Laki Craters (Lakagígar) — volcano
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Laki Craters (Lakagígar)

Lakagígar

  • Elevation812 m
  • 2 min read
  • 64.067° N 18.230° W

Interesting facts

  • The eruption released about six times as much sulphur dioxide as the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo.
  • Weakened monsoons after the eruption brought low Nile floods, and the famine in Egypt in 1784 is thought to have killed about a sixth of its population.
  • In the bitter winter that followed, the Mississippi froze at New Orleans and ice floes were reported in the Gulf of Mexico.
  • The severe winter of 1783–84 delayed congressmen travelling to Annapolis to ratify the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War.
  • Benjamin Franklin suspected an Icelandic volcano behind the strange dry fog of 1783, though he wrongly blamed Hekla.
  • One estimate holds that about 23,000 people in Britain died from breathing the volcanic gases, most of them outdoor workers.
  • The eruption unfolded in ten pulses, each opening with a brief explosive phase followed by months of fire fountaining, and lofted gases to about 15 km.
  • Fluorine poisoning killed roughly 190,000 sheep, 28,000 horses and 11,500 cattle in Iceland.
  • Icelanders call the eruption Skaftáreldar, the Skaftá Fires, after the river whose valley the lava filled.
  • Some historians argue that the failed harvests and harsh weather that followed in France helped fuel the unrest leading to the 1789 revolution.

Why it is worth it

Lakagígar, the Craters of Laki, is a line of some 130 volcanic cones and vents stretching about 25 km across the highlands of southern Iceland, between the ice caps of Mýrdalsjökull and Vatnajökull. Today the row is a quiet landscape of cones and lava fields inside a national park, but in 1783–1784 they produced one of the most devastating eruptions in recorded history, and its effects were felt from Iceland to Egypt, Japan and North America.

The eruption began on 8 June 1783, when a fissure opened through the mountain Laki — a block of older tuff that the crater row cuts in two and that gave the whole site its name. Over eight months, until 7 February 1784, it poured out about 14 cubic kilometres of basalt lava in a series of pulses, with lava fountains estimated at 800 to 1,400 metres high. The lava covered some 600 square kilometres and flowed down the valleys of the Skaftá and Hverfisfljót rivers, burying farms. Far worse were the gases: about 120 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide and some 8 million tonnes of fluorine. In Iceland roughly half of the cattle and horses and about four-fifths of the sheep died of fluorine poisoning, and in the famine that followed, the Móðuharðindin or Mist Hardships, about a fifth of the population perished. On 20 July 1783 the pastor Jón Steingrímsson preached his famous fire sermon in the church at Kirkjubæjarklaustur while the lava advanced; it stopped short of the church at a spot still called Eldmessutangi.

Across Europe a sulphurous haze spread within days, reaching Prague, Berlin, Paris and Britain by late June 1783. Gilbert White described a blood-coloured sun over Hampshire; thousands died, and the following winter was one of the harshest on record on both sides of the Atlantic. Laki belongs to the volcanic system of Grímsvötn, which erupted at the same time under the ice. The craters were protected in 1971 and are part of Vatnajökull National Park; a path climbs Laki itself for a view along the whole crater row.

Getting there

Laki lies in the southern highlands of Iceland, about 33 km north of the village of Kirkjubæjarklaustur in a straight line. The approach is by the mountain road F206 from near Kirkjubæjarklaustur, a 4x4 track with river fords. Keflavík International Airport (KEF) is about 215 km to the west in a straight line and Reykjavík's domestic airport (RKV) about 180 km; Akureyri lies far to the north across the central highlands.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Iceland 41The Most Beautiful Volcanoes in Iceland 7The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders in Iceland 22The Most Beautiful Volcanoes 61The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders 580

From the encyclopaedia

Laki or Lakagígar is a volcanic fissure in the western part of Vatnajökull National Park, Iceland, not far from the volcanic fissure of Eldgjá and the small village of Kirkjubæjarklaustur. The fissure is properly referred to as Lakagígar, while Laki is a mountain that the fissure bisects. Lakagígar is part of a volcanic system centered on the volcano Grímsvötn, including the volcano Þórðarhyrna. It lies between the glaciers of Mýrdalsjökull and Vatnajökull, in an area of fissures that run in a southwest to northeast direction.

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64.06750, -18.23000per Wikidata