Historical and Prehistoric Eruptions
One of the largest Holocene eruptions in Iceland was the Hekla 3 (or H3) eruption of (950 BC) (1159 BC) which threw about 7.3 km3 of volcanic rock into the atmosphere, placing its Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) at 5. This would have cooled temperatures in the northern parts of the globe for a few years afterwards. Traces of this eruption have been identified in Scottish peat bogs, and in Ireland a study of tree rings dating from this period has shown negligible tree ring growth for a decade.
| Eruption | Year |
|---|---|
| H-5 | 5050 BC |
| H-Sv | 3900 BC |
| H-4 | 2310±20 BC |
| H-3 | 950 BC |
A Unless otherwise stated eruption dates are from Global Volcanism Program, other sources disagree.
Hekla 3,4 and 5 produced huge amounts of rhyolitic ash and tephra, covering 80% of Iceland and providing a useful date marker in soil profiles in other parts of Europe such as Orkney, Scandinavia and elsewhere. H3 and H4 produced the largest layers of tephra in Iceland since the last Ice Age. During the last 7000 years one third of the volcanic ash deposited in Scandinavia, Germany, Ireland and the UK originated from Hekla.
Read more about this topic: Hekla
Famous quotes containing the words historical, prehistoric and/or eruptions:
“Historical! Must it be historical to catch your attention? Even though historicity, like notoriety, denotes nothing more than that something has occurred.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Of course
the New Testament is very small.
Its mouth opens four times
as out-of-date as a prehistoric monster,
yet somehow man-made....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“All great movements are popular movements. They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people.”
—Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)