The Laki fissure in Iceland erupted for eight months from June 1783, releasing a sulphur cloud that killed about 23,000 people in Britain alone. How much of Iceland's own population died in the subsequent famine?
Approximately 10,000 of Iceland's roughly 49,000 inhabitants died — a 21% population reduction in a single year, the worst proportional natural-disaster mortality of any European country in the post-medieval period. The cause was famine, not direct gas exposure: sulphate fallout on Icelandic pasture killed 80% of the sheep, 50% of the cattle, and 50% of the horses, collapsing the island's agricultural economy. The Danish Crown, which administered Iceland, briefly considered evacuating the surviving population to Jutland.
Read the full story →In June 1783 a 27-kilometre fissure opened in southern Iceland and erupted for eight months. It killed about a fifth of Iceland's population. The sulphur cloud killed an estimated 23,000 in England. The crop failures it caused across Europe fed directly into the French Revolution of 1789.
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