Legends 68: Erupt

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Speaker 3 Nothing like it had ever happened in that part of Appalachia. Last year, a devastating hurricane blew through the mountains of North Carolina.

Speaker 3 Media outlets were throwing around words like historic and unprecedented. And while a lot of journalists overused terms for shock value, this time they were completely right.

Speaker 3 Nothing even close has ever touched down in western North Carolina.

Speaker 3 Between the rain that preceded that hurricane's arrival and the storm itself, some counties got up to 30 inches of rain in the matter of a couple of days.

Speaker 3 If you lived in the storm's path and were lucky, your home just lost power and your yard lost a couple of trees. But a lot of people weren't so lucky.

Speaker 3 By the time the rain stopped, 100 people had died and thousands more had become homeless. Multiple towns are still trying to rebuild their communities to this very day.

Speaker 3 And over and over, people have asked the same question. How on earth could this have happened?

Speaker 3 We as a society are the most technologically advanced we have ever been. In theory, we can solve almost any problem.
We can stand up to any threat.

Speaker 3 But time and time again, Mother Nature continues to prove that that just isn't true. We can't stop hurricanes or wildfires or tornadoes.
We have no solutions for earthquakes or tsunamis.

Speaker 3 When it comes down to it, despite all our advances, we have nothing in our arsenal to fight cataclysmic weather events. All we can do is try to weather the storm.

Speaker 3 But of course, these tragedies aren't new. History is full of legends born from the conflict between human cultures and the world around them.

Speaker 3 So batten down the hatches and get your evacuation plans ready. Because you never know when a frightening legend might erupt.

Speaker 3 I'm Erin Mankey and this is Lore Legends.

Speaker 3 On December 9th of 2019, 47 people were trapped on an island with an erupting volcano. They were all part of a larger tour group that had taken a boat out to New Zealand's White Island.

Speaker 3 The island itself is actually entirely made up of an active volcano, but that doesn't mean that it was inherently unsafe. In fact, it was a popular sightseeing destination.

Speaker 3 For years, people had come from far and wide to climb to the peak of White Island. It was a win-win for everybody.

Speaker 3 Tourists got to gawk at a real-live volcano and the local tour guide companies made a killing. But on that fateful December day, there would be no winners.

Speaker 3 That afternoon, there were nearly 50 people on the island.

Speaker 3 Some were hiking down after peering over the volcano's cratered edge, and some were waiting for the tour company's boats to take them back to the mainland.

Speaker 3 It didn't matter where they were, though, because there was no way anyone could miss what happened next. Because at 2.11 p.m., the mountain erupted.
There was no lava, though, no fire.

Speaker 3 Instead, a huge plume of ash and toxic gas was shot over 12,000 feet into the air, riding on a wave of otherworldly heat. I won't go into the details because the event was truly horrific.

Speaker 3 All I'll say is that 22 of the 47 people on that island died. Of the 25 survivors, many of them are still undergoing surgeries and burn treatments to this very day.

Speaker 3 It might be easy to think that volcanoes are ancient history. After all, how can the same thing that took out cities like Pompeii still be going strong today thousands of years later?

Speaker 3 For a lot of us, volcanoes probably fall into the same category as quicksand, something that you learned about as a child and that you thought would be a much bigger problem in your life than it really is.

Speaker 3 Eventually, after going years without running into a wave of lava, you just kind of forget that volcanoes even exist at all. But the Earth is still spinning, and tectonic plates are still shifting.

Speaker 3 As long as those two things continue, volcanoes will always be erupting.

Speaker 3 And, as the disaster on White Island demonstrates, we are still almost as as unprepared to face such a devastating natural disaster as those as we were 2,000 years ago.

Speaker 3 Because even in the 21st century, with all our advancements, there are things that we can't control. And volcanoes are one of them.

Speaker 3 Now, volcanoes have been on this planet longer than humans have ever existed.

Speaker 3 In fact, considering that their eruptions formed 80% of the Earth's landmass, we quite literally wouldn't be around without them.

Speaker 3 That being said, I seriously doubt that many of of us associate volcanoes with life. In fact, throughout history, very few societies saw them as benevolent, life-giving forces.

Speaker 3 For many, they weren't just an instrument of death, they were an instrument of justice, a sort of fiery punishment for society's sins.

Speaker 3 Back when the Aztec Empire was still around, the volcano Momo Tombo was seen as a powerful symbol of opposition against the conquistadors.

Speaker 3 In fact, legend claimed that the mountain shook and roared every time a Spanish priest tried to approach it, as if the very land itself was protesting their presence.

Speaker 3 Over in New Zealand, they have a folk tale about a village shaman named Nagatoro. One day, he decided to hike up a mountain, and he told the other villagers not to eat anything until he returned.

Speaker 3 But he ended up being gone for a very long time, and eventually everyone started to think that the man had died. So, hungry and desperate, they broke their fast.

Speaker 3 But as soon as they did, fire demons burst through the mountain and came hurtling toward them.

Speaker 3 This was, of course, lava from the volcano, and they believed that it was punishment for being unfaithful.

Speaker 3 Obviously, even if a culture believes that volcanoes are connected to the righteous arm of retribution, almost no one actually wants for these eruptions to happen.

Speaker 3 So societies that live near active volcanoes developed rituals to prevent them from going off.

Speaker 3 For example, in Italy, whenever Mount Vesuvius was about to erupt, the people of Naples would parade religious relics relics through the streets, specifically a vial of blood and the skull of the martyred Saint Januarius.

Speaker 3 The town would then present the relics to the volcano. According to the records, this actually worked to appease Mount Vesuvius on multiple occasions.

Speaker 3 In 1801, when Hawaii's Mount Hualalai began erupting, Kamehameha, the first ruler of the island, approached the volcano with an offering of fruit, fish, and a pig.

Speaker 3 Unfortunately, the food wasn't enough. The volcano continued to rumble and quake until finally the king dropped a lock of his own hair into the crater.

Speaker 3 And with that, the eruption stopped and Hawaii was saved. But of course, not every ritual has to do with preventing a volcano from spewing lava.

Speaker 3 In Japan, for example, a group of blind female shamans gather over at Mount Asori.

Speaker 3 It's known locally as Fear Mountain, and the peak is considered to be a bridge between the living world and the afterlife because the spirits of the deceased are believed to live inside the mountain.

Speaker 3 And every year on All Souls Day, pilgrims travel from all over the country to meet with these shamans.

Speaker 3 In turn, they communicate with the dead on their visitors' behalf and then they pass on messages from the afterlife to the living.

Speaker 3 It's no secret that volcanoes are usually associated with death, but it turns out that in very rare instances, that can be a good thing.

Speaker 3 It captured the attention of the entire United States. The 1980 eruption of Mount St.
Helens brought on a period of mourning.

Speaker 3 When it happened, two Christian priests in Longview, Washington told their congregation that the eruption had been a warning from God.

Speaker 3 It was meant to get his flock back on track, or, in their own words, back to its spiritual moorings. But obviously, 1980 isn't the first time that this has happened.

Speaker 3 For thousands upon thousands of years, the devouts have associated volcanoes with the divine.

Speaker 3 Some, like those priests, believe that volcanoes were God's messengers, and that maybe it was even his way of punishing wayward followers.

Speaker 3 A similar instance happened in December of 1951 when Mount Habal-Kabak erupted in the Philippines. Hundreds of people died and thousands of acres of farmland were destroyed.

Speaker 3 Many locals interpreted this as a punishment from God in reaction to the younger generation's lax church attendance.

Speaker 3 But there are, of course, rare instances when worshipers don't associate volcanic eruptions with negativity at all. They're few and far between, for sure, but they're still out there.

Speaker 3 For example, in northern Tanzania, the Maasai people worship the volcano Odanyolengai, and when the volcano erupted in 1917, new mothers poured their breast milk on the ground in thanks.

Speaker 3 In Hawaii, volcanic eruptions are often seen as an act of creation rather than destruction.

Speaker 3 Native Hawaiians believe that the spirit of the volcano goddess Pele resides in a huge fire pit at the summit of one of the most active volcanoes on Earth.

Speaker 3 Whenever it erupts, lava trickles into the ocean, gradually cooling into solid rock. Many indigenous peoples actually view these eruptions as the goddess Pele's menstruation.

Speaker 3 The lava represents the blood leaving her body, flowing out to the sea to form the building blocks of life. It's the cycle of death and rebirth, playing out again and again.

Speaker 3 They take the process so seriously that to this day, native Hawaiians still don't allow scientists to divert the flow of lava for any reason. But Pele isn't the only volcano deity on the map.

Speaker 3 The Maori peoples worship the god Romoko, who presides over earthquakes and volcanoes. In the Philippines, they had the goddess Lalahan.

Speaker 3 And the indigenous Guanch people of the Canary Islands worshipped Guayota, who lives inside a volcano that also operates as a gate to the underworld.

Speaker 3 Most of the divine beings that have been associated with volcanoes are directly tied to them. They might live in the lava or maybe they have some kind of power over the timing of the eruptions.

Speaker 3 But there are also deities that have nothing to do with volcanoes other than the fact that they created them.

Speaker 3 According to one creation myth from the Puyallup tribe, long ago a rock slide formed a bridge over the Columbia River.

Speaker 3 Its name could be translated to Bridge of the Gods, and considering how important it was, that was a fairly apt title.

Speaker 3 You see, the only fire in the entire world burned at the center of the bridge's arch.

Speaker 3 People came from all four corners of the earth just to take some of the glowing embers back home to their villages. The fire was sacred, and therefore, the bridge was sacred as well.

Speaker 3 Of course, something so important couldn't just be left out in the open without any protection. So an ugly old woman named Lewitz, or Lady of Fire, was assigned to take care of the flames.

Speaker 3 She never left the fire's side, tending to it 24-7, and eventually the chief of the gods took notice of her hard work. As a reward, he gifted Luit with eternal life, but this only distressed her.

Speaker 3 She had no desire for immortality, especially if she had to live forever as a wrinkled old lady.

Speaker 3 Thankfully, the chief understood, so upon her request, he also granted her otherworldly beauty and youth. Everyone took notice, including the chief's two sons.

Speaker 3 One day, one of the chief's sons decided to pay the famously stunning Lewit a visit. But once he arrived to the bridge, he saw that his brother was already there.

Speaker 3 They both fell in love with Lewitt instantly, but she was overwhelmed and she couldn't choose between the two of them. So to settle things, the brothers fought.

Speaker 3 Now, this wasn't some half-hearted sparring match. This was a serious battle between two divine beings.
In the haze of their anger, the brothers set entire towns and forests aflame.

Speaker 3 When their father saw the destruction they had created, he was furious. With a snap of his fingers, he destroyed the bridge.
The fire fell into the river below, making the water boil.

Speaker 3 And then he turned his ire on the love triangle. With a wave of his hand, he smote the three lovers dead.
But his heart wasn't so cold that he could just kill his own family.

Speaker 3 So where each one of them fell, he raised them back back up as a mountain. One son became Mount Hood, the other Mount Adam.
And as for Lewitt, the lady of fire, well, she became Mount St. Helens.

Speaker 3 For centuries, everyone had believed that the volcano was dormant. But of course, they were wrong.

Speaker 3 Mount Terrawera, located on New Zealand's North Island, hadn't erupted in over 3,000 years, and as far as anyone knew, it would never erupt again.

Speaker 3 The indigenous Maori were so certain that it was inactive that they had actually used it as a burial ground for their chiefs.

Speaker 3 The volcano was sacred to them, and so there was no better place to honor their dead than the cave systems that dotted the side of the mountain.

Speaker 3 Eventually, the rest of the world also realized how special the volcano was. The mountain itself was stunning, of course, but the real showstopper was at its base, not at its peak.

Speaker 3 You see, tourists from all over the world came to see the pink and white terraces. These terraces were essentially very large steps made out of a bright pink silica.

Speaker 3 They held water beautifully, and tourists usually came with the express goal of bathing in one of these crystal blue pools. It was regarded as one of the most beautiful places on the planet.

Speaker 3 In fact, in the 19th century, the terraces were considered to be the eighth wonder of the the world. But everything changed on June 10th of 1886.

Speaker 3 Around midnight, everyone near the mountain was awakened by a string of violent earthquakes. Then, just a couple of hours later, a giant roar ripped through the night.
Mount Terrawara had erupted.

Speaker 3 At first, nobody could see anything but a column of black vapor rising from the peak, but soon that column grew into a dark cloud that rushed down the mountainside, carrying ash and debris with it.

Speaker 3 And then, at about 2.30 a.m., the volcano began to spit lava. The eruption was so explosive that the blast could be heard nearly 400 miles away.

Speaker 3 And in Auckland, which was a mere 133 miles from the mountain, the volcano was so loud that it shook everybody's windows, waking up the entire town.

Speaker 3 Some people later confessed that they thought cannons were going off.

Speaker 3 But if the sound of the eruption could wake entire cities that were hundreds of miles away, we can't even fathom how terrifying it would have been to be in the line of fire.

Speaker 3 One witness wrote about it, describing, the whole mountain appeared to crack open.

Speaker 3 The whole face of the cloud was flashing and flaming with lightning and stars a mile across and curves and balls and fantastic shapes without number darting across the sky and down upon the highest points of the hills.

Speaker 3 In the falling outs, entire villages were completely wiped off the face of the earth. An estimated 150 people died.

Speaker 3 And the pink and white terraces, which had once attracted thousands of visitors every year, were lost forever. The volcano had destroyed them, and the rubble had tumbled into a nearby lake.

Speaker 3 It was one of New Zealand's greatest recorded tragedies, and since it had happened in the 1880s, there were no early detection devices available. Nobody could have predicted what was about to happen.

Speaker 3 But that isn't to say that there wasn't a warning. 11 days before the eruption, on May 31st of 1886, a group of tourists were visiting the nearby Lake Terrawera when they saw something odd.

Speaker 3 There had been no other boats on the lake that day, but then out of nowhere, there was now a canoe paddling across the water. The vessel had two rows of Maori people.

Speaker 3 One row was paddling, the other was standing completely still with their heads bowed. There were feathers on their heads, the same feathers that the Maori wore when they were in mourning.

Speaker 3 According to multiple eyewitness accounts, they could see only one man.

Speaker 3 Then, as the boat drew closer, the number increased to five, then seven, and then the number of men in the canoe kept increasing until they reached 13.

Speaker 3 Then as it paddled away, the number of men decreased until it disappeared into thin air.

Speaker 3 And everyone knew that they had seen something unnatural, but their Maori tour guide, Sophia, convinced them to continue in their journey to the pink and white terraces.

Speaker 3 She kept her true feelings hidden though, but the truth was that Sophia was unsettled too. So once the tour was over, she told her tribe's spiritual leader, Tuhoto, about what she had seen.

Speaker 3 Tuhoto told her that the canoe had been a phantom vessel that was transporting souls to Mount Terawera, a sacred place for the dead. And it wasn't an isolated event either.

Speaker 3 In Maori culture, these phantom canoes were well-known omens of misfortune.

Speaker 3 In the past, they were most commonly seen before a war broke out, so the tribe's chief interpreted this new sighting as a portent of an oncoming conflict.

Speaker 3 Tuhoto concurred, saying that their entire region would soon be overwhelmed. It was a well-educated guess that was backed up by generations of tribal history.

Speaker 3 They had no way of knowing that the Phantom Canoe was trying to warn them about a volcano instead of an oncoming war.

Speaker 3 But Tehoto didn't care whether their doom came from a neighboring tribe or a natural disaster. His opinion never changed.
He now believed that his people were being cursed.

Speaker 3 In his opinion, in the years leading up to to the eruption, the area around Mount Terrawara had changed. The huge influx of tourists had taken a toll on both the land and the locals.

Speaker 3 As far as Tujoto was concerned, his people had sold themselves out for cold, hard cash, and that had caused the volcano to rain destruction down upon them.

Speaker 3 It was a powerful belief, and one that he refused to let go of, right until the eruption buried him in a landslide.

Speaker 3 It's so easy to think that we're in control, isn't it? There are so many instances where we as tiny human beings have managed to wrestle control over the natural world around us.

Speaker 3 The Hoover Dam in America, the chunnel in England and France.

Speaker 3 Heck, anytime a developer flattens a hill and makes the land suitable for a bunch of new houses, they are, in a sense, exercising their power over the natural world.

Speaker 3 But hidden away in the legends of cultures all around the world are tales that show how futile that endeavor really is.

Speaker 3 The world is massive and dangerous and unpredictable, which is a deadly combination that can be impossible to stand against for us mere mortals. But Tuhoto might have been different.

Speaker 3 He may have just been an old man when the eruption swallowed him whole, but a few sources take a slightly different approach and refer to him as an ancient wizard.

Speaker 3 He was cranky and righteous, they say, because that's what his age and experience and power taught him. In truth, he was a divisive figure for the locals.

Speaker 3 He was a spiritual leader that his people looked to for guidance. And at the same time, though, he was a grumpy old man who didn't always think before he spoke.

Speaker 3 You see, Tuhoto had a track record of doing even worse than that. According to a Maori legend, a powerful being had been imprisoned in Mount Terrawera for over 500 years.

Speaker 3 For generations, people had been terrified that he might one day escape and take his wrath out on the entire world. Tehoto, though, wasn't scared.

Speaker 3 Some years before the 1886 eruption, he had actually cursed the man in the volcano. But now his chickens had come home to roost, and it seemed that the volcano had gotten its revenge against him.

Speaker 3 In the days following the eruption, most people were content to leave Tohoto in his rocky grave lest they bring more bad luck upon their community by moving his body.

Speaker 3 But after four days of hemming and hawing, a few men decided that they ought to do a good deed and dig his corpse up. Well, to their surprise, once they began to unearth his body, they heard movement.

Speaker 3 Tohoto wasn't dead at all. In fact, he was shouting at them to go away and leave him alone.
They of course ignored his protestations and dug him out anyway.

Speaker 3 And then the community went about about tending to a very angry wizard who seemed to be severely disappointed that he was still alive. Tsuhoto shouldn't have worried though.

Speaker 3 Less than a month later, he passed away peacefully at the ripe old age of 110. Those who were with him in his final days said that he didn't seem to be injured or sick though.

Speaker 3 He had simply decided that he was done with living. Which honestly highlights the true danger of the natural world.

Speaker 3 We all have plans and hopes and dreams and a vision for how we want our lives to proceed and end.

Speaker 3 But sometimes, when we least expect it, something much more powerful than ourselves can step in and change all of that. All Tuhoto really wanted, it seems, was to be in control.

Speaker 3 And honestly, I can't blame him.

Speaker 3 Legends have been erupting within human culture for as long as we have been around.

Speaker 3 So I hope today's tour through some of the world's most fascinating volcano tales have been informative and entertaining. But never fear, we've saved one last explosive story to share with you.

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Speaker 3 Everybody was afraid of Katla. Considering that she was a remarkably unpleasant woman, this wasn't all that surprising.
Katla's wicked temper did not discriminate.

Speaker 3 She lashed out at anyone and everyone, including her boss. This was particularly egregious though, seeing as her boss was in fact an abbot.

Speaker 3 Somehow, you see, the unholy Katla had landed a job as a custodian for a monastery.

Speaker 3 Now because this particular monastery was located in Iceland, I don't have a hope or a prayer of pronouncing its name correctly.

Speaker 3 But for the purposes of our story today, all you really need to know is that it was established in 1168 and it had a cantankerous caretaker.

Speaker 3 It wasn't clear why the abbot never fired Kotla for her bad attitude, but if I had to guess, his reasoning was that he was just as scared of her as everyone else was.

Speaker 3 You see, Katla wasn't just a crotchety custodian. She was also rumored to be a witch.
And honestly, she made no effort to hide that fact either.

Speaker 3 In fact, she seemed to advertise it, openly dabbling in spellcraft and showing off her magical artifacts.

Speaker 3 Her favorite belonging, by the way, was a pair of bewitched pants that gave the wearer a never-ending supply of energy. I would very much like that pair of pants.

Speaker 3 Clearly, she was a very powerful magician, and in an effort to avoid being cursed, the abbot let her keep her job.

Speaker 3 And so for years, Katla ran her domestic domain with an iron fist, indulging in her witchcraft and bullying anyone who annoyed her. Now, one of her favorite victims was a local shepherd named Barai.

Speaker 3 For some reason, this poor boy drew her ire more than anyone else. She was particularly harsh on him whenever any of his sheep went missing.
And unfortunately for Barai, this was a common occurrence.

Speaker 3 One day, Katla was traveling away from the monastery for a few hours. Before she left, she told Barai to gather all the sheep together.

Speaker 3 She even went so far as to say that he had better have mustered them by the time she got back, or else he'd be sorry.

Speaker 3 As Katla was not known to make empty threats, Barai got straight to work, but eventually he realized that some of the sheep were still missing. He looked high and low, but he still couldn't find them.

Speaker 3 So he did what any desperate man would have done. He made a very poor decision.
Barai snuck into Katla's room and put on her magic pants.

Speaker 3 And then with their aid, he was able to run around the fields without getting tired. He found the missing sheep before Katla got back, but it wasn't enough to escape her wrath.

Speaker 3 As soon as she returned, she could sense that someone had worn her pants. Flying into a fit of rage, she found Barai and she killed him.

Speaker 3 Now, most of us would consider homicide to be a bit of an over-reaction to such a small slight, but that's not how Katla operated.

Speaker 3 She murdered Barai without a second thought, and then she hid his body at the bottom of a communal cistern filled with an Icelandic yogurt called skier.

Speaker 3 Unfortunately for her, the monks continued to drink out of this cistern, blissfully unaware of the shepherd's corpse hiding beneath their snack.

Speaker 3 Eventually, the fear of discovery became too much for her because Kotlin knew that if her crime was discovered, she would be executed.

Speaker 3 So, in the middle of winter, she donned those magic pants and she fled the monastery. Running up an icy mountain, she jumped through a rift in the glacier and then disappeared from view.

Speaker 3 And the moment she was gone, that mountain erupted.

Speaker 3 From deep beneath the ice, a volcano spewed lava, which ran down the hillside until it completely destroyed the monastery and all evidence of Katla's crime.

Speaker 3 It's not surprising to say that nobody ever saw her again after she fled into the mountains, but ever since she jumped down that rift, the volcano has been going off regularly.

Speaker 3 A volcano, by the way, whose name is Katla.

Speaker 3 This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Jamie Vargas. Don't like hearing the ads? I've got a solution for you.

Speaker 3 There's a paid version of lore on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free.

Speaker 3 Subscribers there also get weekly mini-bonus episodes called lore bites, and Patreon supporters get instant access to my inbox and discounts on lore merchandise.

Speaker 3 It's a bargain for all of that ad-free storytelling and a great way to support the show and the team behind it.

Speaker 3 For more information about those ad-free options, head over to lorepodcast.com slash support. And of course, lore is much more than just a podcast.

Speaker 3 There's the book series available in bookstores and online and two seasons of the TV show on Amazon Prime. You can learn more about those over at lorepodcast.com as well.

Speaker 3 And you can also follow the show on social media platforms like Threads, Blue Sky, Instagram, and YouTube. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button.

Speaker 3 And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi.
And as always, thanks for listening.

Speaker 4 League One volleyball is back. The world's best players together on American soil.
This is volleyball like you've never seen before.

Speaker 4 Huge swings, massive walks, jaw-dropping digs. A sport where every play is a highlight.

Speaker 4 League One volleyball returns January 7, 2026 with teams in Atlanta, Austin, Houston, Madison, Nebraska, and Salt Lake. To buy tickets, visit LLVB.com slash iHeart.