When death takes place,
They burn the bodies always in a lake,
The spray whereof is ashes, and its depths
Unfathomable fire.”
Now, either of these can be taken to prove the other. The poetry is consistent, for it agrees, in all essential particulars, with the natural phenomena in this case.
Mount Hekla has a greater celebrity than any other mountain in Iceland, owing to the frequency of its eruptions. All of these, for eight hundred and fifty years, are said to be recorded, and amount to twenty-four in number. They have averaged about three in a century; and, though occurring at irregular intervals, at no time has more than seventy-seven years elapsed from one eruption to another. The following are the periods of
THE ERUPTIONS OF MOUNT HEKLA SINCE THE YEAR 1000.
| Interval between the eruptions. | |||||
| 1. | A. D. | 1004 | |||
| 2. | “ | 1029 | 25 | years. | |
| 3. | “ | 1105 | 76 | “ | |
| 4. | “ | 1113 | 8 | “ | |
| 5. | “ | 1157 | 44 | “ | |
| 6. | “ | 1206 | 49 | “ | |
| 7. | “ | 1222 | 16 | “ | |
| 8. | “ | 1294 | 72 | “ | |
| 9. | “ | 1300 | 6 | “ | |
| 10. | “ | 1340 | 40 | “ | |
| 11. | “ | 1374 | 34 | “ | |
| 12. | “ | 1390 | 16 | “ | |
| 13. | “ | 1436 | 46 | “ | |
| 14. | “ | 1510 | 74 | “ | |
| 15. | “ | 1554 | 44 | “ | |
| 16. | “ | 1583 | 29 | “ | |
| 17. | “ | 1619 | 36 | “ | |
| 18. | “ | 1625 | 6 | “ | |
| 19. | “ | 1636 | 11 | “ | |
| 20. | “ | 1693 | 57 | “ | |
| 21. | “ | 1728 | 35 | “ | |
| 22. | “ | 1754 | 26 | “ | |
| 23. | “ | 1766–68 | 12 | “ | |
| 24. | “ | 1845,46 | 77 | “ | |
According to the Icelandic records, the surface of the land in the vicinity of Mount Hekla has been entirely changed by the eruptions. Formerly, there were beautiful farms on every side, and the country was thickly settled close up to the base of the mountain. The successive eruptions or inundations of lava have covered the land for many miles around, with a charred and blackened mass.