The Year 536

I have not had much time to write blog articles lately due to family concerns, though I have made progress on the second book of the Varangian Chronicles and with only about sixty more pages to go, there is an end in sight. With winter battering the area where I live, and snow and ice making the roads all but impassable, one thinks of the year of 536 and the darkness that settled over Europe for at least three years. George R. R. Martin writes of winters that last years in his Song of Ice and Fire series. In reality, there is an historical basis for just such a winter.

There is indication that a volcanic eruption from a super volcano that occurred in the tropics (possibly in El Salvador) caused this devastation. Recent studies from Harvard are looking into the eruption of a super volcano in Iceland early that year as well. Two other eruptions in Iceland were reported to have occurred in 540 and 547. Volcanic ash and sulfuric particles called aerosols released into the the atmosphere resulted in eighteen months of virtually no sunlight. Crops failed, it grew abnormally cold and may even have led to the events a few years later that caused Justinian’s Plague. The effects of the plague in 541 were felt as far west as Ireland, a country already staggering under the effects of the volcanic eruption. The Byzantine historian Procopious writes of the time:

It came about that a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is accustomed to shed. And from this time when this thing happened men were free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing leading to death. And it was the time when Justinian was in the tenth year of his reign.

The early Germanic people believed that Fimbulvetr or in English Fimblewinter (a harsh winter) would occur prior to Ragnarok which would herald three years of no summer. Indeed, the Irish Annals of Innisfallen mention a time “without bread” from the years 536 to 539. Europe was very nearly brought ti its knees by this catastrophe and was n no shape to face the near annihilation of the known world a few years later when Justinian’s Plague broke out, killing an estimayed fifty million people. It was was supposed to have broken out in Constantinople, brought on grain ships from Egypt. Furthermore, it has been speculated that the eruption may have been responsible for the plague as the changing climate drove the rodents carrying the Yersinia pestis laden fleas into contact with the rats that would ultimately carry them to the grain ships bound for Constantinople.

There is ample archaeological and historical evidence to show a near agricultural and societal collapse on a massive scale in Northern Europe. Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica show residue from sulfuric deposits indicating a volcanic eruption (of not several) of great magnitude. Tree ring dating shows drastically slowed growth in trees of this time. Scientific data extracted from tree rings in Scandinavia and Ireland and historic sources that mention a “failure of bread” have given us a bleak picture of the year 536.

The hardship during these years forced the Great Migration which saw Germanic tribes making their way westward and doubtlessly effected the Germanic invasion of England. It is simple logic that peole began to move about hoping to survive as their crops failed and their livestock and children died or failed to thrive. Rome had already pulled out of Britain, looking to secure its home defense as the Goths and Visigoths moved in. Britain was ripe for the taking though certainly faring no better than anywhere else in Europe.

The Völuspá (Prophesy of the Volva), a poem from the Norse Poetic Edda tells us:

The sun turns black, | earth sinks in the sea,
The hot stars down | from heaven are whirled;
Fierce grows the steam | and the life-feeding flame,
Till fire leaps high | about heaven itself.

In fact it has several references to the long darkness that was to come to Europe:

The giantess old | in Ironwood sat,
In the east, and bore | the brood of Fenrir;
Among these one | in monster’s guise
Was soon to steal | the sun from the sky.

There feeds he full | on the flesh of the dead,
And the home of the gods | he reddens with gore;
Dark grows the sun, | and in summer soon
Come mighty storms: | would you know yet more?

It goes on to speak of the battle of Ragnarok

Brothers will fight
and kill each other,
sisters’ children
will defile kinship.
It is harsh in the world,
whoredom rife
—an axe age, a sword age
—shields are riven—
a wind age, a wolf age—
before the world goes headlong.
No man will have
mercy on another.

History tells us of wars and raids initiated by such people as the Avars and and the Lombards as well as the Huns during this period. It truly was a “wolf-age”. Was Ragnarok based on an actual event that had already occurred and not some far off event like the biblical myth of Armageddon?

Perhaps the most startling thing to come out of all of this was how it effected the mostly Germanic languages spoken in Europe. The proto-Norse language died about this time, giving way to an early form of Old Norse. Runic inscriptions release clues that tell us language was developing so rapidly at tis time that a younger generation to survive the near annihilation of Europeans at this time would have spoken a different language than their grandparents! The crisis caused a startling shift in demographics. With this shift, this was quite possibly caused the Elder Futhark runes to gave way to the Younger Futhark with far fewer runes, indicating much knowledge had been lost. There was no older generation to pass down such knowledge. We may never know the full scale of such an event and how it effected our ancestors and to what effect this may have had even on us in the present day. One thing is for certain, climate change is nothing new, happening again and again in cyclical fashion. Scientists tell us that super volcanoes like Yellowstone are overdue for eruption. How we would fare again in the face of such a disaster, we can only speculate.