Öskjuvatn

Calderensee

The Öskjuvatn ( German: Calderensee ) is a lake in the Icelandic highlands. Its area is 11 km ². The lake depth is a maximum of 220 m.

Location

The lake is located in the caldera of the volcano Askja in the northeast of Vatnajökull. It was created as well as the neighboring Víti crater at a massive volcanic explosion in 1875.

Formation

In 1875 was formed by intrusion of a magma chamber in a Plinian eruption a new caldera in central volcano Askja.

Until the innermost and youngest caldera, however, had filled with water, passed by not less than 32 years. The current water level was therefore achieved in 1907.

The bottom of the lake is today still 50 m deeper than the Calder ground and renewed bathometrische measurements determined a water depth of 224 m.

Missing German

In the summer of 1907, disappeared on the lake two German men without a trace, the lecturer Walter von Knebel and the painter Max Rudloff. The German fiancée of gag, Ina von Grumbkow, a year later went looking for them, but found no trace of the two. Both men could in the small boat in which they drove out to the lake, have been killed by a rockfall avalanche.

Ina von Grumbkow proposed to rename the lake to gag and the caldera after Rudloff; wrote this only survivor of the expedition, the student Hans Speth man in his later publications. The Neubezeichnungen not prevailed, it remained at the Icelandic name Öskjuvatn.