Venue

IGS 2015 Höfn in Hornafjörður

The symposium will take place at Hotel Vatnajökull at Lindarbakki, 13 km from the village of Höfn in Hornafjörður, southeast Iceland (see location map). The location is close by the Vatnajökull ice cap, the largest ice cap in Europe. 

The hotel is new and provides excellent conference facilities. Transport from the international airport in Keflavík/Reykjavík is provided by domestic flights and buses. 

The Hornafjörður area in SE-Iceland is shaped by glaciers and glacier rivers. The inhabitants of the settlements south of Vatnajökull have witnessed advance and retreat of glaciers, jökulhlaups and subglacial eruptions that have put their mark on the history of the area since the settlement of Iceland more than a thousand years ago. 

The area is famous in the history of glaciological research. Observations of outlet glaciers from Öræfajökull in the nearby Skaftafell National Park led the late 18th century naturalist Sveinn Pálsson to the conclusion that ice flows as a very viscous fluid. The glaciologist Hans W:son Ahlmann, Sigurður Þórarinsson and their colleagues made pioneering mass balance observations of Vatnajökull in the early 20th century and observations of jökulhlaups on Skeiðarársandur from Grímsvötn led to the first insights into the dynamics of glacier floods in the 1970, to list a few examples.