afternoon, November 10th, and Teresa’s convinced that the world is coming to an end. That the ground beneath her feet will collapse and her family and the entire town will disappear down a black hole.

Until that moment, she’d never felt or heard anything like it. Neither had anyone else in the small Icelandic town of Grindavik.

It was like an animal coming, one resident said. Like a sea monster, said another. I could hear the magma under my feet, said a third.

Despite having drunk a few beers at the local bar to mark the start of the weekend, Teresa realizes she has no choice but to get in the car, pick up her kids and drive out of town.

When she gets home her daughter Toni is weeping uncontrollably, her eyes full of fear. Teresa tells her and her older brother Fjölnir to get in the backseat.

“It’s going to be alright, kids,” she tries to reassure them, short of breath.
In the rear-view mirror she sees her hometown fading in the distance.

All of Iceland was following the news, watching the crack that had torn the main road and much of the town apart.

They always knew it was there beneath their feet, dormant and undisturbed for 800 years. But still it came as a shock to their community.

No one had died, but for 41-year-old Teresa Bangsa and the other 3,800 residents of Grindavik it meant that they were without a home.

Before all this happened, it used to be a tranquil town. The kind of place where people left their keys in the car and their houses unlocked.
“You know everyone,” Teresa says. “And everyone knows you.”
This was where she was born and raised and where her family has lived for generations.

Two houses down the street live her parents, Guðní and Bangsa. Well, Bangsa isn’t his real name. He was born Björn, but no one ever called him that. In fact, people would be confused if you said Björn. Björn means bear and Bangsa means teddy - and maybe that is a more suitable name for the big, gentle, white bearded man.

The name was adopted by Teresa and her brother Hallí, and everyone in town knows the Bangsas - or as Teresa and her brother jokingly calls them - the Bangsa mafia.

Hallí is the captain of a fishing vessel. He’s out at sea for two weeks followed by two weeks at home. Every time he returns to Grindavik, he and Teresa go out for a beer and have a trúno, the Icelandic word for a deep and intimate talk. They catch up on everything that’s happened while he’s been at sea.

They always go to the same bar, Café Bryggjan, which lies on the pier, looking out on the harbor full of boats and neatly stacked fishing crates. How’s mom, how’s dad? How are the kids doing? They then walk up to Salthús, the restaurant further up in town, and have another beer.

Everything had felt safe in the small town by the edge of the sea. Well, at least up until now.

The drive out of town feels like an eternity. Fjölnir comforts his sister, Toni, while Teresa tries to keep calm on the slippery, winding roads.

After two hours, they arrive at the apartment of a family relative in Reykjavik. They can stay there for as long as they wish, she tells them. Hopefully it will only be a matter of a few days.

It’s a one-storey flat on the ground floor with a tiny entrance that leads into a kitchen room. It has two tiny windows in the living room facing the street.

The earthquakes are far away by now, but for the next two days Teresa can’t stop shaking. And she has trouble sleeping. So do the kids. When she lies down, she can’t tell if it’s her heart beating or another earthquake coming.

The TV screen flickers and lights up the three of them. They’re scrunched together on the sofa watching the news. An eruption could happen any minute now, a reporter states while pointing towards Grindavik.

“Is the lava right under our home?” Fjölnir asks. “Are we going to be alright?”

Teresa doesn’t know how to answer.

“What do you tell your kids when you don’t know what’s going to happen?” she asks herself.

The three of them fall asleep on the couch with the TV still on.

Four days after the evacuation, November 14th, Teresa is waiting in a long line of cars to go back to her home. She’s been waiting for half an hour. She looks at the list of things she wrote down to bring with her, rehearsing her route through the rooms of the house. To put it in her own words, she’s scared shitless.

Ten minutes is all she’ll be allowed by the authorities once she’s passed the checkpoint. Ten minutes to search her wooden house and collect all the belongings that mean the most to her.

She struggles for breath once let in. Some of the streets are closed off entirely. Cracks everywhere. The thought of what’s down there terrifies her.

Her home looks the same as when she left it. The children’s table full of crayons, her favorite armchair by the window, and the dirty dishes left in the sink.

She spends the first three minutes frantically searching for a pair of shoes. Grabs some clothes for her and the kids along with some kitchen utensils for the new apartment. She looks at the list.

She takes some of Toni’s drawings as well as a framed painting of Jesus on the cross – not that she’s especially religious, but it’s one she inherited from her Catholic grandmother whom she’s named after.

The ten minutes are almost up and all she can think of is how badly she wants to get out. Forget the rest of the list. They’re just things. She takes a black flip clock – the kind where the numbers replace each other like falling domino bricks – and throws it in the car before pulling out of her driveway. The numbers get stuck on 15:48.

Time passes, yet in Teresa’s mind it seems to stand still. Days turn into weeks as the uncertainty of whether they’ll be able to go home only grows. She still has trouble sleeping and keeps having the same nightmare over and over.

One volcano expert says the eruption won’t happen near town and residents will be able to return home soon. Another goes on to say that the whole town will be flooded by lava any minute now. In the meantime, there’s a rumor going that people might be able to go home for Christmas. But Teresa doesn’t know what to believe in anymore.

“A never-ending rollercoaster ride,” she calls it.

The drawings she brought back from Grindavik got crumpled in the car and Toni’s furious and in tears.

“You can’t be angry at mom,” Fjölnir says. “She was risking her life just to get some stuff, and it’s just drawings.”

“But it’s my childhood!” Toni yells back at her brother.

Teresa doesn’t tell her that she actually spent more time collecting some of her drawings than the family albums.

The toast doesn’t taste the same to Toni, although it’s the exact same loaf of bread. She only wants to eat sushi, she says. Fjölnir is quieter, but he’s also having a hard time adjusting to the temporary school he’s going to.

One thing has changed for the better though. Toni used to hate the painting of Jesus on the cross because of her disdain for everything slightly related to him, but strange enough it’s beginning to grow on her. It reminds her of home.

It’s taking a toll on Teresa too. She misses the taste of the tap water, her coffee machine, her hot tub. And she’s drinking more than she usually does.

“This situation is testing you to your limits as a family,” Teresa says.
Hallí, her brother, was home briefly, but he’s gone to sea again. Her mother, Guðní, has lost ten kilos in the past month. The only one who seems to be going on with life as if nothing had happened is her dad, Bangsa.

Since residents were allowed to return during daylight, Bangsa's been driving back to Grindavik almost every day with no other purpose than to make a cup of coffee and go in the hot tub. He says he’d sleep there if only his wife and the authorities would let him.

Back in Reykjavik, he’s been looking into buying a new house. One where all of them could stay in case they never get to go home again. He’s not too worried for himself, but he’s worried about what awaits the family.

“I’ve been lucky my whole life, but the devil was always at my heels,” he says. “This time it seems he’s finally caught up with me.”

Then one evening it finally arrived. The signs were clear. Geologists measured hundreds of tiny earthquakes and could tell that within an hour the ground would burst.

It’s December 18 and Teresa’s social media is being flooded by videos of a night sky on fire. Blazing orange smoke plumes. On the videos it looks like the lava is coming from behind the mountain by the sea. Which would mean the eruption is happening in her backyard.

“Oh my god, there it goes,” she sighs.

If all she’s ever known is about to go up in flames, she has to see it with her own eyes. She rushes up to the Hallgrímskirkja church, at the very top of the hill in Reykjavik, and from a distance of more than thirty kilometers she sees the bright, burning light.

It’s really happening. She’s filled with fear, and fascination, and a weird sense of relief.

Her phone rings. It’s Hallís oldest son, Lucas, who’s a police officer stationed at the meteorological institute.

“Is grandpa home?” he asks.

“No,” Teresa says.

“Are you sure?” he asks again.

“Yes, why?” Teresa says.

“You’re absolutely sure Bangsa isn’t in Grindavik right now?” he asks a third time.

A few weeks pass and Hallí’s home from the sea again. He and Teresa are out for a beer and having a trúno together, a deep talk, just like they used to. They’re sitting in a bar next to each other, side by side.

She tells him about the phone call she got from his son, Lucas. How he’d asked three times in a row if Bangsa was in Grindavik. She’d answered no, she knew he wasn’t, because he’d been taking care of Toni and Fjölnir a few hours earlier that day.

It was only later that Lucas told Teresa what he knew at the time. That if the lava had continued to flow at the same pace it initially did, it could’ve flooded their hometown within an hour and a half.

At first, she’d been relieved. The dragged-out doomsday film her life had become seemed to finally be over. But quickly the relief subsided because of the new land rise, warning that magma was building up underground, almost like air being blown into a balloon, meaning another eruption could be on its way.

New official rules have been introduced as well. Although the authorities don’t recommend it, residents can go home and sleep in Grindavik if they wish to. Almost everyone Teresa knows want to go back, but she’s only heard of a few who actually have.

She has good news for Hallí as well. They’ve bought a red house in Reykjavik with space for both her and her kids as well as their parents. They signed the contract a few days ago right before New Year’s Eve. Of course, it won’t be easy, but she’s looking forward to it. They even get to keep most of the furniture. And it’s full of windows.

Hallí orders another round and tells Teresa that he’s had second thoughts about moving away from Grindavik - something that he’d been contemplating long before the evacuation. But living in Reykjavik has made him realize how much he yearns to go home.

Teresa lights up. That’s the best news she’s had in a long while.
She wants to go back too, but she’s afraid. They finish their beers, put on their jackets, and walk out into the cold night air. She goes home to catch some sleep.

Teresa’s been here before. She knows this pasture. It’s the one down by the sea that she used to play in as a kid. It’s full of people, lambs, and boiling lakes of lava.

She’s jumping from one stone to another trying not to lose her footing.

“We have to get going,” she says to the others.

“Don’t worry,” they answer.

She gets in her car and starts driving. The red-hot lava lakes come closer, and she can’t seem to find a way out.

“I need to get my kids,” she says.

And then it erupts. High beams of fiery molten rock spew out of a black hole. She’s never thought orange could look so orange and takes out her phone and starts filming, but then she thinks:

“Why am I recording this? I have to find my kids!”

The lava’s closing in on her. She’s thinking, this is it. End of the road.

Then she wakes up. Gasping for air. Still shaking from the nightmare.

She rolls down her window and brings the car to a full stop by the curb of the checkpoint.

“Teresa Björnsdóttir,” she says to the guard and states the address of her home.

She’s decided to go back. Just for one afternoon.

It’s Saturday, the 6th of January, and the first thing she notices are the many cars in the driveways. She’s driving around town and as she’s passing by, she sees red signs in some of the windows of the houses, declaring them uninhabitable.

“At least these people get to have some closure,” she says.

Some houses are tilted and slanted in awkward angles, walls misaligned, roofs zigzagging – look too long and you end up dizzy.

“Jesus Christ!” Teresa cries out.

Salthús, the restaurant and bar, where she used to go, is unrecognizable. One half of the building has sunk a few meters into the ground with the roof diving at one end. The dark-red wooden boards have resiliently stayed upright but the whole area is fenced off because of a big, deep hole beneath the building.

She drives over to her own house.

“My street has turned into a hill,” she says.

What used to be a straight road now looks like a wave. The neighbor’s house has sunk a few meters compared to hers. Or is it her house that’s risen, she asks herself.

Her home looks the same as when she left it. She checks the water faucet and after a few minutes of hissing and spewing it works again. She turns on the coffee machine and does the dishes, that she had left behind in the sink on the day of the evacuation.

It’s been almost two months since she fled her home. Lots of things have happened since.

She’s sitting with a warm cup of coffee between her hands. It tastes sour, she notices. Maybe it always was, Teresa thinks to herself. She’s enjoying the view from her window and for a moment everything seems to be normal - except for the fact that she hasn’t taken off her shoes.

It gets dark and before heading home she drops by her dad’s house to see if he’s there. He still goes almost every day. As she parks the car in his driveway, she sees him through the window.

“Oh god, why does he have to be naked?” she asks.

He’s sitting by himself in his living room with a cup of coffee seemingly lost in thought. He’s definitely been in his hot tub, she thinks. She tries calling his phone, but there’s no answer. Maybe he left it in his car. If he doesn’t have his phone on him, no one can call him if there’s an emergency, so she’s about to step out of the car and go tell him.

But then she says:

“Know what, he seems to be at peace. He’s 80 years old and he could die anytime. Why not let him enjoy the moment.”

She drives back to Reykjavik.

A whiff of detergent hits Teresa as she walks into the old red house they had just bought. Guðní and Bangsa have already made themselves at home, sitting in silence submerged in the couch.

It’s the 7th of January and they’ve come to pick up the keys to their new house and figure out who gets to sleep where – no easy puzzle to solve, since there will be three generations staying under the same roof.

Teresa’s parents leave for Grindavik to get the TV.

A dim light from the evening sun spills through the windows. She sits by the dining table which the previous owner left behind alongside some other essential furniture. The walls are bare, with a few nails in the wooden boards revealing where the pictures used to hang.

“I think this is a good spot,” Teresa notes, looking at the Jesus picture she hung in the living room.

In her hands, she’s holding a steaming cup of coffee in a mug she borrowed from her new neighbor.

The sound of the clock that flips every minute is the only thing that breaks the silence.

“I should get a radio here,” Teresa stutters. “It’s too quiet.”

She doesn’t know how long she and her family will stay. It depends on what the volcano in her backyard decides to do. For now, she’s stopped thinking about what might or might not happen. Besides, school reopens tomorrow, and she has to get the kids.

The story’s based on extensive interviews with Teresa and her family as well as other residents of Grindavik. The writers have been to the evacuated town several times.

Since the story was written the volcano has erupted once more. Early morning on January 14, 2024, a new fissure emerged close to Grindavik. The defense barriers, previously built, proved their value by diverting much of the lava flows. Yet, it was not enough, and lava reached the outskirts of town burning three houses to the ground. The flow ended, but the uncertainty of whether there is more to come, prevails.