On October 26, 1995, just before dawn, a massive avalanche came down off Skollahvilft mountain and slammed into the village of Flateyri in Iceland’s Westfjords. It destroyed 17 houses and killed 20 people. Forty-five people were inside the homes that were hit.

Sóley Eiríksdóttir was 11 years old, asleep in her bed, wearing nothing but “knickers and a T-shirt in all that snow,” as she later put it. There had been no warning. One moment she was asleep; the next, she was buried under the rubble of her own home.

She would be trapped there for hours.

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Sóley, who shared her story on Instagram, described the strange calm that settled over her once she realized rescuers were near. The villagers were being dug out in the middle of the night by, among others, the crew of a fishing trawler called Pétur Jónsson RE-69.

“I heard noise in the room next to mine and I realised that a lot of men were there,” she........

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