1918 eruption of Katla
volcanic event in Iceland
Between October and November 1918 a series of jökulhlaups, a type of glacial outburst flood, following an eruption of Katla in Iceland caused significant property damage and disruption in Iceland with local depopulation.
Background
Katla is an active volcano in the south-east of Iceland. It is covered by the Mýrdalsjökull ice cap. Over 300 basaltic eruptions may have occurred in the Holocene. The 1918 eruption was amongst the largest 20th century eruptions in Iceland.
Geology
This was a typical hydromagmatic basaltic eruption below the Mýrdalsjökull ice cap, although explosive silicic eruptions are known from the volcano.
The eruption produced a bulk volume of tephra of up to 1.2 km3 (0.29 cu mi) and eruption cloud height of at least 14 km (8.7 mi). The total dry rock equivalent erupted was up to 0.9 km3 (0.22 cu mi).
Events
Seismic signs of unrest are reported to have started at about 11:30am local time on 12 October 1918 with ripples observed in a bucket of water and at about 1pm an earthquake was felt at Vík í Mýrdal. Observers in the Vestmannaeyjar Islands mention steam from the volcano about an hour before the eruptive column was sighted there.
“1918 eruption of Katla” enters the record as volcanic event in Iceland. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what eruption, Katla and volcanic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“1918 eruption of Katla” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, eruption, Katla and volcanic provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q127220575. Authority coordinates are 63.633, -19.050. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1918.
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This entry incorporates text from “1918 eruption of Katla” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.