A British tourist has returned a piece of lava which he removed without permission, visir.is reports. He believed the stone to be the source of all his recent calamities. The lava has now been returned, flown by helicopter to the eruption site at Eyjafjallajökull glacier.
Fimmvörduháls lava fields. Photo by Páll Stefánsson.
After suffering blows both in his private and professional life, the tourist decided to send the nugget to the University of Iceland’s Institute of Earth Sciences, requesting that it be returned to its proper place.
“He was not joking,” said Rikke Pedersen, a specialist at the institution. “He had been traveling around Iceland with his family and since then, all kinds of bad things began happening to him. He was convinced that if he returned the nugget, everything would return to normal.”
Pedersen received the rock along with a letter explaining the situation. This week, she brought it to the Iceland Tourist Assistance. There, the staff got in touch with Nordurflug Flight Company who flew it to the eruption site, which contains Iceland’s freshest lava.
In Iceland, rocks are part of the folklore.
