Historic Activity
Sixteen eruptions have been recorded for Katla since 930. The last major eruption started on 12 October 1918 and lasted for 24 days. It was likely a VEI5 level eruption. The 1918 eruption resulted in extending the southern coast by 5 km due to laharic flood deposits. Its present dormancy is among the longest in known history.
Major eruptions occurred in :
|
|
Most of these eruptions resulted in glacial floods. The severe fissure eruption in 934 was one of the largest lava eruptions in the past 10,000 years. Before the Hringvegur (Iceland's Ring Road) was constructed in 1974, people feared traversing the plains in front of the volcano because of the frequent jökulhlaup (or glacier bursts) and the deep river crossings. Especially dangerous was the glacier outburst that followed the eruption of 1918.
Read more about this topic: Katla Volcano
Famous quotes containing the words historic and/or activity:
“Never is a historic deed already completed when it is done but always only when it is handed down to posterity. What we call “history” by no means represents the sum total of all significant deeds.... World history ... only comprises that tiny lighted sector which chanced to be placed in the spotlight by poetic or scholarly depictions.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“Criticism is infested with the cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit to imitate the sayers.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)