What’s Hot in Iceland? The Lava Show!

If one of Iceland’s four dozen volcanoes isn’t erupting while you happen to be on the island, don’t stress. You can still feel the heat at the award-winning Lava Show, which creates glowing molten rock before your very eyes.

This is no sideshow circus trick. They really do make lava by superheating volcanic rocks collected from old lava fields to temperatures as much as 1,100°C (2,000°F) and then pouring the molten liquid into an ice-filled basin just feet from the mesmerized audience.

With locations in Reykjavík’s harbor district and Vík village on the island’s south coast, the Lava Show experience also includes a video on Icelandic volcanism that explains why the island is such a geological hotspot (it straddles the convergence of two major tectonic plates).

Pulling protective eyewear over their faces, the audience members wait for the bright orange lava to slide down a concrete ramp and onto the ice. Like a living thing, it bubbles, cracks and even smells as the host explains and demonstrates its geological properties. Cooling down, the lava evolves into gray and then jet-black rocks that are reused for the next show.

Ragga and Júlíus Ágústsdóttir, the husband-and-wife team that created Lava Show, worked with American rocket scientists to design the super-heating furnace that produces the molten lava. The furnace is powered by methane gas extracted from organic waste, making the show both eye-catching and environmentally friendly.

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