Abstract This paper explores present understanding of the possible impacts that volcanic eruptions in Iceland might have had upon the environments and traditional farming systems of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, before ‘the Clearances’ of the late 18th and 19th centuries AD . It reconstructs both the nature of the impacts and the character of the risks that might have been faced by subsistence communities within the historical period from such Icelandic volcanic eruptions, and as such serves to redirect a research emphasis that has previously been principally focused upon the European Bronze Age. The study also emphasizes that it is inadequate to envisage the impacts from volcanic aerosols as threats to the community to be understood solely along a continuum of environmental hazards. For example, in the historical period before the Clearances, the wider social, political and economic contexts of subsistence economies affected can be shown to have raised or lowered the thresholds at which environmental risks became real or were turned into subsistence crises. In times past, as now, the capacity of people to cope with such environmental vicissitudes would have varied according to a complex of pre-disposing factors, their recent experiences, attitudes and perceptions, political and social relationships, health and well-being (especially their susceptibility to respiratory problems), economy, education and memory, and general inventiveness and resilience. Unlike much earlier research, which focused upon the European Late Bronze Age and emphasized global climatic change and its regional-scale consequences, this account of more recent times emphasizes the small scale, the importance of local pre-disposition and contingency, and hence the likely patchiness and indeterminacy of consequences on the ground of distant volcanic eruptions. The paper concludes that in the historical past, for a variety of environmental, agricultural, social and political reasons, some communities in the Highlands and Islands would have already been typically at risk of a subsistence crisis one year in every four or five. Hence a particular group of people could have been at notable further risk if a significant quantity of volcanically derived noxious and toxic materials had fallen upon them. As a result, for both habitats and human populations in historical times, the consequences of an Icelandic volcanic eruption are likely to have varied from place to place and from time to time. This analysis also suggests that it is difficult to envisage that any postulated region-wide abandonment of settlement in the British Isles might be attributable, directly or indirectly, to the distal impacts of volcanic eruptions in Iceland.

Abstract This paper presents documentary evidence suggesting that the most recent volcanic activity in Germany may have occurred just over 200 years ago, rather than the 11 000 years held currently (Ulmener Maar, West Eifel). Several descriptions recounted here suggest that a mountain in Germany, the Gleichberg, may have erupted in the early summer of 1783. The reports of the volcanic event are laden with detail that would tempt the reader to accept them as genuine descriptions of an eruption, had the event been located in an historically active volcanic region. However, there are several reasons to suggest that the report of the Gleichberg eruption was a complex hoax, written to exploit the fear and panic generated by the dry fog present over much of Europe at the same time, which had its origins in the Laki fissure eruption. Geologically, the Gleichberg forms part of the Grabfeld, and is of Tertiary volcanic origin. There are no compelling geological reasons to suggest that this area has been tectonically active in recent times. The convincing detail of the report is used to illustrate the pitfalls waiting for geologists, historians and archaeologists who are using historical documents and folklore to explore the impact of volcanic eruptions upon ancient peoples and environments; time may lend weight to documents and folklore, which in reality may deserve none.