An island was born in 1963 and almost nobody has been allowed to visit
Iceland's newest piece of land is a live experiment in how life colonizes nothing — which is why it's been kept nearly empty on purpose.
On 14 November 1963, fishermen off the south coast of Iceland watched black smoke rising from the sea and reported what they assumed was a boat on fire. It was a volcano, erupting from a vent 130 meters underwater, and within days it had built an island. By the time the eruption stopped in 1967, the new landmass — named Surtsey, after a fire giant from Norse mythology — covered about 2.7 square kilometers of raw volcanic rock with no plants, no animals, no soil, nothing.
Three French journalists landed on it within weeks of its appearance and jokingly claimed it for France before Iceland's government firmly disagreed. That was more or less the last casual visit anyone got to make. Iceland declared Surtsey a nature reserve while it was still erupting, and today almost no one is permitted to set foot on it — a small number of research scientists get landing rights, and everyone else can only see it from a passing plane.
The restriction is the point. Surtsey is one of the only places on Earth where biologists can watch an ecosystem build itself completely from zero, with no human trampling, seeding, or accidental contamination, since the beginning. The first plant showed up on its shore in 1965; the first moss two years later. By 2008, sixty-nine plant species had drifted, floated, or been carried in bird droppings onto the island, and about thirty had actually managed to take root.
Most places get more interesting the more people show up. Surtsey's entire scientific value depends on almost nobody ever arriving.