The Mid-Atlantic Ridge passes through the middle of Iceland and much of Iceland's volcanic activity is along it, but there's a kind of subsidiary area to the west that isn't quite on the ridge, as leeneia intimates, and that's where this latest eruption is. There are some enigmatic features of Iceland's vulcanicity that science has yet to resolve. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is where two plates are diverging and where magma is upwelling. So far so good, but why is Iceland there at all, when other excrescences along the ridge are overwhelmingly mere seamounts? Hotspots tend to be stationary, in effect, whilst plates move over them, resulting in strings of volcanoes (as, famously, in Yellowstone). No such phenomenon can be discerned in Iceland. Is Iceland the result of a large magma plume, or is there even a plume at all? It goes to show that, even in a place which is the subject of the most intense investigation, the answers are obstinately difficult to elicit. I like that. Unlike with religion, we just keep looking.

In the last six years I've spent two separate weeks at the same hotel with the most amazing view of Etna from the room terrace, 20km away from the volcano. It's been my bad luck both times to be there when the giant was slumbering, especially in light of the fact that Etna has been especially restless in the last few years. Tsk. I'll have to go back. By the way, it's the best hotel I've ever stayed in, it's called the Villa Angela, just outside Taormina, and I'm not connected. It's not hyper-expensive either. The sun sets over Etna from there, and there's always something puffing away out of the top...If you go there, there's a fabulous restaurant just up the road with the same view from its open-air roof terrace. Give my love to Alfio Puglia, the owner. He'll remember me, as I was there the night Liverpool won the Champions League, and he made a Very Big Thing of it... :-)