What archaeologists have long identified as the ‘Migration Period’, from the fifth to mid-sixth centuries, included protracted crises with far-reaching effects. Their impact was further accelerated by a terrifying climate disaster that no one could have foreseen, causing mass mortality in the North. The deeper origins of Viking-Age Scandinavia can be found in these social and political upheavals. The recovery from a half-century of trauma was the beginning of something different, a new order of warlords and their retinues, of petty kingdoms ruled from great halls—and the whole culture of mythologised, ritual power that supported them—that would ultimately set the stage for the Viking phenomenon.
The Ilopango eruption was among the ten largest on earth over the past seven thousand years, and remember, this was preceded by the 536 volcano, so far unlocated. New research also suggests these may have been followed by a third major eruption, in 547. The effects were devastating, as the ejecta and sulphur dioxide aerosols reached the lower stratosphere and began to circle the globe. The sun’s light was blocked in a hazy mist that allowed no heat to penetrate,
Estimates of the population loss across Scandinavia rise as high as 50 percent—a number considered reasonable by both volcanologists and archaeologists