Tangerine Travels: Etna: The Living Mountain

Etna is alive to the people who live on her flanks. Sometimes she is recalcitrant, dangerous and unpredictable, but mostly she is loving, bestowing gifts on her Sicilian children, including fertile soil for crops, and a financial infusion from tourists attracted to her uniqueness. The Sicilians are a bit like her, volatile one minute, serene and beautiful the next.

One of the world’s longest historical records of volcanic eruptions exists for Etna, dating back to about 1500 BCE, when her children escaped her wrath by moving west to the quieter side of Sicily. As the population of Sicily grew with Greek and Roman settlements, moving seemed to be a less viable option. In 122 BCE, ash and lapilli from Etna rained down on the town of Catania, causing many roofs to collapse. The Romans exempted the Catanians from paying taxes for ten years so that they could rebuild.

In 1669, the resourceful Catanians attempted to control the path of lava flowing from Etna. According to the History Channel, Diego de Pappalardo led about 50 men from Catania to divert lava flow equipped using water soaked cowhides for cover and long iron rods, shovels, and picks for redirecting the lava. The residents of the town of Paterno realized that the lava was being diverted toward their town, so they fought the Catanians. The Catanians returned to their town, about 18 miles from the lava source, and waited…hoping the lava would miss the city. Unfortunately the lava reached the city and killed around 17,000 people in Catania, along with people in 14 other towns. The drawing below is from a book published in 1669 and shows the lava flowing toward Catania and the sea.

Again in 1992, people tried again to control the destruction of one of Etna's temper tantrums. This time, 21 meter high barriers were constructed. When lava reached the top, additional barriers were added, but finally blasting was used to create a channel. The lava was diverted through the channel and the town of Zafferana Etnea was saved.

Etna continues to have periods of moodiness, yet as the image to the left shows, she provides her children with comfortable living...in this case with vineyards growing in terraced fields, constrained by walls make from the dark volcanic rock. Above the house are young vines, recently planted in the rich volcanic soil.

Originally, the homes were built with rocks from Etna, however it is an active seismic zone, so if a home is destroyed...or a new house is built, it must be built with concrete so that it will be safer during earthquakes. When steam emerges from Etna's vents, her children are happy because they believe that if she releases pressure gradually, she will less likely explode violently. Today there are websites that track Etna's moods, so her children have warning when activity is happening. I cannot imagine how frightening she would have been to people in days long ago. Perhaps they relied on intuition. Perhaps they were more tuned to her nuances, since they lived closer to the Earth than we do today.

Driving up Etna's slopes, you see a change from the soft heavily vegetated lower slopes to the harsh, rocky upper slopes as seen in the images below.

The plants on Etna's slopes yield honey, which can be purchased in the parking lot of the national park on her slopes. Once again we are reminded of her dual nature...sometimes destructive, sometimes lovingly offering gifts to her children.

Etna's fiery nature inspired her children to create a fiery alcoholic beverage in her honor. One of her children, shown in the picture above, offered us tastes of the concoction and I can verify that the beverage feels like it is igniting a flame inside the body. One taste was enough for me!

Etna's name came from her fiery nature, although some details are unclear. The Phoenician word for furnace is attuna, which could be the origin of her name. However, the Greek word for "I burn" is Aitne, which is close to Etna. Sicilians call her Muncibeddu, which simply means 'the mountain' in the Sicilian language, or Mongibello, which has the same meaning in Italian. After all, she is the mountain that dominates Sicily! Arabs called her Ǧabal al-Nār which means "the mountain of fire" in Arabic.