224: Blood Moons

The year of 1110 must have been an emotional whirlwind for those who looked up at the night sky.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records on May 5th of that year, when the moon rose in the sky, its light was gradually dimmed until no light whatsoever shown.

In fact, what sets this apart from a lunar eclipse is that the Chronicle specifically states that there was no light that night until the morning sunrise.

They say all the stars shone brightly that night, but the moon? The moon was nowhere to be seen.

It was so dark that night that even that little bit of starlight couldn't ward off a deep frost affecting the fruit beginning to grow on trees around the kingdom.

Just a month later, the chronicles tell us, "...appeared a star northeast, and its train stood before it towards the southwest.

Thus was it seen many nights, and as the night advanced, when it rose higher it was seen going backward toward the northwest." This was how Henry's second decade as king began, with a disappearing moon and a strange little comet that seemed to change course all of a sudden one night.

Are these good portents or bad ones? Time will tell, but plenty of other things occurred under Henry's watch that year that should have made him a bit nervous for the years ahead, to be quite honest.

For instance, we're told that Henry took the lands and titles of various noblemen, which included William Mallet, and he also shook things up by replacing a large number of sheriffs around the kingdom.

Turns out some of those records the exchequer was keeping may not have been adding up to Henry's liking.

What's more is that one of Henry's more important allies, Count Elias of Maine, died that year, prompting the Count of Anjou to pounce on Maine, quote-unquote, holding it against the king, so writes the Chronicles.

We're told 1110 was a pretty rough year agriculturally for England as well.

Just when Henry thought things were going his way, nature just had other plans.

So I came across an interesting scientific paper published back in April of 2020 entitled Climatic and Societal Impacts of a Forgotten Cluster of Volcanic Eruptions in 1108-1113 CE.

Now this paper states that recent Greenland ice cores strongly suggest that there was a tightly packed collection of volcanic eruptions occurring between these years.

Researchers note that the Hekla eruption of 1104 in Iceland was once thought to be the source of various sulfate deposits around the globe, namely those in Greenland, but that ice cores from around 1110 could be pointed to another volcanic eruption occurring in 1108 at Mount Asama in Japan.

What's more is that they suggest that the Mount Asama eruption may have kicked off, or just been a part, of a several years long series of eruptions all over the globe.

And they even point to medieval chroniclers noticing that something was off with examples, such as the 1110 lunar eclipse seen in England.

They suggest that volcanic ash catching a certain wind could definitely produce a moonless night in England.

The only catch I have to this is that the chronicles specifically state that the stars still shone brightly that night.

Now, I don't know about you all, but I love the interaction between modern science and medieval history.

Some of it can explain a lot, while other things, like this example, show us that we still have so much yet to uncover.

There's always a mystery afoot.

There's always some detail hiding out of sight.