Around the late 18th century, there were plenty of priests present on Iceland, including, most notably, one Jón Steingrímsson. Along with plenty of other people back on June 8th 1783, he witnessed a fissure eruption begin and not stop effusing lava for around eight months.

“The ground swelled up with tremendous howling, then suddenly a cry shattered it into pieces and exposing {the earth's] guts, like an animal tearing apart its prey,” Steingrímsson noted at the time, as recalled marvelously over at Scientific American.

Pouring out of 135 separate crevasses covering 2,500 square kilometers (965 square miles) – around three times the area of New York City – it ended up killing around 9,000 people directly through the release of toxic gases and, well, a seemingly endless flood of lava. The ash that polluted the agricultural land around the fissures ended up killing off so much cattle and destroying the crop-growing land ultimately led to a famine in which one-third of the country’s population, about 20,000 people, died.

Steingrímsson’s diary – which you can grab a copy of for yourself – proved to be a valuable assest for volcanologists down the line looking for a blow-by-blow account of the Laki eruption, named after the chain of fissures that emerged back then. Apart from also handing out food and comforting those that were dealing with the terrifying emergence of the hellish, liquid conflagration, he also, on one particular Sunday, held a now-legendary mass.

Laki was one of the defining events of Iceland’s history. Its impact went well beyond the nation, covering much of the northern hemisphere. It seems amazing that something that caused so much suffering was seen by so few people. This it shares with Eldgja, which was even larger and must have devastated Iceland, but of which no eye witness report remains. There are reasons. The largest disasters leave the local population decimated and local areas uninhabitable, and the historical record is lost. The region in which the eruptions occurred, and which Lurking has named the Dead Zone (because of lack of earthquake activity), was unsuitable for habitation due to previous lava floods. So no one saw the rift opening, and the lava was only seen when it came spilling out from the river canyon, some days later.

The best record we have is from the local priest, mentioned by Carl: Jon Steingrimsson. He was quite a remarkable person, well educated and caring, and his observations have stood the test of time. His diary is much more than a scientific record: it is a personal story of happiness, worry, despair, suffering and survival, in a developing disaster that would claim the life of his wife and leave him destitute and starving and decimated his human flock. It is about being human in a time of the inhumane. But it doesn’t answer the major questions that we would like to answer about the Laki eruption. What made it happen? Where did the magma come from? Could it happen again?

Looking back


Let’s first get the lie of the land. The map shows the main locations in the story of Laki. Klaustur is the place where Jon lived during the events. It is along the river Skafta, which in those days came from a 200-meter deep canyon further west. The canyon has been filled by Laki lava and no longer exists. Nowadays the Skafta is fed by multiple small tributaries. The first lava flows came down the Skafta gorge, after the rift southwest of Mount Laki fissured. Later, the eruption shifted towards the northeast and now the lava flowed through the canyon of the Hverfisfljot river.

Carl has explained the timeline of the Laki eruption. The first explosion happened in the morning of Sunday, 8 June 1783 (Pentecost Sunday), as Jon was getting ready for the church service. The ash turned day to night, but by afternoon the sky had cleared. The ash returned the next day. The Skafta river began to dry up, and by the afternoon had stopped flowing completely. The lava appeared in the lowlands on June 12, having come down the canyon. The following Sunday, some of the local farmers trekked into the highlands, climbing a peak (Kaldbakur, 8km due north of Klaustur – not the mountain of that name in northwest Iceland – still over 10 km from the Laki rift) to get a view of the events. They were the first (and only?) to see the rift in action, reporting twenty fountains of fire. (Following their example, these types of eruptions are now called ‘fires’). The number may well have been exaggerated – how would we know? By mid July, the lava was encroaching on Klaustur, but it stopped on Sunday 20 July, during Jon’s famous fire sermon. The flow ceased because of a combination of reducing lava flow and quenching by heavy rain (and of course the famous sermon of which sadly no transcript survives).

Four day later, the fissures northeast of Mount Laki opened up, with a major explosion on July 29. The new flows came down the Hverfisfljot river. By August 3 this river no longer flowed, and on August 7 lava appeared in the lowland. This was more sedate than the June eruption, but in the end just as devastating. Various eruption episodes continued, each one accompanied by a new lava flow down the river valley. The last of these was late October. After this, there was still fountaining but at rates too low to reach the lowlands. It was stopped by cooling. Lava can flow as long as it is hot enough. When eruption rates get less, the lava flows become thinner and therefore cool faster. Lava tubes can extend the reach by a lot, but for surface flows, the lava reaching less far is a first sign of a tapering off of the eruption. So it was at Laki. The last fire was seen on February 7, 1784.

Fires of the Earth
The Laki Eruption 1783-84
By the Rev. Jón Steingrimsson (trans. by Keneva Kunz)

As I read Fires of the Earth, the translation of Jón´s account of the Laki eruption and its aftermath, I thought Keneva Kunze´s translation easy to read, although I know that given Jon´s religious position and the times, that the original must have presented serious problems to a translator. This book is only ninety-five pages. It attempts nothing beyond sharing the observations of Jón Steingrimsson in English..

Many North American Icelandic readers are unlikely to recognize Jón by his name but they would know who he was the moment his Fire Sermon was mentioned. We all have images of him defiantly preaching in his church as lava from Laki flowed toward it. Before this climactic moment, at least two other churches had been destroyed so everyone knew that the house of God alone was not enough to bring the calamity of the lava to a halt.
“on the fifth Sunday after Trinity…I proceeded to the church, along with all of those people then in the Siða area who could manage to do so. I was filled with sorrow at the thought that this might well be the last service to be held in the church, as the terror which now threatened and approached ever nearer appeared likely to destroy it as it had the other two.

“As we approached, the clouds of hot vapours and fog coming from the fire farther down the river channel were so thick that the church could hardly be seen, or its outline could only be hazily seen…Claps of thunder were followed by such great flashes of lightning, in series after series, that they lit up the inside of the church and the bells echoed the sound, while the earth tremors continued unabated.“

He makes his sermon longer than usual, keeping everyone in the church. When he, at last, finishes his sermon, he and others went to see how close the lava was to them. They discovered that it had not advanced at all. “The rivers Holsá and Fjaðará poured over the dams which the new lava had made them, and with great torrents and splashing smothered the fire”.

Jón´s chronicle of this time doesn´t stop with the eruption but goes on to describe the aftermath. Not many were killed by the eruption. The dying came because the feed for the sheep and cattle had been destroyed. To add to the misery, the animals suffer from some terrible disease, from rain that poisons everything and burns the leaves of plants and the skin of people and animals. Jón´s observations are detailed, his analysis intelligent. His bravery unquestioned.

Iceland had a population of around fifty thousand people at the time of the eruption. Ten thousand died. That is one in every five. Jón reports on the desperation of people dying of hunger, dying from eating the flesh of the animals poisoned by the water and grass. The effects on the animals are grotesque.

Jón names the farms that are destroyed, names how much each was worth before the eruption. These were prosperous farms. The owners were wealthy. After the eruption they became paupers. For people who don´t know Icelandic history, the term pauper isn´t terrifying. For those who do know, the word encapsulates forced removal, being sold to the person who will take the least amount from the sysla to keep them, to the loss of all rights until the debt is paid.

Jón begins by describing the years of plenty before the eruption. Times were good. They were so good that people became greedy, uncaring, vain, proud. The abuse of alcohol became wide spread. By the end of 1784, they had all been chastised. Being reduced to eating your leather clothes does that to people.

It is a shame that Fires of the Earth is out of print. It is a book that everyone of Icelandic background should read in order to understand their Icelandic ancestors and their current Icelandic relatives.