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Understanding the mechanical processes involved in fracturing is important for a number of geological applications, such as underground pollution and mining. Observations of populations of tensile fractures in Northern Iceland show that the fracturing process is non-universal and is scale-dependent. Simulations of fracturing show that recourse to multiple growth mechanisms is unnecessary to explain the Iceland observations. The fracturing process and its non-universality shows that larger fractures induce stress perturbations that influence the smaller fractures.