1783 Volcano fun.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Hello, long time no post (it's so slow these days on a non-Intel Mac!). Dunno if this news has travelled worldwide, but European airspace is currently unusable because of the dust cloud from an Icelandic volcano. If the eruption goes on much longer it's going to cause imported food shortages here and severe hardship for - for example - African farmers who depend on air freight to the European market. Hundreds of skeletons from a medieval mass grave were recently dug up near my friend's workplace in Spitalfields, London, dead from starvation after a volcano caused failed harvests, and I heard discussion of the 1783 eruption today, and found this in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/15/iceland-volcano-weather-french-revolution

Comments

[maelipstick.livejournal.com]

There used to be some grafitti near where I grew up: "summer's here - let's riot"

Ah ha ha. That's true of London. I seem to remember that grafitti, is it in Notting Hill?

I think generally people were more concerned wsimply with survival in winter - keeping warm and fed during short winter days.

True. I was going to make that point - that cold and hunger can make people more apathetic. The Russian Revolution rather scuppers that theory though, March and November must be rubbish times to hang around on the streets of St Petersburg.

[(Anonymous)]

There was a comment on QI (BBC2) that in some areas medieval French rural peasants would almost 'hibernate' like bears to conserve energy. There was a teacher interviewed on Radio 4 last week about the effects of having a power station built in the area (one of the Southern English coasts, I think) recalling that new people moved into the village to work in it, including Scots, and that when their children came to do P.E. in winter, it turned out they had been sewn into their underclothes in the medieval way!

St Petersburg had tenement blocks which were very overcrowded (presuming Dostoevsky's painting a true picture) so I could imagine men might hang around on streets or in pubs, keeping the cold out with vodka, and there'd have been more artificial lighting by that time, I suppose.

[maelipstick.livejournal.com]

medieval French rural peasants would almost 'hibernate' like bears to conserve energy.

Absolutely, makes sense. Around here where people were still practicing transhumance in the 18th century, upland farmers would get their flocks down and expect to get snowed in for a couple of weeks, so everyone just huddled tight. Not much revolutionary potential there.

St Petersburg had tenement blocks which were very overcrowded (presuming Dostoevsky's painting a true picture) so I could imagine men might hang around on streets or in pubs,

Wasn't it the women who kicked off the February revolution?