Island on Fire Read online

  Such open-ended issues complicate the calculation of Laki’s final death toll. The official count, according to the authoritative reference work Volcanoes of the World, is 9,350. But tens of thousands more may have perished across Europe from the effects of breathing in the particles day after day, and if you add in the famines in Egypt and possibly Japan, Laki suddenly becomes a much bigger killer. Pressed for a complete tally, Thor Thordarson suggests that more than 1.5 million people may have lost their lives as a result of the eruption. John Grattan, a geographer at Aberystwyth University who has done the most work on Laki mortality rates, speculates the death toll may even have been as high as six million.

  In perhaps the biggest stretch, some environmental historians have even argued that the Laki emissions may have spelled the end for French royalty. The harsh winters, cool summers and heavy rains set up a series of crop failures across France throughout the early 1780s. Bread became scarce, and peasants became angry and desperate, particularly after a drought in 1788. The following year, revolution broke out. Few people would accept this as a straightforward case of environmental determinism: complex socioeconomic and political factors were at work in the French Revolution. That said, Laki clearly disrupted life in France for years on end. Those storming the Bastille might not have known anything about the Icelandic volcano, but perhaps it was an unseen player in the events of 1789.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Laki Today

  Life in the mountain’s shadow

  IF YOU WANT TO VISIT THE CRATERS OF LAKI, the first thing you need is a proper vehicle. F206, the overland path that leads from the heavily travelled ring road north toward Laki, is one of Iceland’s infamous ‘F roads’ – unpaved dirt tracks that sometimes vanish altogether over lava highlands or under roaring rivers. For this kind of terrain, a rental car just won’t do. You need someone like Trausti Ísleifsson and his jacked-up four-wheel-drive van. Trausti and his brother Gudmann run an adventure company in Klaustur, and they unhesitatingly agree to take us to the Laki craters even though we are visiting at a time – mid-June – when the F206 track is often still buried by the winter snows. Fortunately, the spring of 2012 is warm enough to clear a path to the craters. So right after breakfast on a Wednesday morning, Trausti rolls his white van on its massive knobbly tyres up to the front door of our hotel. He is the quintessential Icelandic tour guide: tall, blond, with flawless English, and kitted out in rugged and expensive-looking outdoor gear. We are his only passengers.

  Laki is just thirty-five kilometres from Klaustur as the crow flies, but getting there and back is a lengthy affair. On a drizzly, cloudy morning we start by driving about six kilometres west from town, through an eerie hummocky wasteland. What look like soft pillowy forms are actually hard black rocks carpeted by pale green and gray arctic moss. They are the cooled remains of lava from the eruption of 1783–84. The strange lumps stretch on both sides of the ring road, for nearly as far as the eye can see. Forever useless to farmers, this land is now home only to birds.

  The farms and hamlets along Iceland’s south-central coast lie directly in the line of fire downslope from Laki’s craters.

  As we turn off the ring road onto F206, Trausti pulls over the van to let air out of the monster tyres. As we start rolling again, we immediately see the wisdom of this move. The road is unpaved and boulder-strewn, beset with axle-breaking potholes, and the lower tyre pressure allows us to navigate the obstacles better. This early in the season, hardly anyone is on the road except us and one unfortunate-looking Subaru sedan that creeps along, scraping its underside on the rough track. We pass it, wondering what it will do when it encounters the swiftly flowing rivers. Trausti, of course, barrels through fearlessly with just enough clearance under his van. He even halts halfway into the river to dip his water bottle into the icy, clear meltwater. ‘You won’t taste anything better,’ he tells us.

  The landscape is classic Iceland: rolling fields of black lava misted with the green of low-growing tundra plants. Pockets of lingering snow nestle into the sides of hills and ridges, and from time to time we spot the massive bank of ice that is the Vatnajökull ice cap glowering in the distance. Out here, the only sign of civilisation is a single blue sign marking the entrance to Vatnajökull National Park, one of the country’s three national parks and the biggest in all of Europe.

  A ceiling of gloomy clouds extends from horizon to horizon, but even those can’t dampen our mood as, an hour and a half after turning onto the track, we finally approach Mount Laki itself. As if on cue, two whooper swans, startled by the van’s sudden appearance, take wing. Nothing except them and the clouds seems to be moving out here.

  Then Trausti points ahead. After all the anticipation, our first glimpse of Mount Laki is a little less than impressive. It’s just another black ridge of rock among other black rocks. Like many of Iceland’s mountains, it formed in a subglacial eruption in the distant past when magma erupted under ice, cooling quickly and turning to rock. Today Mount Laki is a craggy, weathered mound with an elevation of 818 metres, comparable to other peaks in the region. But we’re here because the mountain sits smack in the middle of the volcanic fissures we came to explore. If you want to see the crater row, this is where you begin.

  Trausti brings the van to a halt in a small black sand clearing beneath yet another lava ridge. He waves us out and lights up a cigarette. A bored-looking park ranger cautions us not to stray off the path or pick tundra flowers. Then we are off to climb Mount Laki by ourselves.

  The hike is straightforward but steep, so we keep our heads down as we clamber and scramble along the lava trail. An occasional glance over our shoulders at the receding parking area, more scrabbling, a brief rest, a final push, and then we are at the top.

  The view is stunning in all directions – lakes, mountains, glaciers – but what we’ve come to see lies on either side of the windswept summit. A single file of volcanic craters stretches all the way to the horizon, their moss-covered flanks and swales dappled, here and there, with patches of snow.

  From a vertiginous shelf, we look off to the southwest: these are the older craters, the ones that opened up on 8 June 1783, and in the following weeks spewed the thousand-metre-high fire columns that Jón Steingrímsson and others saw above the hills behind Klaustur. Lava from these craters surged down the Skaftá gorge and spread out upon the lowlands, destroying farms and threatening Klaustur itself on the Sunday of Jón’s Fire Mass.

  We turn the opposite way and gaze towards the northeast. Yet more craters stretch off into the distance and disappear below a low cloud bank that hovers above icy Vatnajökull, brilliant white in full sunlight. These craters were the later ones to erupt, beginning the last week of July 1783. They sent lava flowing down the eastern path towards Klaustur and its weary and dying villagers.

  This perspective is the only way to really visualise the fearsome power that once ripped this landscape wide open. Laki is but a name, an abstraction, until we see this mighty gash in the earth. Its beauty belies the devastation it once unleashed. How could a land so tranquil and green have once been a terrifying inferno? We take our photos, pile a few stones on a summit cairn, gaze on the crater row one last time, and head back down.

  Seen from atop Mount Laki, the crater row stretches off to the Vatnajökull ice cap in the northeast. In 1783, this scene would have been a row of flames.

  Later that afternoon Trausti takes us to walk through several of the Laki craters. We drive slowly south and west, marvelling at the colour and variety of forms lava can take, from blue-black pillow-like lobes to reddish sharp-edged rocks. Many are shot through with vesicles, the holes left by gas bubbles as the lava cooled and hardened to rock. Some flow features in the lava resemble brown toffee that has yet to harden.

  We come across deep green mirror lakes, gentle burbling watercourses and, here and there, clumps of ground-hugging wildflowers – golden root, purple moss campion, white rock-cress and yellow meadow buttercups. Everywhere sprawls a carpet of that grey
-green Icelandic moss, giving the otherwise coarse landscape a soft, impressionistic appearance. As sunlight alternates with a gentle mist that occasionally turns to snow, we almost forget we’re walking through what was once a death trap.

  After the long drizzly day, we’re happy to return to the warmth of the Hotel Klaustur, a modern building just a few steps from the centre of town. Or, rather, a few steps from the traffic roundabout and petrol station that serve as the centre of town. Home to fewer than two hundred people, Klaustur is more a way station than a destination for tourists, and survives mainly because it is a convenient stopping place between Vík, the coastal town to the west, and the grand scenery of glaciers to the east.

  Just as it was in the eighteenth century, Klaustur remains a farming community, though farms are being abandoned as young people move to Reykjavík for jobs and other opportunities. The main part of town lies against ancient sea cliffs that rise forty metres to a large lake above. Sheep seemingly defy gravity as they make their way along the cliffs on narrow grazing paths.

  The broad Skaftá River flows west to east along the southern edge of town, a clear burbling ribbon that calls out for a fly fishing rod. Before the eruption you would have had to cross it by boat but today you can practically wade across, thanks to the lava that filled up the gorge this river once flowed through.

  Other main attractions are a strikingly forked waterfall called Systrafoss to the west of town, and a natural pavement of basalt columns known as the Kirkjugólf or ‘church floor’. But we’re here for more than a quick visitor stop. We’ve come to interview a local community leader, the caretaker of Jón Steingrímsson’s legacy.

  We meet Jón Helgason in our hotel’s elegant restaurant. It’s hard to believe he’s in his eighties: his greyish-white hair may be thinning away from his broad forehead, but there’s still plenty of it. His eyes are blue and penetrating, and he always seems to have just a slight grin around his mouth. Born and raised in the village, Helgason lived most of his professional life in Reykjavík, where he served in the country’s parliament and as agricultural and justice minister. On retiring, though, he came back home as quickly as he could. Now he lives on a farm south of Klaustur, and spearheads efforts to preserve the town’s history for future generations.

  Klaustur’s memorial chapel to Jón Steingrímsson is built to evoke the A-shape of traditional Icelandic homes and barns.

  Helgason gestures out the window, through which we can see Klaustur’s most famous building: a dark brown, modern A-frame wooden structure, just outside the old church grounds. The local women’s association organised the fund-raising to get the chapel built, and a hundred farmers – true to tradition – each donated one autumnal lamb for six years to help pay for it. This is the Steingrímsson memorial chapel, consecrated in 1974 to commemorate Jón’s stopping of the lava. It is also the spiritual and emotional centre of town: in 1983, a 200th-anniversary celebration of the Fire Mass brought several hundred people here in a moment of re-creation.

  When Helgason takes us inside we see that the building is set up in simple Icelandic fashion, with wooden pews flanking the single aisle. It is a quiet and contemplative space, with views of the verdant cliffs above town. Off to one side of the pulpit sits a small architectural model under glass: a replica of the interior of the original church, where the Fire Mass was held. Its roof is authentically covered in miniature artificial grass, a nod to the days when almost every Icelandic building was A-frame in design and partly buried beneath the lush turf. A cut-out in the model reveals the simple wooden furniture within.

  Looking up from the model, we see something above us and catch our breath. On each side of the chapel, attached to the A-frame, are two obviously ancient timbers. Splintery and fissured, the wood is smooth in places, scarred with black holes where nails used to be. Square-headed nails and rusty pieces of iron are embedded deep in the coarse grain. We look at Helgason and ask if these are what we think they are. And he nods. These are timbers from Jón’s original church. Hesitantly, we touch them. These timbers are relics of the Fire Mass, the remnants of a now legendary battle between man and volcano.

  The eerie feeling grows stronger as we leave the chapel and walk out to the grounds behind. Here, a low stone wall and a stand of birch trees enclose a wide squarish area. This is where Jón’s church stood, where the Fire Mass took place. A simple white cross rises from the undulating ground, bearing a small plaque that reads ‘Hér var Eldmessan 20. Júlí 1783’ (‘Here was the Fire Mass, 20 July 1783’). Helgason tells us that the cross stands where the entrance to Jón’s church is believed to have been.

  On the ground nearby, so low that we almost trip over it, is a low rectangular basaltic stone: it’s the gravestone of Jón and Thórunn, at a spot that would have lain behind the choir of the church. Lichens and weathering obscure the Icelandic runes that are carved into it. The rest of the enclosure looks like a small park, except for several modern graves occupying the northern corner.

  Around this small, carefully tended cemetery the ground rolls away, until it banks up to a mound in the southwestern corner. There are no markers here, for it is a mass grave. It’s the burial site of some 76 parishioners who died during the Laki eruption and its aftermath. Yet another chill rolls down our spines: this is where Jón led his trusty horse, burdened with the corpses of his parishioners, and where he consecrated the bodies to the ground. So many died so quickly in the famine that they did not receive individual burials – though each, Jón was proud to say, was buried in his or her own coffin.

  Here is indeed the true heart of Klaustur. It was sacred ground long before Jón arrived here. Just outside this stone enclosure, recent excavations have uncovered the remains of the town’s medieval convent, whose nuns were celebrated for their skill in working textiles. (A loom has been unearthed here by archaeologists.) On old maps of Iceland, Klaustur is often designated with the sign of a cross, to indicate its famous convent. By Jón’s time, however, the convent had fallen into ruin, and his church soon went the same way.

  For nearly two decades after 1783, fierce winds blew volcanic sand from the lava deposits east of Klaustur, and by 1850 the grains had almost buried the building in a dune. Klaustur’s congregation abandoned the church and moved its Sunday services a few kilometres north to Prestbakki, the former rectory for the parish and where Jón lived during the Laki eruption. A new church built of Danish timber was erected at Prestbakki in 1859, and still stands bright white above the lush meadowland. These days, the local priest doesn’t have much call for his services, given the dwindling population. But once a month he still holds services at Prestbakki.

  The memory of the Fire Mass runs deep even here. The altar at this newer church is a hand-carved pulpit depicting Jón, in all his neck-ruffed glory, preaching the Fire Mass. In the conical steeple, one of the bells retrieved from the original chapel – now oxidized with age – still tolls for services, weddings and funerals.

  Standing outside this church at Prestbakki, Helgason describes the devastation of Laki, in a recitation that makes him sound more like an eyewitness than a story teller. He details what happened where and when: lava came up to a church in Skal on 12 June; on 15 June, it flowed below Skal and Holt but halted for a while; over in the lowlands, lava formed a lake; days later lava came within 500 metres of cultivated land; on 14 July people fled to the west. Helgason’s memory is long, and it is as if a part of him lives in the eighteenth century. ‘I can remember one-third of the time since the eruption,’ he says matter-of-factly. He and other locals still divide history into the time before the fires and the time after the fires.

  Jón Helgason keeps the memory of the Fire Mass alive.

  Like many people in and around Klaustur, Helgason traces his ancestry to a farmer who survived the eruption and the hardships that followed. Family lore holds that this relative, named Oddur, pulled through because his farm happened to be at a spot along a river that drained a different portion of the highlands. Even as Laki
contaminated the Skaftá and other rivers with ash and lava, this stream ran with mostly fresh, untainted water. Other families starved for lack of food, but Oddur could usually go to the stream and retrieve enough fish to feed his six daughters. Even today this place in the river is known as Oddsbúr, or ‘Odd’s pantry’.

  Laki’s ash still runs in Klaustur’s veins. Talk for a while with Sveinn Jensson, the young manager of the Hotel Klaustur, and he will tell you about his trips to Switzerland and Cuba to get away from the village and explore the world. But press a little deeper and you’ll learn that he was born and raised on the farm where, more than two centuries ago, Danish authorities making the rounds after the famine found an entire family dead in their beds, felled by starvation and malnutrition after trying to boil and eat their shoes.

  Sveinn is a slim, dark-haired man with the unfailingly polite manner of someone trained in the hospitality industry. He worked his way up at the hotel, from cleaning rooms to working in the restaurant to becoming general manager by the age of thirty. So perhaps it’s not surprising that he’d like to see Klaustur become a more prominent spot on tourists’ itineraries. Laki would be the key to getting visitors into town. In Italy, Pompeii and Etna have built entire tourist industries around their volcanic histories, he notes. Why not Klaustur?