This is an especially interesting prompt for me, because it just so happens that at the time of publishing this post, I am in the looming shadow of this giant! It is a behemoth in more ways than one, stretching high into the sky, and leaving a huge footprint on the Sicilian landscape. As far as volcanoes go, there are considerably more destructive ones on mainland Italy (such as Vesuvius), yet Etna is almost always active, and whilst those outbursts are not necessarily huge, nor are they without danger.

Etna has a lengthy geological history of powerful eruptions, but over the course of human civilisation those eruptions, whilst never something to take lightly, have taken a surprisingly low number of human lives. The early formative years of the volcano saw explosive eruptions akin to Mount St. Helens, but we’re talking about a spell of eruptions from around 35,000 years ago, to 15,000 years ago. In Roman times, the volcano was reported to have erupted on many occasions, but with a greater cost to Sicilian economy prosperity than to human life (though it is worth noting that the reporting focus of the era may not have focused on the human toll). There were eruptions that half-buried the town of Catania in 1669, but during the course of recorded history, it is said that Etna has only claimed 77 lives. This figure seems suspiciously low, but it must be noted that some of the deaths attributed to Etna (it was claimed that as many 15,000 people died in the 1669 eruption) could also be attributed to earthquakes in the region.

In modern times, Etna has erupted on a great many occasions, earning the title of Europe’s most active volcano. Since January 1955, it has produced seven eruptions that are level three on the VEI scale, which are considered severe eruptions. To place this into context, the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD that wiped out Pompeii was said to be a level five, and falls in the realm of ‘cataclysmic’.

Still, we’re talking about a volcano here, and no matter how Etna may get compared to some of its neighbours, it is a powerful, daunting reminder that nature is beautiful and terrifying, sometimes all at once.