Speciality of Hekla volcano

Hekla is the most outstanding volcano of Iceland. It is not the biggest, not the most dangerous, but the most famous one. According to the analysis presented here, it is located above an upwelling line of mantle convection rolls. The mountain is relatively young, as geologists find it to be mostly made of 3000 years old rock or younger. It last erupted in the year 2000. It looks like a boat with the keel turned upwards, and has to be classified as a mixture of a ridge forming on a fissure swarm and a proper stratovolcano. It is located at a spot where four different convection cell layer division lines cross exactly under the mountain’s top crater. Therefore it is often mentioned in scientific articles that it looks like the volcano has different sources of magma. The mountain can be regarded as the central point of volcanic activity in Iceland, manifested by the fact that the distance to the volcanoes farthest in the east and west, Snæfellsjökull and Snæfell, is exactly the same!