Mount Etna Trivia | 40 facts about the oldest volcano in the world

Mount Etna, or simply Etna is an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, Italy. It is located between the cities of Messina and Catania.

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Mount Etna, or simply Etna is an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, Italy.
It is located in the Metropolitan City of Catania, between the cities of Messina and Catania.
It lies above the convergent plate margin between the African Plate and the Eurasian Plate.
It is one of the tallest active volcanoes in Europe.
It’s the tallest peak in Italy south of the Alps with a current height (July 2021) of 3,357 m (11,014 ft), though this varies with summit eruptions.
Satellite images reveal that Mount Etna has erupted so much in 2021 that it has grown about 100 feet (30 meters) in height in just six months time.
So far Mount Etna has erupted 50 times during 2021.
The southeastern crater is now the tallest part of the volcano.
Etna covers an area of 1,190 km² (459 sq mi) with a basal circumference of 140 km (87 miles).
This makes it by far the largest of the three active volcanoes in Italy, being about two and a half times the height of the next largest, Mount Vesuvius.
Only Mount Teide on Tenerife in the Canary Islands surpasses it in the whole of the European–North-African region west of the Black Sea.
In Greek mythology, the deadly monster Typhon was trapped under this mountain by Zeus, the god of the sky and thunder and king of gods, and the forges of Hephaestus were said also to be underneath it.
Mount Etna is one of the world’s most active volcanoes and is in an almost constant state of activity.
The fertile volcanic soils support extensive agriculture, with vineyards and orchards spread across the lower slopes of the mountain and the broad Plain of Catania to the south.
Due to its history of recent activity and nearby population, Mount Etna has been designated a Decade Volcano by the United Nations.
In June 2013, it was added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
One view is that the word Etna is from the Greek aithō meaning “I burn”, through an iotacist pronunciation. Another view is that the name is derived from the Phoenician word attuna meaning “furnace” or “chimney”.
In Classical Greek, it is called Aítnē a name given also to Catania and the city originally known as Inessa.
In Latin it is called Aetna. In Arabic, it is called Jabal al-Nār (‘the Mountain of Fire’).\
According to both Greek and Roman mythology, the god Vulcan (Greek: Hephaestus) had his blacksmithing forge under mount Etna. Vulcan was the Roman god of blacksmithing. The volcano is also known as Muncibbeḍḍu in Sicilian and Mongibello or Montebello in Italian (the Italian word literally means “beautiful mountain”).
According to another hypothesis, the term Mongibello comes from the Latin Mulciber (qui ignem mulcet, “who placates the fire”), one of the Latin names of the Roman god Vulcan.
Αnother theory is that Mongibello came from the Italian word monte plus the Arabic word jabal, both meaning “mountain.”
Today, the name Mongibello is used for the area of Mount Etna containing the two central craters, and the craters located southeast and northeast of the volcanic cone.
The name Mongibel is found in Arthurian Romance, as the name of the otherworld castle (or realm) of Morgan le Fay and her half-brother, King Arthur, localised at Etna, according to traditions concerning them derived from the stories told by the Breton conteurs who accompanied the Norman occupiers of Sicily.
What were originally Welsh conceptions concerning a dwarf king of a paradisal, Celtic underworld became attached to the quasi-historic figure of Arthur as “Ruler of the Antipodes” and were then transplanted into a Sicilian milieu, by Bretons impressed by the already otherworldly associations of the great, volcanic mountain of their new home. Mediaevalist Roger Sherman Loomis quotes passages from the works of Gervase of Tilbury and Caesarius of Heisterbach (dating from the late twelfth century) featuring accounts of Arthur’s returning of a lost horse which had strayed into his subterranean kingdom beneath Etna.
Caesarius quotes as his authority for the story a certain canon Godescalcus of Bonn, who considered it a matter of historical fact of the time of Emperor Henry’s conquest of Sicily circa 1194. Caesarius employs in his account the Latin phrase in monte Gyber (“within Etna”) to describe the location of Arthur’s kingdom.
The volcano is not dormant. Before 2001, Mount Etna erupted on average once every two years, but it has since increased. However, the eruptions happening in the present day are relatively harmless.
The last major eruption happened as long ago as 1992.
There are two types of eruptions that Mount Etna experiences: explosive eruptions from its summit craters and flank vent explosions. The most common of these are from the three summit craters: the northeast, the central and the southeast, however when the flank vents erupt, it is highly likely that it will cause an explosion from the summit craters.
Due to the size of the volcano, it is estimated that almost a quarter of Sicily’s inhabitants live on the slopes of Mount Etna, with the site proving to be a popular tourist destination
. Visitors to the area enjoy climbing or skiing on the mountain, due to there being snow present on the volcano year-round.
On March 8th, 1669, Mount Etna began to rumble, producing gas from the top of the towering landmark.
Despite this, the inhabitants of Sicily remained calm, ignoring any signs that the volcano was likely to erupt.
Over the course of the three days, the island failed to make any presumptions about what was to come, before noxious fumes began to be emitted.
3,000 people who were living on the slopes dies from asphyxiation.
Shortly after that, molten lava began to spill out of Mount Etna, being pushed out with such force that ash was reportedly seen over 100 miles away. On the south side of the mountain, the lava began to head towards the city of Catania, home to 20,000 people.
In an attempt to protect their city, a team of 50 men head towards the lava, attempting to divert it away from their precious homes and towards the neighbouring town of Paterno.
Those living in Paterno decided to fight back, however, after a couple of weeks of fighting, the lava began to spread into Catania, destroying the city and killing 17,000 of the residents who chose to stay.
In the 1970s Etna erupted smoke rings, one of the first captured events of this type, which are extremely rare. This happened again in 2000. Video footage of 8 June 2000 event was captured by naturalist filmmaker Geoff Mackley. Another event occurred on 11 April 2013.
The Global Volcanism Program has assigned a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) to all of Mount Etna’s eruptions since January 1955.