26 Which of the following is NOT mentioned about the winter of 821 in Europe in the first paragraph?
(A)It was the coldest one in the early 820s.
(B)The big rivers – the Danube, the Rhine and the Seine – froze.
(C)The next spring did not make things better.
(D)It subsequently brought fear among people.

It seemed like a curse诅咒.The summer of 821 was wet, cold and yielded產生 a poor harvest收割. Then winter came.

Temperatures plunged驟然下降. Blizzards smothered悶死、窒息、摧殘 towns城鎮 and villages村莊. The Danube多瑙河, the Rhine萊茵河and the Seine塞纳河– rivers that never froze – froze so hard that the ice covering them could be crossed not just on foot but by horse and cart. 

Nordid北歐國家 spring bring respite暫緩. Terrible hailstorms冰雹 followed the snow. Plague驟然下降 and famine饑荒 followed the storms. The next few winters were worse. 

Fear stalked跟隨 the land. Paschasius Radbertus拉得伯土, a monk of Corbie科爾比耶, in what is now northern France, wrote that God Himself was angry. 

Yet it was not God that wrought this destruction毀滅, according to UlfBüntgen of the University of Cambridge, but rather a volcano now called Katla, on what was then an unknown island, now called Iceland. At the moment Katla, one of Iceland’s largest volcanoes, located near the island’s southern tip, sleeps beneath下方 700 metres of ice. 

It has so slept, albeit儘管 fitfully, for almost 100 years. 

Its last eruption爆發 big enough to breakthrough the ice was in 1918. 

A score of such ice-breaking awakenings have been recorded by Icelanders since the first Norsemen settled there in 870. 

In 821, however, Iceland was not on the Norsemen挪威人’s horizon地平線. They were concentrating專注 their activities on the lootable洗劫 monasteries修道院 and villages of coastal沿海 Europe. 

There is thus noman-made record of what Katla was up to then. 

But Dr. Büntgen thinks he has found a natural one. 

Amemorandum備忘錄 of an eruption that coincides with the events described by Radbertus is, he believes, written in aprehistoric史前 forest森林.

Large volcanic火山 eruptions can affect the weather. In particular they eject排放 sulphur dioxide二氧化硫, which reacts with atmospheric gases to form sulphate硫酸鹽 aerosols噴霧器 that reflect反射 sunlight back into the space, cooling the air beneath下方.

Thatis well known. So the suspicion懷疑 that what happened in the early 820s was precipitated發生 by such an eruption has been around for a long time.