Volcanos Part 1: Frankenstein
(AKA the influence of volcanic eruptions)
Volcanic eruptions have had many pop-culture influences over the years including influencing art, literature, and even music. We are going to look at three notable instances. These include Mary Shelley's Frankenstein published in 1818, Edvard Munch's painting The Scream from 1893, and Antonio Stradivari violins of the 1600's and 1700's.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus (1818)
On April 5th of 1815, the Indonesian volcano, Mount Tambora began to erupt. While the eruption was huge on any scale, killing an estimated 10,000 people in proximity to the mountain, and many more beyond, the amount of material that was erupted managed to encircle the globe, blocked out the sun, and created the "year without a summer" in 1816.
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| Location of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. Image courtesy of the Global Volcanism Program. |
Mount Tambora is a stratovolcano located on Sumbawa Island within Indonesia. The April eruption, which ended up lasting for months, produced pyroclastic flows that reached the seas on all sides of the peninsula. The total amount of material erupted eventually exceeded 150 cubic km of tephra (gasses, dust, and rocks that make up the volcanic material). On the volcano itself, after the eruption the top of the volcano collapsed into a caldera 6 km wide and 1250 meters deep.
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| The Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) scale. Image courtesy of the USGS. |
Volcanic eruptions are ranked in size by a VEI scale, "Volcanic Explosivity Index", with this eruption ranking a 7, the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. While there is evidence of larger eruptions in the geological record, there are none that have been witnessed in the last few thousand years. This eruption was so loud, that it was heard over 1200 miles (1930 km) away.
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| Map of temperature anomalies in Celsius across Europe during the summer of 1816 as compared to 1971-2000 climate normals. Image courtesy of UCAR Center for Science Education. |
The eruption was so large that it was able to inject a cloud the size of Australia of aerosolized volcanic debris into the atmosphere, blocking solar radiation and absorbing heat, producing a drop in global temperatures from 2 to 7 degrees F. This caused snow falls in summer and frosts that killed off crops, leading to an Irish famine, and locked people indoors for months. On July 4th, 1816, John Quincy Adams laments that he was confined to his house in London all day due to freezing rain showers and thunder.
Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World
Gillen D'Arcy Wood, in his book Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World, laid out how this eruption influenced events that extend far into the 20th century. One such instance is that because of the terrible weather during the summer of 1816, Mary Shelley was locked indoors at the villa of Lord Byron on Lake Geneva, Switzerland. With her, was her husband, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. Because of the lack of things to do, and the gloomy atmosphere outside, Lord Byron proposed a contest. Who could write the scariest ghost story. At the end of the contest, Mary, only 18 at the time, had constructed what is considered to be one of the greatest works of Gothic horror. And much to the surprise of no one, didn't win the competition, with Byron giving the victory to Percy, since Mary's work was considered "too philosophical".
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| Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World |
References
Wood, Gillen D’Arcy. Tambora: the eruption that changed the world. Princeton University Press, 2026.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, 1818
