Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Vesuvius in the
prehistoric period and
Vesuvius in the classical
period, shown in a late
19th-century lithograph.
Image not available - no digital rights
region; coming earthquakes, of course, are not. Those few literate
witnesses of volcanoes in action have left patchy but colourful
evidence. The twelfth-century monk Benedeit, who told the
story of St Brendan's voyage six hundred years earlier, described
Hekla erupting: this may have been the 1104 eruption. The
monk sees Iceland as
a smoky and foggy land, stinking worse than carrion . . .
throws fire and flames, blazing beams and scrap iron, pitch
and sulphur up to the clouds, then everything falls back
into the abyss . . . Judas was imprisoned there.6
