Huge Lava Flood, Apocalyptic Poem Drove Vikings to Christianity: Study
A new study has found that the largest lava flood in Iceland's history, which was recorded in an apocalyptic medieval poem, greatly influenced the country's viking population to turn to Christianity.
The study, which was published on Monday in the journal Climate Change, details the volcanic eruption of Eldgjá, which, according to high-temporal resolution glaciochemical records, occurred somewhere in spring 939 and continued until autumn 940.
Within two generations of the Eldgjá eruption, at the turn of the 11th century, Iceland had formally converted to Christianity. The change was foretold in the medieval poem "Vǫluspá," which tells of the death of the pagan gods and the coming of a new, singular God.
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The scientists and medieval historians, led by the University of Cambridge, used ice cores and tree rings to date the volcanic eruption.
"This places the eruption squarely within the experience of the first two or three generations of Iceland's settlers," said Clive Oppenheimer of Cambridge's Department of Geography, one of the authors of the report.
"Some of the first wave of migrants to Iceland, brought over as children, may well have witnessed the eruption."
The Eldgjá eruption is known as a lava flood, which is a rare type of prolonged eruption, releasing large amounts of sulphurous gases.
The eruption had a major effect across Europe, with historians findings accounts of a blood-red sun in Irish, German and Italian chronicles from the time period.
The haze of sulphurous dust also caused one of the coolest summers in the last 1,500 years back then.
"In 940, summer cooling was most pronounced in Central Europe, Scandinavia, the Canadian Rockies, Alaska and Central Asia, with summer average temperatures 2°C lower," explained co-author Professor Markus Stoffel from the University of Geneva's Department of Earth Sciences.
Tim Newfield, from Georgetown University's Departments of History and Biology, noted that the historical evidence for the consequences of the eruption was abundant.
"Human suffering in the wake of Eldgjá was widespread. From northern Europe to northern China, people experienced long, hard winters and severe spring-summer drought. Locust infestations and livestock mortalities occurred. Famine did not set in everywhere, but in the early 940s we read of starvation and vast mortality in parts of Germany, Iraq and China," Newfield pointed out.
As the University of Cambridge team explains, Vǫluspá, which translates to "the prophecy of the seeress," dates back to 961, or only a couple of decades after the eruption took place, and foretells how the old religion would be replaced by Christianity.
It uses apocalyptic imagery of the sun turning to black, land sinking into sea, and flames flying "high against heaven itself" to describe the destruction of the world of the old viking gods.
"With a firm date for the eruption, many entries in medieval chronicles snap into place as likely consequences — sightings in Europe of an extraordinary atmospheric haze; severe winters; and cold summers, poor harvests; and food shortages," said Oppenheimer.
"But most striking is the almost eyewitness style in which the eruption is depicted in Vǫluspá. 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 Christianization of Iceland."
Today, Christianity remains the largest religion in the country, with close to 80 percent of the population belonging to the Lutheran State Church. Actual religious faith is on the decline, however, as is in other Scandinavian countries.
The WIN-Gallup International Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism in 2012 found that Iceland is one of the most atheistic places in the world, with 10 percent of the population stating that they are convinced atheists, while 31 percent said that they have no religion.
