More frequent, and foregone her usual rest.
Is it a time to wrangle, when the props
And pillars of our planet seem to fail,
And Nature, with a dim and sickly eye,
To wait the close of all?”
A.D. 1784, the year after the outbreak of Skaptár, which left the whole island in mourning, was almost as memorable for earthquakes, not only in Iceland, but in many parts of the world widely separated from each other, as 1755 had been in connection with the eruption of Kötlugjá.
Most of the Icelandic mountains are volcanic, and, from the native history, we learn the frequency with which they have manifested this character. Let us glance at the following brief sketch of their
VOLCANIC HISTORY,
chiefly compiled by the author of “Iceland, Greenland, and the Faröe Islands.”
Of these mountains, this writer says, “most of them seem now to be in the state of intermittent activity, in which more or less violent paroxysms occur at intervals of longer or shorter duration; and, but for the uncertainty of these periods, we might consider some as in a state of complete repose. These alternations of movement and rest seem common to the separate members and to the whole system; there being many years in which the island remains undisturbed, whilst at other epochs it appears as if entirely devoted to the fury of contending elements. The most terrible of the volcanoes known in ancient times were Hekla, Oræfa-Jökul, and the Kötlugjá; to which have recently[[36]] been added Krabla, Leirhnukr, and Skaptáfells, which commenced only in the 18th century. The earliest record of such an occurrence is that of Eldborg,[[37]] in the western part of the island, said to have happened in the 9th or 10th century. This was followed by the eruption from the mountains in Guldbringu syssel in the year 1000, at the time when the althing was deliberating as to the reception of the Christian religion. In the 11th century Hekla appeared in a state of violent commotion, which extending, in the middle of the 12th, to many others, devastated the land from north to south, and was accompanied by destructive earthquakes. In the beginning and at a later period of the 13th century, the south-western quarter was particularly excited; whilst in the middle of the succeeding one, the island was desolated by the most terrible convulsions, concluding in 1391 with a violent earthquake, felt over the whole country. From this date till the beginning of the 16th, the volcanoes were comparatively quiet; but at that period, and in the end of the century, they raged both in the south and the north. The 17th was again an interval of repose, in which only the southern ones were active; but the eighteenth age proved that their energies had undergone no diminution, by eruptions even more violent than those of the fourteenth. Between 1720 and 1730 the same mountains were in incessant action, accompanied by earthquakes; whilst in the north, Krabla and Leirhnukr began their devastations. In the years 1753 and 1755 the Skeidará and Kötlugjá Jökuls poured out every variety of volcanic matter. In 1766 Hekla again commenced, and the destructive outbreak of the Skaptár in 1783 closed these frightful scenes. From that time till 1821, with the exception of some slight agitations, and probably a few inconsiderable eruptions in the desert part of the country, no displays of volcanic action occurred.”