{"id":33,"date":"2016-12-07T18:45:08","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T18:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/wheredisasterstrikes\/?page_id=33"},"modified":"2017-01-30T20:21:41","modified_gmt":"2017-01-30T20:21:41","slug":"laki-1783-1784","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wheredisasterstrikes\/volcano\/laki-1783-1784\/","title":{"rendered":"Laki, 1783-1784"},"content":{"rendered":"

The eruption and outpouring of lava\u2014now referred to as Laki or Lakag\u00edgar\u2014began on 8 June 1873 and continued until February 1784 from Mount Laki, a relatively benign location compared to the more active Hekla. The consequences were devastating. The lava poisoned the land killing nearly half of the country\u2019s livestock, which caused a famine that killed a fifth of Iceland\u2019s fifty thousand residents.<\/p>\n

The eruption also attracted scientific attention. Both Benjamin Franklin (in 1784) and Morgue de Montredon (in 1783) independently speculated that the aberrantly cold winter in Europe and North America resulted from the widespread sulphuric dry fog coming from Iceland\u2019s volcanoes. In his 1785 Short Description of the New Volcanic Eruption<\/em> in Iceland in 1783<\/em>, the Danish Magn\u00fas Stephensen drew on his own travels to Iceland in 1784 to combine a testimony of the wreckage in Iceland with a scientific account of the source of the eruption, the nature of its lava, and the mechanics of volcanoes.<\/p>\n

Joris Carolus Flandro, \u201cTabula Islandiae\u201d (1662)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"tabula_islandiae\"<\/p>\n

Magn\u00fas Stephensen, \u201cKarte \u00fcber die Gegend von West-Skaptefels Syssel in Island\u201d (1786); Christophe Daniel Ebeling Collection, gift of Israel Thorndike, 1818.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"1110_1786_2\"<\/p>\n

What was it like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAll that day and night the thunderous crashing was so great that everything shuttered and shook, and the earthquakes made every timber crack again and again. The entire area between \u00c1rfjall and the uplands of Skaft\u00e1rtunga appeared as one great conflagration and the fire was still churning in the orifice mentioned earlier. With several companions I went over to the canyon. The flood of fire flowed with the speed of a great river swollen with meltwater on a spring day. In the middle of the flood of fire great cliffs and slabs of rock were swept along, tumbling about like large whales swimming, redhot and glowing\u201d<\/p>\n

J\u00f3n Steingr\u00edmsson (1728-1791) was a Lutheran clergyman who led a church in the S\u00ed\u00f0a district not far from the Laki eruption. His diary of the events combines precise, scientific descriptions with Christian interpretation of their meaning for him, his church, and the world. He, for instance, suggests that his reader understand the eruption as a \u201csort of reflection and reminder of the end of the world and the Doomsday fires.\u201d At other moments, he enumerates the timeline of the death of the specific plants and animals around him. His autobiography, in which this diary features, remained unpublished as a manuscript among his descendants until 1913.<\/p>\n

J\u00f3n Steingr\u00edmsson, Fires of the Earth: The Laki Eruption, 1783-1784<\/em>. Trans. Keneva Kunz. Reykjav\u00edk: Nordic Volcanological Institute: University of Iceland Press, 1998.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The eruption and outpouring of lava\u2014now referred to as Laki or Lakag\u00edgar\u2014began on 8 June 1873 and continued until February 1784 from Mount Laki, a relatively benign location compared to the more active Hekla. The consequences were devastating. The lava … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8103,"featured_media":0,"parent":11,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-33","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wheredisasterstrikes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wheredisasterstrikes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wheredisasterstrikes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wheredisasterstrikes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wheredisasterstrikes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wheredisasterstrikes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wheredisasterstrikes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33\/revisions\/174"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wheredisasterstrikes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wheredisasterstrikes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}