Figure 1: Schematic diagram of the impact of quiescent and explosive volcanism on the Earth’s radiative balance (Fischer et al. 2006). Redrawn after Robock (2000).[fullsize fig]

Pic: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/efischer/volcanoes.html

Eruptions of this size are rare and biologist Michael Rampino and astrophysicist Richard Stothers started to study ancient texts to find more of them.

Stothers who also knew classical languages read the Latin and Greek source texts himself. Their article “Volcanic eruptions in the mediterranian before AD 630” was published in “Journal Of Geophysical Research” 1983.

They noted that four authors of late antiquity mentioned 536 as a year when the sun was powerless or veiled. “We are amazed at bodies casting no shadow at mid day” -Roman official Cassiodorus.

He also mentions how “the sun was blueish” and that it was not a temporary thing like an eclipse. He also says that “the air has thickened into some kind of mixture” and that the fields give no crops. “Neither the natural colour, nor warmth from the celestial bodies can penetrate. As if we saw them through a thin skin”.

This had been going on for a year when he wrote the letter.

Though Cassiodorus doesent mention a volcano Stothers and Rampino cant imagine what else it could have been.

Comparisons with ice drill cores from Greenland, around 540, give or take a decade, there was a layer of sulfate that could be from an eruption.

This has made scientists aware of a possible earlier unknown eruption in 536.

Stothers wrote the article “Mystery cloud of AD 536”.

He says the ash cloud and its consequences for the climate exeeds any others for 3000 years back.

Annual rings on trees shows that the climates in the northern hemisphere from the US to Siberia where unusually cold 536-45.

The first to make a connection to Norse archeology was Danish archeologist Morten Axboe.

The gold hords dug down around this time, like the bracteates of Söderby, Uppland (Sweden) might have been to placate higher powers, or possably to protect them from robbers during troubled times.

Axboe connected this climate to the myth of Fimbulvetr and Bo Gräslund continues on that. “Harsh winter have never been a problem in the north” he writes in ”Fimbulvintern, Ragnarök och klimatkrisen år 536–537 e Kr” i Saga och sed 2007.

“But if there where no crops as summer approached you starved”.

Gylfi is tricked in an illustration fromIcelandic Manuscript, SÁM 66

Early suggestions for interpretations of the stags included connecting them with the four elements, the four seasons or the phases of the moon.

In his influential 1824 work, Finnur Magnússon suggested that the stags represented winds. Based on an interpretation of their names, he took Dáinn (‘The Dead One’) and Dvalinn (‘The Unconscious One’) to be calm winds and Duneyrr and Duraþrór to be heavy winds. The stags biting the leaves of the tree, he interpreted as winds tearing at clouds. The fact that Dáinn and Dvalinn are also dwarf names, he connected with dwarves having control of winds.

Many scholars, following Sophus Bugge, believe that stanzas 33 and 34 of Grímnismál are of a later origin than those surrounding them. Finnur Jónsson surmised that there was originally only one stag which had later been turned into four, probably one on each side.This is consistent with stanza 35 of Grímnismál, which mentions only one hart:

It has been suggested that this original stag is identical with Eikþyrnir, mentioned earlier in Grímnismál.

 Veðrfölnir (Old Norse ”storm pale,” ”wind bleached” or “wind-witherer”) is a hawk sitting between the eyes of an unnamed eagle that is perched on top of the world tree Yggdrasil. Veðrfölnir is sometimes modernly anglicized as Vedrfolnir orVethrfolnir.

The unnamed eagle is attested in both the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, while Veðrfölnir is solely attested in the Prose Edda. In both the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, the squirrel Ratatoskr couriers messages between the unnamed eagle and Nidhöggr, the wyrm that resides below the world tree. Scholars have proposed theories about the implications of the birds

John Lindow points out that Snorri does not say why a hawk should be sitting between the eyes of an eagle or what role it may play. Lindow theorizes that “presumably the hawk is associated with the wisdom of the eagle” and that “perhaps, like Odin’s ravens, it flies off acquiring and bringing back knowledge”.

Veðrfölnir sits atop the eagle with Ratatoskr nearby (upper right) while Odin sacrifices himself to himself upon the tree Yggdrasil (central) in an illustration (1895) by Lorenz Frølich.

Hilda Ellis Davidson says that the notion of an eagle atop a tree and the World Serpent coiled around the roots of the tree has parallels in other cosmologies from Asia, and that Norse cosmology may have been influenced by these Asiatic cosmologies from a northern route. On the other hand, Davidson adds, the Germanic peoples are attested as worshipping their deities in open forest clearings, and that asky god was particularly connected with the oak tree, and therefore “a central tree was a natural symbol for them also”