The disappearing Black Sand Beach

The black sand at Reynisfjara, often called the Black Sand Beach, is gone! Puff! Disappeared, and the basalt rocks now stand out there in the middle of the ocean!

Reynisfjara, the black sand beach, is a famous beach in the southern part of Iceland, mainly for its beautiful basalt columns and, of course, for the black sand. People also visit to see the puffins from May to August. Now on the other hand, the sand is gone. The strong eastern winds have roamed for days, and the strong ocean currents move away the sand, but not to despair; this has happened a number of times before, and every so often it only takes a few days after the wind shifts to bring back the sand again.

At Reynisfjara

Black sand beach from Dyrhólaey

Basalt columns at Reynisfjara

Puffin

Reynisdrangar

Walk on water and sand

You might ask if there were any other black sand beaches in Iceland, and the answer is of course, almost everywhere by the ocean, and even by many of the lakes, you find a black sand beach. It is only in a relatively few places where you can find brown sand beaches.

Iceland resides on two tectonic plates, which grow to the west and east from the Atlantic ridge, and it so happens that Iceland is right there in the middle where the volcanic activity is the most. The black sand is formed in eruptions where the magma hits water and the forming rock explodes into billions of pieces called sand. This usually happens in eruptions underneath a glacier or in the ocean. For example, the Katla eruption underneath the Mýrdalsjökull glacier in 1918 produced so much sand that the beach grew out hundreds of meters.

Fun fact: The main difference between most brown sand beaches and the black sand beaches is the fact that the black ones have never been alive! Brown sand beaches are often formed from broken shells and other marine life.