(h/t +George Wiman)
Reshared post from +Bora Zivkovic
June 8, 1783: How the “Laki-eruptions” changed History | History of Geology, Scientific American Blog Network
“The sun fades away, the land sinks into the sea, the bright stars disappear from the sky, as smoke and fire destroy the world, and the flames reach the sky.” The End of the World according to the “Völuspa“, a collection of Icelandic myths compiled in the 13th century.
There are theories that a volcanic eruption in the 1000s or 1100s BCE triggered a massive migration of tribes from Scandinavia through central Europe, and that the resulting displacement is responsible for the Greek Dark Ages (a setback that took Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures about 700 years to recover from).