How humans have tried to control storms

In Lithuania in the olden days, they would drink beer, dance round bonfires, or sacrifice animals. In other Slav countries, maidens would be danced to death. In the British Isles, we burned humans and animals alive inside a great wickerwork idol (remember the cult horror film, The Wicker Man?), while the Aztecs sacrificed children. All these things were done to try to control the tempests which humanity has learned the hard way, can unleash immense destruction without warning.

It must all have sounded so primitive to those in more modern times, who tried to enlist science. So in Central Europe in the late nineteenth century, they fired mortars in vineyards and orchards to stop hailstorms, believing the shock waves in the atmosphere would stop the stones forming. Great success was claimed, but scientific experiments found the method useless.

In the twentieth century, the Soviet Union went for a more ambitious approach, trying to protect the cotton fields of Uzbekistan and other places from hailstorms by firing into the clouds rockets and artillery shells carrying silver or lead iodide crystals. The idea was to provide lots of nuclei around which stones could form, making them more numerous but smaller, and less able to do damage.

The Russians claimed that between 1968 and 1984 they achieved 80 per cent success, but American tests were unable to reproduce the results. 

For the full story of humanity’s attempts to control storms see my new book Storm: Nature and Culture (Reaktion Books). 

Storm gods rule!

In ancient religions all over the world – Greece, Rome, Iceland, India – the chief god was the god of storms, whether it was Zeus brandishing his thunderbolt, Thor with his magic hammer, or Indra riding his multi-tusked elephant.

My new book Storm: Nature and Culture (Reaktion) explores the fascinating stories surrounding these gods, such as how a wicked giant stole Thor’s hammer and demanded the hand of a princess in marriage as the price of its return. Thor disguised himself as the bride, and managed to escape detection at the wedding ceremony in spite of eating an ox and eight salmon. Then he grabbed the hammer and killed the giant.

The Maoris told of how the sky god made love endlessly to the earth goddess so their children could never get out of her womb. Eventually one of the young deities managed to prise them apart, but this upset the storm god Tawhirimatea who had been quite happy inside his mother, and now became an unruly presence on land and sea.

In some Slavic regions, they believed the darkness held the sun prisoner in a cell which could be opened only by lightning from the storm god, Perun, and a spring festival used to be held at which maidens would dance themselves to death in his honour. This became the inspiration for Stravinsky’s ballet, The Rite of Spring, while the cult 1970s British horror film, The Wicker Man, was inspired by sacrifices to the Celtic storm god, Taranis.

For much more on the role of storms in religion, see Storm: Nature and Culture by John Withington. Reaktion Books. Price £14.95.  ISBN 9781780236612.