here are many events that occurred in our history that we like to refer to as “anomalies” as they cannot be explained. In the year 1110, the Moon was nowhere to see according to historical records. Historians and other experts around the world tried to communicate to see if the Moon could have been seen from other places on Earth. To the extent of this search, the Moon was impossible to see in 1110 and the following ten years.

During the middle of the medieval era, our world had many people who believed in magic or dark powers as it was the easiest way to give an explanation for these anomalies. Due to the lack of scientific research, the disappearance of the Moon was never explained until now.

At the time, many people that did not believe in magic or other entities from fantasy thought that the eruption of the Hekla volcano had cataclysmically provoked in some way the disappearance of the Moon. It’s not probable that the volcano would have enough power to push away a satellite such as a Moon, the volcano eruption was supposed to produce heavy ash within the sky, so heavy that it would make the sky darker than at nighttime.

Legends proved wrong

Historians always believed that the eruption of the Hekla volcano in 1104 was a plausible answer to this event, but scientists today have proven this wrong. Studies carried out by Paleoclimatologist Sebastien Guillet from the University of Geneva in Switzerland, stated that the Hekla volcano could not have produced enough volcanic residue to hide the Moon for 16 years. Taking into consideration that Hekla erupted in 1104 and the Moon reappeared in 1120, why didn’t the moon disappear in 1104?

Professor Sebastien’s theory is based on the eruption of another volcano, Mount Asama volcano in Japan that erupted in 1108 and had the potential to produce enough volcanic residue to cover the Moon for 10 years. Analysis from the ice cores that are 900 years old shows that the Hekla volcano simply didn’t produce that much ash.

Still, Professor Sebastien mentions that due to the high number of volcanic eruptions around the world, there could have been other volcanos that contributed to the disappearance of the Moon. This is also based on the theory of Medieval Climate Optimum which is said to have provoked the rise of the global temperature during the medieval period.

Mount Asama volcano

There aren’t many historical records based on the Asama eruption that took place in 1108 to define with exactitude the magnitude of the eruption. However, if Professor Sebastian’s theory is correct, it would be difficult to imagine the power and shake the eruption would provoke for a volcano that would generate so much ash that it covered the Moon for 10 years!

The first recorded eruption of Mount Asama was in 1108 and it is said to have been the biggest volcanic eruption in the AD era. The next eruption of Mount Asama took place in 1783, almost 700 years later which and it’s said to have been three times weaker than the first recorded eruption. Since then the eruptions became more frequent, but at the same time, less powerful (never reaching the power of the first five eruptions).

In the last 1000 years, Mount Asama had erupted almost 80 times, without counting the speculations of earlier eruptions before the year 1108. The last one was actually recorded in 2019 with a danger zone of four kilometers (2.5 miles). To compare this to the eruption from 1108, the danger zone was 145 kilometers (90 miles).

In 1120, the huge ash cloud provoked by the eruption slowly faded and the Moon reappeared in the sky. For many years people thought that the Moon had actually disappeared for good, but it was only hiding behind volcanic ash.

It is imperative to understand that I am only presenting the information discussed on the possibility of this event happening, not implying that this event actually took place as some information contemporary information can turn out to be invalid or false.