Nice new clip by Bon Iver, shot in Iceland. The whole little-boy-wearing-Nordic-sweaters thing is a bit too angelic and over the top for my tastes (and Bon Iver has obviously been listening to and watching Sigur Rós clips very closely); but those landscapes are real, of course, and they look magnificent. Decent song, too.
Check out this impressive video of the Grimsvötn volcano on Iceland erupting, shot from a helicopter.
The story of the creator:
Haven’t really had time to watch the video. Volcano season keeps me pretty busy. I cut it on board the helicopter on the way back from the eruption. Threw some music from the fantastic composer Veigar Margeirsson (veigar.com) on it and posted it here.
It took us 90 minutes to fly to Grimsvotn with a strong wind against us. The eruption looked magnificent in the sunset. Once we landed 5 miles away from the crater the cold glacier air hit us like a truck. We tried to work outside but I only lasted for a couple of minutes. Pilot Reynir Petursson also didn’t want to stay on the ground for too long since it was very windy and the ash fall was unpredictable. The light was also disappearing and he needs visual reference which is difficult on a white glacier. Once we got off the ground again we had to stay low because there were so many lightnings all around the eruption. Getting hit by a lightning in that strong wind, extreme frost and next to a live volcano was not desirable. We made it back to Reykjavik at 2am. Now the airspace has been closed in a 20 nautical miles radius because of ash.
A nice timelapse video of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, with a track from (former) Sigur Rós frontman Jónsi:
Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull – May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.
Unfortunately I can’t put them on the site, but check them out at The Telegraph.
Edit: These pictures from The Boston Globe are also absolutely stunning!
The eruption of the Icelandic volcano with the unspeakable name causes a lot of problems for a lot of people, and costs a lot of money, obviously. Yesterday I went out into nature, though, on a beautiful spring day, and enjoyed the totally blue, cloudless, trailless, planeless sky. Like how the sky must have been in the nineteenth century. What’s more, the last time an Icelandic volcano this size erupted (in 1783) it killed a quarter of the Icelandic population, caused smokey fog all over Europe, and led to famines, which leads The Guardian to say that it might have contributed to the French Revolution. So yeah…
Just over 200 years ago an Icelandic volcano erupted with catastrophic consequences for weather, agriculture and transport across the northern hemisphere – and helped trigger the French revolution.
The Laki volcanic fissure in southern Iceland erupted over an eight-month period from 8 June 1783 to February 1784, spewing lava and poisonous gases that devastated the island’s agriculture, killing much of the livestock. It is estimated that perhaps a quarter of Iceland’s population died through the ensuing famine.
(…)
Ships moored up in many ports, effectively fogbound. Crops were affected as the fall-out from the continuing eruption coincided with an abnormally hot summer. A clergyman, the Rev Sir John Cullum, wrote to the Royal Society that barley crops “became brown and withered … as did the leaves of the oats; the rye had the appearance of being mildewed”.
The British naturalist Gilbert White described that summer in his classic Natural History of Selborne as “an amazing and portentous one … the peculiar haze, or smokey fog, that prevailed for many weeks in this island, and in every part of Europe, and even beyond its limits, was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike anything known within the memory of man.
“The sun, at noon, looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured ferruginous light on the ground, and floors of rooms; but was particularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and setting. At the same time the heat was so intense that butchers’ meat could hardly be eaten on the day after it was killed; and the flies swarmed so in the lanes and hedges that they rendered the horses half frantic … the country people began to look with a superstitious awe, at the red, louring aspect of the sun.”
Across the Atlantic, Benjamin Franklin wrote of “a constant fog over all Europe, and a great part of North America”.
The disruption to weather patterns meant the ensuing winter was unusually harsh, with consequent spring flooding claiming more lives. In America the Mississippi reportedly froze at New Orleans.
The eruption is now thought to have disrupted the Asian monsoon cycle, prompting famine in Egypt. Environmental historians have also pointed to the disruption caused to the economies of northern Europe, where food poverty was a major factor in the build-up to the French revolution of 1789.
The ash clouds which are currently causing the closing down of European airspace:
Via Huffpost.
These clouds can be devastating for jet engines, but are supposed to be harmless for individuals, and sunset will be extraordinarily colorful!
Time to annex some countries. After all, if you can’t pay your debt, you become bankrupt and all your assets go to your creditors.
