CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND—According to a Live Science report, researchers led by volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer of the University of Cambridge examined ice cores and tree ring data from Iceland, in order to calculate precise dates for the medieval eruption of the Eldgjá volcano, and determine whether the massive lava flood and sulphurous gases emitted by the eruption could have been witnessed by the Viking and Celtic migrants who settled Iceland in A.D. 874. March 19 (UPI) -- One Iceland's most famous ancient poems describes the eruption of the Eldgjá volcano, linking the apocalyptic conditions -- the thick haze of gas and massive lava flows -- with the abandonment of the pagan gods and the acceptance of a new, singular god. A lava flood is a “prolonged volcanic eruption in which huge flows of lava engulf the landscape, accompanied by a haze of sulfurous gases,” and the massive eruption over 1,000 years ago would have spewed enough lava to cover the entire island nation in a layer 20 centimeters deep. The Eldgjá lava flood affected southern Iceland within a century of the island's settlement by Vikings and Celts around 874, but until now the date of the eruption has been uncertain, hindering investigation of its likely impacts. In a paper published in the journal Climatic Change, Oppenheimer and colleagues report using ice core data from Greenland to pinpoint the date of the eruption of Iceland’s Eldgjá volcano. The island was settled by Vikings and Celts in about 874 CE, and using evidence of volcanic fallout, as recorded in ice cores from not-too-distant Greenland, researchers — led by Clive Oppenheimer from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom — concluded that the Eldgjá eruption “began around the spring of 939 [CE] and continued at least through the autumn of 940 [CE].”

Called “The prophecy of the seeress” in English, Vǫluspá was written at least as far back as 961 CE, and describes what are likely the eruption and its aftermath, and is the only known text from Iceland to do so. Oppenheimer says the dates indicate that some of Iceland’s first settlers, and perhaps two generations of their descendants, may have witnessed and survived the cataclysm, and eventually translated their experiences, including the ensuing devastation and famine, into the Voluspá, a poem written around A.D. 961. Effects of the eruption were felt as far afield as Iraq, Canada and China as hoards of locusts swept in at the same time that famine killed droves of people in the Northern hemisphere. Oppenheimer and his team point to an influential and apocalyptic Icelandic epic poem, called Voluspá – The Prophecy of the Seeress – which has been dated to at least as far back as 961CE. The memory of the Eldgjá lived on in the island's culture and poetic lore, however, and only a few decades later, the Voluspá poem, which can be dated to as far back as 961 AD, credits the Eldgjá fallout with paving the way for Iceland's conversion to Christianity. The sun turns black, | earth sinks in the sea,

The hot stars down | from heaven are whirled;

Fierce grows the steam | and the life-feeding flame,

The fetters will burst, | and the wolf run free;

Much do I know, | and more can see

Of the fate of the gods, | the mighty in fight. Steam spurts up with what nourishes life, flame flies high against heaven itself.”

Vǫluspá also speaks of cold summers that followed the massive eruption (volcanic ash covered the sky, reducing the amount of sunlight that reached Earth, causing widespread loss of livestock and farmland, particularly in Iceland itself, but felt in most places across the planet) and all the end-of-the-world imagery was used in prophesizing the exit of the many pagan gods, and the coming of a singular god. Since the conversion of Iceland to Christianity was formalized some 30 to 50 years later, researchers suggested the poem used apocalyptic imagery “to rekindle harrowing memories of the eruption to stimulate the massive religious and cultural shift taking place in Iceland in the last decades of the tenth century.”

“The poem’s interpretation as a prophecy of the end of the pagan gods and their replacement by the one, singular god, suggests that memories of this terrible volcanic eruption were purposefully provoked to stimulate the Christianisation of Iceland,” Oppenheimer said in a statement Monday.
Analysis of ancient ice cores extracted from Greenland dates an eruption on Eldgjá volcano in Iceland. Iceland's largest eruption in the last 2,000 years was described in ancient poem Völuspá.