A Wonderful Volcano - Europe

A volcano with an unpronounceable name may not make you think of Iceland every time you see ash. But named after a geomorphologic phenomenon, Iceland, unsurprisingly, decided that instead of paying the $5 million-plus it owes the UK and the Netherlands, it would rather export another geomorphologic variant and say, "Kiss my ash." Not just scatter the ashes of its economy over Europe; even as a wobbly EU economy cries in despair, "We said, 'Send cash, not ash!'"

The two quotes are a couple of popular exercises of Twitter wit at the queues, cancellations and apocalyptic sense of havoc the ash has inflicted on Europe. But it's filmmaker, writer, New York Times "Opinionator" Errol Morris (The Fog of War, Standard Operating Procedure, Gates of Heaven, etc) who, tweeting on Sunday, perhaps put Eyjafjallajökull in essential and epic perspective: "The volcano is the volcano's punishment for a lack of volcano worship. (I feel less threatened because I've been praying to the volcano.)"
No, they hadn't been praying to the volcano. Not those suffering its judgment. And after such ash, what forgiveness?
There's a sense of apocalypse on the ground, where the stranded millions await deliverance; they cannot see the plume and ash high up competing for airspace. (Despite some take-offs in northern Europe on Tuesday, a fresh ash cloud still jeopardises British airspace.) It is in unforeseen but temporarily intractable situations such as this that wisdom dawns on the post-industrial, uber-technological soul: that nature is not one of the arbiters of where we lastingly live, work and procreate; it is the sole arbiter.
If this isn't the apocalypse yet, it's possibly a mere regress in EU economic recovery. If it is, we're best advised to use up the days left on the significances of ash (and fog and mist), sacred and profane. For the symbolic import of ash simultaneously straddles the holiness of sacrificial ascent through cleansing and the busting of all dreams. Under the ash cloud, some may morbidly feel it marks Europe's ultimate failure to recast and remake itself — despite its best efforts as a continent of nanny states or as the superego over the world's id. There is a "valley of ashes" where all Gatsbian dreams die, but it's not necessarily the ash heap of
civilisation.
Volcanic ash, in particular, is known to aggravate asthma and lung disorders. Although some of the ash from Iceland has hit the ground in Scotland, there isn't a high possibility of health hazards, given the relatively small eruption. The haplessness of millions is the result of Eyjafjallajökull affecting an extremely busy airspace and the danger of clogging and damaging jet engines that experts believe it poses (Something the loss-making airlines claim EU governments are exaggerating.). The fine ash is reaching the heights and high winds of big aircraft because of the size and strength of the gigantic steam plumes rising from the glacial ice that's melting on contact with the molten rock and magma.
However, volcanic ash has changed history. For Iceland itself, its worst natural disaster was the Laki eruption of June 1783 that killed a fifth of its then population of 50,000 and thousands in Europe, including 20,000 in the British Isles. Icelanders, for whom geology today is compulsory study in school itself, died of starvation as the livestock and crops died from the environmental damage caused by the "apocalyptic fog" that travelled to cover north Europe. After Laki, they supposedly stopped dancing — an explanation given for the sudden loss of Iceland's traditional dances.
The one eruption in the last millennium to beat Laki was Tambora in 1815 — the biggest in recorded history — when the volcanic ash killed about 10,000 people as it spread out on the ground, although Krakatoa (1883) has captured the popular imagination because it was the first major one in the age of modern communications. Together, Tambora and Mount Pinatubo (1991) twice helped push back global warming by the chill produced from their ash clouds. And, it is said that without Tambora's volcanic cloud, Mary Shelley wouldn't have written Frankenstein, since the unnatural chill had confined the Shelleys indoors, at Byron's Vila Diodati on Lake Geneva.
A white plume, geologists say, doesn't contain ash. A coloured — brown or grey — one does. The volcanic deity usually displays a cruel hand but a soft heart, with its severest punishment meted out in the immediate aftermath of the eruption. If airports are fully operational by Thursday, the stranded, no longer irreverent, would glimpse their first instalments of deliverance through the yellow fog of their dawn and dusk. After the ash, there's always forgiveness.