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Frikirkjan

Eldmessa - The Mass of Fire
a concert describing the emotional hazards of life …
Performance and music by :
A grand mixed choir
Gunnar Gunnarsson - Church Organ
Daniele Principato - guitar , samples and electronics
Claudio Vignali - Grand Piano
Arne Hiorth - trumpets and electronics
Maren Eikli Hiorth – narrator and vocal solo
Eldmessa – based on a true story :
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 perhapsa quarter of Iceland's population died through the ensuing famine.
Then, as now, there were more wide-ranging impacts. In Norway, the Netherlands, the British Isles, France,
Germany, Italy, Spain, in North America and even Egypt, the Laki eruption had its consequences, as the haze of dust
and sulphur particles thrown up by the volcano was carried over much of the northern hemisphere.
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 British naturalist Gilbert White described that summer in his classic Natural History of Selborne:
"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." -
Reverend Jón Steingrímsson became a legendary figure among Icelanders for his actions during and after the
eruption. He was believed to have performed a miracle one fateful Sunday in July 1783. On that day a branch from
the lava flow threatened to destroy his church. Reverend Jón decided to conduct a service in it anyway, it was
assumed to be the last service ever performed in that church. During his preaching, passionate prayers and calls to
God, the lava branch stopped and the church was saved. Since then this mass has been known as “Eldmessa “
-The Mass of Fire, and reverend Jón Steingrímsson as the Pastor of the Fire.