Tunga (mountain)
| Tunga | ||
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 Tunga, from the direction of Húsafell |
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| height | 450 m | |
| location | West of Iceland | |
| Coordinates | 64 ° 43 ′ 0 ″ N , 20 ° 51 ′ 0 ″ W | |
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| rock | Rhyolite | |
| Age of the rock | about 2.5 million years | |
 Tunga, seen from the Hraunfossar, with Strútur and Eiríksjökull behind |
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 Tunga seen from the Hraunfossar, far left in the middle distance, right. of which Strútur and Eiríksjökull |
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When Tunga (450 m) is a volcanic mountain in the west of Iceland at Húsafell .
Surname
The name means tongue , which the mountain probably owes to its elongated shape.
location
The mountain belongs to the Kalmannstunga farm northwest of Húsafell.
At its foot, the Hvítá (Borgarfjörður) flows to the east , and to the west is the extensive lava field of the Hallmundarhraun .
geology
The mountain is part of a heavily eroded central volcano, the Húsafell volcano, which was active about 2.5 million years ago. This also explains the striking blaze of color that can be traced back to the predominant rhyolite rock .
The Húsafell volcano was active for a total of about 500,000 years. There were three periods of particularly intense activity. The oldest layers have an inclination of 5 ° to the southeast, which corresponds to about 100 m less over a length of 1 km. The central volcano was about 15 km in diameter.
As the ice age began when the volcano was active, some of the layers consist of palagonite or rhyolite, which formed under glaciers during eruptions.
However, since the warm periods of the early Ice Age were shorter than the cold periods, most of the layers consist of lava layers or ignimbrites . In the lowest and at the same time oldest layers, rather intermediate effluent rocks such as andesite , but also dacite, are found . For example, in the small Ásgil gorge at the nearby Hraunfossar waterfall , you can discover ignimbrite layers from Dazit, and similar things can be found in the Bæjargil gorge at the large Gilsbakki farm .
On the other hand, the Liparit - intrusions at the waterfall Barnafoss from the youngest and last outbreak period.
Hiking on the mountain
Since the mountain is on private property, the permission of the farmer from Kalmannstunga should be obtained to climb it.
But it is very easy to go up on him, e.g. B. from the top of the pass above Kalmannstunga on the slopes in the Arnarvatnsheiði .