The Year Without Summer — Famine Ghosts of 1784

Skaftá River Valley, South Iceland

The Laki eruption of 1783–84 killed 9,000 Icelanders — a quarter of the population. The ghost tradition from the famine years describes entire families seen continuing to work farms that had been empty since their deaths.

The Laki fissure eruption that began on June 8th, 1783 was one of the largest volcanic events in recorded human history. For eight months, the fissure poured out lava and, more destructively, vast quantities of fluorine-laced volcanic haze — the Móðuharðindin, the Haze Famine. The haze poisoned pasture across Iceland. Livestock died first: three-quarters of all horses and cattle were dead by autumn. The following winter and spring, with the livestock gone, the human famine began. By 1786, approximately 9,000 Icelanders had died — roughly a quarter of the entire population. The ghost tradition from the Skaftá River Valley — the area immediately adjacent to the Laki fissure — is specific and consistent. In the years following the famine, farms that had been abandoned when their families died were reported by neighbouring households to still be occupied: smoke from chimneys where no fire had been lit, figures seen moving between the farm buildings, the sound of work continuing — the rhythmic thud of churning, the sound of animals that were no longer there. This class of ghost — the dead continuing their work — is understood in Icelandic tradition as a sign that the death was sudden and unresolved. The famine dead had not prepared for death. They continued. The ghost reports from this area persisted for approximately fifty years before fading. The farms were re-occupied by new settlers and the old sounds stopped when living routines replaced the ghost routines.