Thousands of flights were affected as some of Europe's busiest airports closed, including London's Heathrow; Amsterdam, Netherlands' Schiphol; and Paris, France's Charles de Gaulle.
Volcanic ash can cause jet engines to shut down.
The prime minister of Norway was among those stranded by the closure of European air space.
Jens Stoltenberg, who was in the United States for President Obama's nuclear summit, is running the Norwegian government from the U.S. via his new iPad, his press secretary Sindre Fossum Beyer told CNN.
The United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands also announced the complete or partial closure of their air space, authorities in each country said. Norway also closed its ocean territory and canceled helicopter flights to offshore oil installations, according to Avinor, the Norwegian agency responsible for the country's airport network.
It's hard to predict how long it will be before air travel can resume, said Matthew Watson, a geophysicist, at England's Bristol University.
"You really need two things to happen: You need the volcano to stop emplacing ash to the altitude that commercial aircraft fly at, 30,000 to 35,000 feet, and you then need the upper level winds to blow the ash and disperse it out of the air space," he told CNN.
How long that will take "depends very much on the volcano. If this is it and it's stopped right now and it doesn't do anything else ... I imagine you are looking at 24 to 48 hours to clear U.K. air space," he said.
But the volcano was continuing to erupt and spew ash as of 5:30 p.m. local time (1:30 p.m. ET) Thursday, Icelandic Foreign Ministry representative Urdur Gunnarsdottir told CNN.
Britain's Civil Aviation Authority said the closure of British air space would last at least until 7 a.m. (2 a.m. ET) Friday. A further announcement would come later Thursday, it said.
France closed eight airports in the north of the country as of 5 p.m. local time (11 a.m. ET), and is set to close another 16, including Charles de Gaulle, at 11 p.m. local time (5 p.m. ET).
In all, around 3,000 flights across Europe were expected to be affected by the closures, according to Eurocontrol, the intergovernmental body that manages European air travel.
Many airports were already shut and flights were grounded across the United Kingdom on Thursday because of the ash, which came after an eruption under an Icelandic glacier early Wednesday, airport authorities said.See how domestic flights in U.S. are affected
The eruption -- the latest in a series that began on March 20 -- blew a hole in the mass of ice and created a cloud of smoke and ash that went high into the air.
AIR SPACES CLOSED
Belgium
Full closure from 4.30 p.m. CET
Britain
Closed until at least 7 a.m. BST Friday
Denmark
From 6 p.m. CET
France
8 airports in North closed, another 16 from 11 p.m. CET
Ireland
From 12 p.m. BST
Finland
"Heavily restricted"
Netherlands
From 7 p.m. CET
Norway
From 10 a.m. CET
Sweden
From 10 p.m CET
The volcano was still active Thursday, creating floods in the area and producing a lot of volcanic ash, a spokesman for Iceland's Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management told CNN.
"There will be an immediate impact today in terms of passengers not being able to travel," said independent air transport consultant John Strickland, of JLS Consulting in England. "The key thing is we don't know how long it's going to last. ... But even if that were to be resolved, it will take some significant time for airlines to recover."
Flights to the United Kingdom from Japan, Hong Kong, India and Australia were affected, and Etihad Airways announced that five flights between Abu Dhabi and England were canceled Thursday.
The U.S. Air Force said two of its bases in England, RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath, would be shut down for at least two days. That meant dozens of U.S. Air Force F-15s and other fighter jets and tankers were not flying, and flights to Iraq and Afghanistan that would have flown through that air space were being diverted to other routes.
iReporter captures footage of eruption
The ash wasn't necessarily visible in the air, but Manchester Airport spokesman Russell Craig said it can still pose a threat to aircraft.
"If you think about the way an aircraft engine works, it sucks in air, it compresses it, forces it out on the other side. That creates thrust," Craig told CNN. "If that air were mixed with ash, it can cause engine failure and electrical difficulties with an aircraft. It's happened before, and the aircraft didn't come out the other end in one piece."
ASH AIR EMERGENCIES
April 1982 -- British Airways flight 009 en route to Auckland, New Zealand, from London, England, flew into a cloud of ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, Indonesia, causing engines to fail. Crew were eventually able to restart three engines and land safely in Jakarta after gliding through the cloud.
December 1989 -- KLM flight 867 en route to Anchorage, Alaska, from Amsterdam, Netherlands, flew into a volcanic ash cloud caused by eruption of Mount Redoubt in Alaska, resulting in failure of its engines as it tried to climb out of the cloud. Pilots were able to restart engines, two at a time, before landing the badly damaged airliner.
Eric Moody was the pilot aboard a British Airways flight in 1982 that managed, barely, to fly through volcanic ash thrown up by Mount Galunggung in Indonesia. All four of the engines stopped because of the ash, and the plane glided through the air for about 15 minutes, he told CNN on Thursday.
"The engines just ran down," Moody said. "We couldn't see out the windscreen and half the electronic aids to landing weren't working, either."
Passengers were told to prepare for an emergency crash landing, with Moody making this now-famous announcement to passengers: "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, it's Captain Eric Moody here. We've got a small problem in that all four engines have failed. We're doing our utmost to get them going, and I trust you're not in too much distress."
Eventually, at 13,000 feet, the engines started working again and the plane was able to land. That, said Moody, is why this Icelandic ash could be so dangerous.
"I don't know how thick this ash is, but I wouldn't go anywhere near it," Moody said.
Explainer: Why ash cloud endangers aircraft
Nick Grahame, a chief forecaster at Britain's weather service, the Met Office, said it is hard to predict where the ash cloud will go next.
"The Met Office forecast at the present time, based on the emissions at the moment, suggests that the plume will come across the UK, and also Scandinavian countries in particular, over the next 24 to 36 hours," Grahame told CNN. "If the volcano continues to erupt through Friday into the weekend, then obviously the ash will spread further, but that's something we are not clear about at the moment."
Capt. Bob Jones of the Civil Aviation Authority said Britain will not reopen its airspace until the threat is over.
"It very much depends on the location of the ash, but needless to say, we're taking extreme caution," Jones told CNN.
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