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Abbreviation from the GIMLI SAGA, written by Thorsteinn Th. Thorsteinsson. Translation by Miss Sigurbjörg Stefannsson. "The winter of 1874 (in Iceland) was one of the severest of the century with heavy snows and frosts, bays frozen over and polar ice lying offshore till early summer. Sheep had to be killed for lack of fodder. Polar bears came on shore in the north and east, but most of them were killed. There were snows even in summer, and in early September so violent a gale lasting a week or more that ships were torn from their moorings, sheep lost, hay blown away and houses destroyed. The following year, 1875, was one of the mildest of the century, but earthquakes and eruptions that had occurred intermittently in preceding years came to a climax with a tremendous eruption of Mount Askja and the neighbouring Dyngja Mountains. Tremendous volumes of smoke gushed up from Mount Askja, and a dreadful darkness spread wherever the ashes fell over communities stricken by the disaster. By noon it was as dark as a windowless house while the volcanic ash fell. Where it was densest it averaged three inches deep, and in a few places four to eight inches and glowing hot, with some lumps the size of a man´s fist. Such terrors of nature, combined with many other hardships, caused many people to leave Iceland. . . . . Travel agents had come from Canada and the U.S. inviting settlers. Since North America had been discovered by Leif Ericsson, the thought of it had been familiar to the Iceland people. The emigrants went both North and South America, setting up colonies in Brazil and various parts of the U.S. and Canada."

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