The Night The Mountain Roared

Daníel Bjarnason’s documentary revisits the deadly night of the Súðavík avalanche

At around 6:25 on January 16, 1995, a massive avalanche struck the fishing village of Súðavík in the Westfjords, claiming the lives of 14 people, including eight children aged between one and fourteen. To this day, it remains one of the deadliest natural disasters Iceland has ever experienced. Thirty years on, many questions remain unanswered: Why were houses built in a known avalanche-risk area? Why were preventive measures never taken, despite avalanche warnings being identified years earlier? Could the tragedy have been prevented if the village had been evacuated that night? And why was the response so flawed, leading to a significant delay in aid?

In November of last year, the Icelandic Parliament finally appointed a committee of inquiry to examine the circumstances and aftermath of the tragedy. The investigation has only just begun, but the harrowing night of the avalanche and its aftermath is captured in Daníel Bjarnason’s award-winning (Einarinn, the Audience Award at Skjaldborg Documentary Film Festival) and now Edda-nominated documentary Fjallið það öskrar (When the Mountain Roars in English).

Though his background in television is substantial, Fjallið það öskrar is Daníel’s first feature-length film — closely connected to his own family history. “I’m from Flateyri, which is where the second avalanche that year happened,” explains Daníel, speaking about the October 1995 avalanche that killed 20 people. “Actually, I always wanted to make that film, but it had already been made. So, I started checking out the stories from Súðavík, and I felt like those stories haven’t really been told as much as those from Flateyri.”

Though Daníel moved to the capital area at age five when his father began studying there, his family had always planned to return to Flateyri. However, in 1994, his brother was born with a heart disease. “We had to fly to Boston for open heart surgery. Because of that, we couldn’t move back to Flateyri. We needed to stay in Reykjavík with all the doctors and medical teams. So we leased out the house we were going to move back into, and a few months later, the avalanche happened, and everyone in the house died. My brother, born sick, actually saved our lives — otherwise, I wouldn’t be here today.”

As he set out to make a film about the decades-old tragedy, Daníel reached out to journalist Aron Guðmundsson, who had made a podcast about the avalanche. “He already made the basic connections needed for the film — I took that information and wrote a short screenplay,” shares Daníel. “Then we started checking out who was available and who wanted to be in the film.”

The project came together surprisingly quickly. “A few weeks later, I had the pitch ready and took it to Stöð 2, and they bought it the same day,” he recalls. “I’ve never sold a project so fast.”

A hybrid documentary

Fjallið það öskrar recounts the tragic events of the night of the avalanche in Súðavík, blending personal accounts from survivors Sigga Ranný, Hafsteinn Númason and Elma Dögg Frostadóttir, alongside those of rescue team members who came to Súðavík from nearby towns. Due to the lack of available footage, some scenes were recreated with actors. According to Daníel, only one actual clip was available from the avalanche site, as the authorities declined all photo and film requests, wanting to respect the rescue operation and victims.

“I always call it a hybrid documentary,” he explains. “It is a documentary first and foremost, but it also has recreations in it. It’s not a narrative film, though it kind of feels like a narrative film when you watch it. But everything you see is true.”

A significant challenge for Daníel and the crew was piecing together the weather conditions leading up to the avalanche — a heavy snowstorm that night. He spent hours in archives reviewing footage from all over the country. “That footage is really hard to come by because people don’t really go out and shoot footage when there’s a snowstorm. They go out and shoot when it’s sunny,” he explains.

Given the limited budget, the crew couldn’t shoot on location in Súðavík. Most recreations were done in Reykjavík, and for the storm scenes, the team travelled to Bláfjöll ski resort. There, they placed the actors between snow machines to simulate the heavy snow. “They could only spend a few minutes in there because they were freezing,” Daníel recalls, describing the challenging production. “We had to stop, dry out and get back. We were really going back and forth.”

Respecting the story

Convincing people who lived through traumatic experiences to share their stories on screen required careful trust-building. “First, I met with them and told them about myself, showed them my work and told them I was from the Westfjords as well. I think that helps,” Daníel explains. In some cases, it took several meetings to establish trust.

“At first they didn’t really want to do this because they felt that over the years, the media had taken their stories and changed them a little bit. They weren’t really happy with how they turned out,” he says. “But this time, I was offering them to just sit down and tell their own stories.”

“I’ve done a lot of difficult interviews in my career, but nothing compared to this.”

Throughout the process, Daníel showed the interviewees rough cuts and edited sections, making sure they were comfortable with how their experiences were portrayed. “I needed to have them on board the whole time. As soon as you start to do something that they don’t like, you lose all credibility as a documentary filmmaker.”

One of the actors, Emilía Tera Þorsteinsdóttir, is actually the daughter of one of the survivors. She plays her mother, Sigga Ranný, who was 22 when the avalanche struck, tragically losing her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Hrafnhildur Kristín Þorsteinsdóttir. Her five-year-old daughter, Linda Rut, survived. Now at a similar age, Emilía Tera relives her mother’s most painful moments on screen.

Despite the recreated scenes, the film relies almost entirely on the voices of its interviewees. “We didn’t really use any dialogue in the recreation scenes,” Daníel explains. “I always try to make the actors improvise. I never write their lines — I just tell them the situation and want them to bring something to the table. You can maybe hear a few words here and there, but the audience isn’t supposed to connect with that, the audience is supposed to connect with the interviews.”

And those interviews were the hardest part. “I’ve done a lot of difficult interviews in my career, but nothing compared to this,” Daníel admits. “With Sigga Ranný, we filmed her interview in Súðavík. She’s [worked through her grief] through the years, but what I was asking her to do was just something completely different — put [her] back into that situation. We had to stop all the time just for her to get tears out and go again.”

He continues that the heaviness of the subject slowed down the editing process. “Many of those interviews were so heavy and so difficult to work with, I always had to take a lot of breaks. I’d have an episode of Seinfeld on another screen, so I could gather energy to keep on going.”

Unanswered questions

Ever since its premiere at Skjaldborg last year, the response to Fjallið það öskrar has been exceptional. Daníel admits that by releasing the film around the 30th anniversary of the tragedy, he hoped it might push the government to finally move forward with an official investigation.

“If you look at the documents and facts, it is clear a lot of mistakes were made by Almannavarnir (Civil Protection) and the government because they had been warned,” says Daníel. “If you look at the documents, it really looks like nobody had to die that night.”

An investigation was finally launched in January 2025, but with some of those responsible for monitoring the situation and coordinating the rescue efforts having since passed away, it remains unclear whether anyone will be held accountable. Nearly three decades later, the survivors who lost their loved ones are still searching for closure. Fjallið það öskrar doesn’t offer answers, but it contributes to the documentation of one of the darkest chapters in Iceland’s history.

“I’ve heard from a lot of people that they don’t want to watch the film because they know it’s difficult — they know people are going to die and they don’t want to put themselves through that,” Daníel admits. “But I always try to tell them, it’s not just about people dying. It’s also beautiful survival stories and a testimonial for that time —  the mid 90s — and what everything was like. It’s a huge part of our history as a nation.”

“If you look at the documents, it really looks like nobody had to die that night.”

He continues, “I think it’s really important to preserve our history this way — through an accessible medium. We’ve all read interviews about this event, and yes, it’s horrible. But when you actually see the people this happened to talk about it on camera, you see their emotional response as they think about these events and retell the stories — it hits you completely differently.”

If you’re in Europe, you can rent Fjallið það öskrar on sjonvarp.stod2.is, with English subtitles available.