1 inch more separation per year

I was listening to NBC news tonight with Brian Williams on TV. The reporter mentioned that the fault between the North American Plate and the European Plate was opening up about 1 inch per year and that there likely isn't anywhere on earth that the magma is closer to the surface or can more easily reach the surface on earth than iceland. I think this is why the "Journey to the Center of the Earth" movies take place going into the earth in Iceland also. So it is easy to understand why no place seems to be quite like Iceland as far as extreme volcanic pyrotechnics are concerned.   One must take all these volcanic events very seriously especially when you consider that during either the 1780s eruptions or the 1821 eruptions the eruptions actually killed off 1/4 of the entire population of Iceland at that time.