A stunning timelapse video has captured the Northern Lights putting on a show over a volcano in southwestern Iceland, which has erupted four times in recent months, sending lava towards a nearby community.

The volcano erupted four times in December, January, February and March. But the activity is slowly diminishing.

The current eruption, now ongoing for 28 days, became officially the second longest of the seven that have occurred in the last three years, after the six-month-long 2021 Fagradalsfjall eruption.

The eruption has occurred near the fishing town of Grindavik, a town of 3,800 people about 50km (30 miles) southwest of Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital.

The community was previously evacuated in November following a series of earthquakes that opened large cracks in the earth between the town and Sýlingarfell, a small mountain to the north, and it was evacuated again in January the night before the last eruption started.

In the weeks since the December eruption, defensive walls had been built around the town, the geothermal power plant and the Blue Lagoon, in hopes of directing lava away from the community.

After the eruption in January the construction of the defensive wall immediately started again.

A view of the eruption with the northern lights dancing in the sky. – AP Photo/Marco di Marco

Just one crater is erupting at the moment and the active lava flow is confined close to the volcanic cone, far from any infrastructure.

Iceland’s civil defence has lowered the level of alert for the area from emergency level to danger level.

In Iceland there are three levels of alert, from the lowest to the highest: Uncertainty, Danger and Emergency.

This has meant that the nearby Blue Lagoon geothermal spa – one of Iceland’s biggest tourist attractions – has reopened to tourists.

Since the eruption intensity started dropping, the area has started to inflate again, as has been observed in between the previous eruptions, the Icelandic Met Office stated.

This could mean that, even if this eruption might be over in the coming days, new activity could start again in the following weeks.

Iceland, which sits above a volcanic hot spot in the North Atlantic, sees regular eruptions and is highly experienced at dealing with them.

The most disruptive in recent times was the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which spewed huge clouds of ash into the atmosphere and led to widespread airspace closures over Europe.