A Cambridge University research has traced the beginning of Christianity in Scandinavian country, Iceland, to the beginning of the first century. The researchers, comprising scientists and medieval historians applied information contained within ice cores and tree rings to accurately date a massive volcanic eruption that happened shortly after the island was first settled.
The largest lava flood in the history of the country, which was recorded in an apocalyptic medieval poem, was used to drive the island’s conversion to Christianity, the research suggested.
Today, Iceland has a population of over 70 percent that are of various Christian denominations.
“The eruption of the Eldgjá in the tenth century is known as a lava flood: a rare type of prolonged volcanic eruption in which huge flows of lava engulf the landscape, accompanied by a haze of sulphurous gases. Iceland specialises in this type of eruption – the last example occurred in 2015, and it affected air quality 1400 kilometres away in Ireland.
“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. It was a colossal event with around 20 cubic kilometres of lava erupted – enough to cover all of England up to the ankles,” the research noted.
One poem, that is today, Iceland’s most celebrated medieval poem, Voluspá (‘The prophecy of the seeress’) appears to give an impression of what the eruption was like. The poem, which can be dated as far back as the fall of the first century, foretells the end of Iceland’s pagan gods and the coming of a new, singular God: in other words, the conversion of Iceland to Christianity, which was formalised around the turn of the eleventh century.
Parts of the poem described a terrible eruption with fiery explosions lighting up the sky, and the Sun obscured by thick clouds of ash and steam: “The sun starts to turn black, land sinks into sea; the bright stars scatter from the sky. Steam spurts up with what nourishes life, flame flies high against heaven itself.”
The cold summers that the poem said should be expected after the eruption was linked by the researchers to the spectacle and impact of the Eldgja eruption.
The researchers suggested that these lines in the poem may have been intended 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.
Dr. Tim Newfield of Georgetown University’s Department of History and Biology, who was part of the research team said, “It was a massive eruption, but we were still amazed just how abundant the historical evidence is for the eruption’s consequences. 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.”
Also, the lead authour of the research, Dr Clive Oppenheimer of Cambridge’s Department of Geography said, “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. But most striking is the almost eyewitness style in which the eruption is depicted in Voluspá. 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.”
