LONDON ¨C Volcanoes in southwestern Iceland have been quiet for 800 years, but the period of rest may soon be over: More than 18,000 earthquakes have shaken the area in just over a week, leading scientists to believe that an eruption could be imminent.
Geophysicists and volcanologists say the quakes are the culmination of more than a year of intense seismic activity, and although most of the tremors have lasted a few seconds, with light shaking, they have rattled residents in the capital, Reykjavik, just 32 km north of the Reykjanes Peninsula where they have occurred.
¡°People in Reykjavik are waking up with an earthquake, others go to sleep with an earthquake,¡± said Thorvaldur Thordarson, a professor of volcanology at the University of Iceland. ¡°There¡¯s a lot of them, and that worries people, but there¡¯s nothing to worry about, the world is not going to collapse.¡±
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