Island on Fire: The extraordinary story of Laki, the volcano that turned eighteenth-century Europe dark

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Though the 1970s rediscovery of Samuel Sharpe came at the time of Jamaica’s relations with Castro and the US attempts to tamper with national elections, there were also other powerful cultural forces at work… The government declared Samuel Sharpe a National Hero on October 1, 1975, an honor that unleashed a number of others. Sharpe’s story was inserted into the public school curriculum all over the island. His face went on the paper currency.” It ends by returning to Heimaey where the book originally started and how the parish priest - who spoke the famous 'fire sermon' that supposedly stopped the lava flow not far from the church where he was preaching - was still being recognized and revered. As Advent and Christmas is a time for remembering the hope that such an arrival occasioned, it also lends itself to reflecting on others who have continued to spread that hope of liberation through the way they have lived their lives collectively with others. Zoellner describes the story of Samuel Sharpe becoming recognized as one of Jamaica’s seven national heroes: This story is told some of you point of Julia who is passed away recently and it's following her grieving husband best friend Renee and her neighbor around the island and making sure that everyone is ok after she is gone. As she tells the story we get many stories about Fire island and how people fall in love, get divorced and heal.

While the musings of a woman speaking from beyond the grave may not strike you as beach read material, the writing has a wistful quality that doesn’t come across as morbid or flippant.

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It is pretty commonly known that Iceland is where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge breaks the surface and that it is a very volcanically active country. In fact, one of its numerous volcanoes is erupting even as I write this review. Most of the world is familiar with the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajokull which disrupted aviation across the world for a week. There are two different versions of this film: a 96-minute Hong Kong version and a 125-minute Taiwan version which focuses more on character development and plot detail.

This book is more an examination of volcanoes and their impact on humans with a focus on the Laki explosion for 10 months in 1783/84. The impact on the climate, especially in Europe, seems to not have been clearly understood at the time. The volcano blew so much sulfur into the atmosphere the global temperature dropped by 1 degree celsius for the year. It has been theorized that the changing climate in France in the mid-1780s helped bring about the French Revolution at the end of the decade. The impact is is difficult to measure and therefore dismissed. Island on Fire: The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Changed the World by Alexandra Witze and Jeff Kanipe is the story of Laki, the massive Icelandic volcano whose 1783 eruption plunged Europe - and possibly the wider world - into the dark (and subsequently the cold). In Iceland they died of the direct of effects of a poisoned environment; in western Europe of the prolonged effects of breathing in an unrelenting poisonous fog; further afield - as far as the Nile - of the effects of climate change wrought by this massive explosion.

Show Notes

Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire by Tom Zoellner recounts Samuel Sharpe’s rebellion in Jamaica and how it led to the abolishment of slavery. The book delves into the structure of Jamaica’s system of slavery and the experiences of the enslaved. There’s an in-depth explanation of Jamaican society with regard to culture but there’s also the island’s economics. I find that as I read more history books, I’m taking a deeper interest in the economic history of different crops and products as well as explorations of how and why certain decisions were made. Island on Fire is an engrossing read that I highly recommend for the light it sheds on the early economic history of Jamaica. Media YouTube Video And while Rosen does explore death and grief here, it is done so tenderly and with a lightheartedness that often brings a smile and laughter to the reader. In other words, it's a book about death that's not overly sad. Instead it's hopeful - even life-affirming! The book jumps around quite a bit from the science of volcanos to the effects on Iceland folk when Laki erupts to what it did to people outside of Iceland. Laki had far ranging consequences and you learn all about them. They also touch on further interesting points such as: did J.W. Turner and Edward Munch paint red skylines because there was so much volcanic particulate in the air at those times? How do you divert a bajillion tons of angry lava away from your tiny Icelandic fishing village, both in the 18th century and in 1973? Ancient Danish/Icelandic warrior kings with weird bone structure--early victims of fluorine poisoning?