Áhrif Skaftárelda á mannfall - þverfræðileg rannsókn

Claudia Wieners, dósent við Sjávar- og lofthjúpsrannsóknarstofnun (Instituut voor Marien en Atmosferisch onderzoek) Utrecht-háskóla og Guðmundur Hálfdanarson, prófessor í sagnfræði við Háskóla Íslands, kynna niðurstöður þverfræðilegrar rannsóknar á áhrifum Skaftárelda á mannfall á Íslandi.

Fyrirlesturinn veður haldinn í stofu 007 í Veröld, fimmtudaginn 29. ágúst kl. 16:00. 

Útdráttur á ensku

The 1783 Laki eruption was followed by an almost 20% population loss, traditionally attributed to a famine (caused by fluorine poisoning of livestock) and various diseases. From the 1970s, hypotheses were formed that fluorine poisoning might have contributed to human mortality in Iceland, and air pollution might have caused excess deaths both in Iceland and Europe. These hypotheses were taken up with enthusiasm by popular science sources, including Wikipedia entries for “Laki” and the book Island on Fire (Witze and Kanipe). However, little effort has been done to scrutinise these ideas, especially as far as mortality in Iceland is concerned. In our recent paper, we confront the “fatal pollution” hypotheses with evidence ranging from contemporary Icelandic records, mostly parish registries, to climate model simulations and a 1937 report on animal experiments with fluorine poisoning. We conclude that the original interpretation of the 1784-85 excess mortality in Iceland is correct; it was mostly the result of famine, whereas the evidence for significant direct contributions from pollution to human mortality is weak.