From Atlantis to Frankenstein, volcanoes have long shaped European culture

Last month there was a massive eruption from the Tongan volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai. The island exploded with a force estimated at 10 megatons, roughly 500 times the yield of the nuclear weapon used to destroy Hiroshima. The explosion was so powerful that its shockwave circled the globe twice, and tsunamis caused a large oil spill 10,000km away in Peru.

The majority of the world’s volcanoes are, like Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, found in the Ring of Fire, a 40,000km belt that circles the Pacific Ocean and includes an almost continuous chain of subduction zones.

These are areas where the tectonic plates of the Earth's crust meet, causing frequent volcanoes and earthquakes. Today Europe sees comparatively little volcanic activity; the last eruption on the continental mainland was Vesuvius in 1944.

Mount Etna in Sicily and Cumbre Vieja in the Canary Islands are the only significant recent eruptions in the European Union, although in 2010 the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull caused a week of disruption to air traffic when an ash cloud from its eruption spread across the north Atlantic.

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Despite the small number of volcanoes here, European culture has been deeply influenced by volcanic activity. In ancient Greek mythology, volcanoes were where the Olympian gods had imprisoned their rivals, the Titans. When the Romans adapted the Greek religion, Mount Etna became the home of Vulcan, the god of fire and blacksmiths, who worked his forges underneath the mountain. Philosophers proposed a more mechanical explanation for eruptions.

Anaxagoras argued that they were caused by huge winds inside the Earth, while Aristotle suggested that beneath the planet’s surface was a fire that created an internal wind. When this wind escaped the ground, it generated friction and heat, which resulted in earthquakes and volcanoes.

The island of Santorini is now famous for the whitewashed buildings that cling to the steep cliffs as they drop into its caldera. This geology is the result of a massive eruption around 1600BC, which saw the island collapse in on itself, and is the likely inspiration for Plato's lost city of Atlantis.

One of the most dramatic effects of large volcanic eruptions is their ability to affect life on the other side of the world. The vast amounts of ash and sulphur released into the atmosphere can reflect solar radiation and cool the Earth’s surface, creating a volcanic winter.

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein while holed up in Lord Byron's villa at Lake Geneva after the weather made outdoor activities impossible

The Annals of Ulster describe a failure of bread in 536, when much of Europe was struck by famine that scientists have attributed to massive eruptions in North America and the tropics. In 1257 Samalas in Indonesia exploded, causing extreme weather the following summer and several years of crop failures as far away as France and England. Another explosion in 1315, of Mount Tarawera in New Zealand, caused the Great Famine of the 14th century, a seven-year food shortage across Europe.

The atmospheric effects of these and smaller volcanoes contributed to a sustained period of lower North Atlantic temperatures known as the Little Ice Age. By the 1400s Iceland was surrounded by kilometres of pack ice, and the Norse colonies in Greenland had vanished due to starvation.

Without the benefits of modern volcanology and climatology, there was no obvious explanation for the cold weather and crop failures. The hardships were often attributed to the practice of witchcraft, previously a minor concern for secular and religious authorities.

In the following three centuries, about 50,000 women were executed as witches. There were, however, more positive effects. The Thames and other major rivers often froze in cold winters, with “frost fairs” featuring shops, circuses, and other forms of entertainment.

Although the cold receded in the 19th century, 1815 saw the largest eruption in recorded history, when Mount Tambora in Indonesia exploded. In 1816, which was known as the "Year Without a Summer", there was widespread crop failure, famine, persistent rain and heavy snowfall throughout the summer. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein while holed up in Lord Byron's villa at Lake Geneva after the weather made outdoor activities impossible.

So much ash settled in the atmosphere that it took several years to disperse, dimming the sun and causing dramatic sunsets, depicted in paintings by JMW Turner and Caspar David Friedrich. Another large explosion at Krakatoa in 1883 caused similar effects, visible in the vivid red sunsets of William Ashcroft and, it has been suggested, in the red sky in Edvard Munch's famous The Scream.

Dr Stuart Mathieson is a postdoctoral fellow working in Dublin City University school of history and geography