Abstract: Shaking the WorldWhereas Icelanders had long since familiarized themselves with the peculiarities of their homeland, in mainland Europe, volcanism was still quite an obscure concept.Indeed, it was not the obvious and dramatic consequences of a volcano that occupied the continent that summer but the protracted presence of a caustic mist.Chapter Three analyzes how contemporaries in Europe and beyond reacted physically, emotionally, and intellectually to the Laki haze and the numerous other unusual phenomena that characterized 1783.