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Katla is a fictional dragon from the Swedish children's book The Brothers Lionheart , written by Astrid Lindgren. The name Katla is an old Norse female name and means either "the kettle" or "the boiler". It is also the name of a volcano in Iceland and a Heavy Metal band from Denmark.
Katla is a huge ancient monster in the land of Nangijala, with the ability to spray flames from her mouth, just like its namesake volcano in Iceland. If a victim of the flames survives, the victim is paralyzed. Katla is controlled and will obey only a lur, which is owned by the evil warlord Tengil, who uses Katla to terrorize Nangijala. The scale of Katla is so strong that no weapon can injure her or even leave a scratch. When the citizens of Cherry Valley rise up against Tengil, he uses Katla to stop them, but loses the lur to Jonathan Lionheart, one of the protagonists. Jonathan uses the lur to make Katla kill Tengil, but Katla later burns Jonathan, wounding him. Before succumbing to the paralysis, Jonathan manages to push a large boulder onto Katla, making her fall into a river. In the river, she battles another great beast, Karm the lindworm, and the two monsters kill each other.
In the 1977 film adaptation of the novel, Katla was played by a model, four meters tall and eight meters long, created by Pinewood Studios. The model contained three people; one in each front leg, and one at a small control panel. Costing 100,000 Swedish kronor to produce, it could blink, spit fire, and whip its tail. The model has not been used since, and is currently located in Trollywood. [1]
Katla is not killed by Karm in the film. Instead, she drowns in the boiling pool of mud after being hit by the boulder.
Iceland experiences frequent volcanic activity, due to its location both on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a divergent tectonic plate boundary, and being over a hotspot. Nearly thirty volcanoes are known to have erupted in the Holocene epoch; these include Eldgjá, source of the largest lava eruption in human history. Some of the various eruptions of lava, gas and ash have been both destructive of property and deadly to life over the years, as well as disruptive to local and European air travel.
Mýrdalsjökull is an ice cap on the top of the Katla volcano in the south of Iceland. It is to the north of the town of Vík í Mýrdal and to the east of the smaller ice cap Eyjafjallajökull. Between these two glaciers is the Fimmvörðuháls pass.
Eyjafjallajökull, sometimes referred to by the numeronym E15, is one of the smaller ice caps of Iceland, north of Skógar and west of Mýrdalsjökull. The ice cap covers the caldera of a volcano with a summit elevation of 1,651 metres (5,417 ft). The volcano has erupted relatively frequently since the Last Glacial Period, most recently in 2010, when, although relatively small for a volcanic eruption, it caused enormous disruption to air travel across northern and western Europe for a week.
Katla is an active subglacial volcano in southern Iceland. This volcano has been very active historically with at least twenty documented major eruptions since 2920 BC. In its recent history though, Katla has been less active as the last major eruption occurred in 1918. These eruptions have had a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of between 4 and 5 on a scale of 0 to 8. In comparison, the Eyjafjallajökull 2010 eruption had a VEI of 4. Larger VEI-5 eruptions are comparable to Mount St. Helens 1980 eruption. These eruptions have produced very large glacial outburst floods. Several smaller (minor) events measuring VEI-1 and below have occurred since.
Eldgjá is a volcano and a canyon in Iceland. Eldgjá is part of the Katla volcano; it is a segment of a 40 kilometres (25 mi) long chain of volcanic craters and fissure vents that extends northeast away from Katla volcano almost to the Vatnajökull ice cap. This fissure experienced a major eruption around 939 CE, which was the largest effusive eruption in recent history. It covered about 780 square kilometres (300 sq mi) of land with 18.6 cubic kilometres (4.5 cu mi) of lava from two major lava flows.
The village of Vík, known as Vík í Mýrdal in full, is the southernmost village in Iceland. It is located on the main ring road around the island, and is around 180 km (110 mi) southeast of Reykjavík by road.
Theatre of Blood is a 1973 British horror comedy film directed by Douglas Hickox and starring Vincent Price and Diana Rigg.
The Juniper Tree is a 1990 Icelandic medieval fantasy drama film written and directed by Nietzchka Keene. Based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale "The Juniper Tree", the film was shot in black-and-white in a small budget in 1986. It stars Björk Guðmundsdóttir, Bryndis Petra Bragadóttir, Guðrún Gísladóttir, Valdimar Örn Flygenring and Geirlaug Sunna Þormar.
The Brothers Lionheart is a children's fantasy novel written by Astrid Lindgren. Well established as one of the most widely read and beloved books for children in Sweden, it was originally published in the autumn of 1973 and has since been translated into 46 languages. Like several of Lindgren's works, the book has a melancholy tone, and many of its themes are unusually dark for the children's book genre. Disease, death, tyranny, betrayal, and rebellion form the backdrop of the story, against which are contrasted platonic love, loyalty, sacrifice, hope, courage, and pacifism.
Gamera vs. Zigra is a 1971 Japanese kaiju film directed by Noriaki Yuasa, written by Niisan Takahashi, and produced by Yoshihiko Manabe and Hidemasa Nagata. It is the seventh entry in the Gamera film series, after Gamera vs. Jiger, which was released the previous year. Gamera vs. Zigra stars Eiko Yanami, Reiko Kasahara, Mikiko Tsubouchi, and Kōji Fujiyama, and features the fictional giant monsters Gamera and Zigra.
The Brothers Lionheart is a Swedish fantasy film which was released to cinemas in Sweden on 23 September 1977, directed by Olle Hellbom and based on the 1973 book of the same name, written by Astrid Lindgren. It won Sweden's Guldbagge Award for Best Director in 1978.
Junibacken is a children’s attraction, founded by Staffan Götestam, Fredrik Uhrström and Peder Wallenberg. It is situated on the island of Djurgården in Stockholm, Sweden.
Between March and June 2010 a series of volcanic events at Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland caused enormous disruption to air travel across Western Europe.
Markarfljót is a river in the south of Iceland. It is approximately 100 km (62 mi) long and has had in pre-history jökulhlaups which would be potentially catastrophic, if a similar sized one was to happen in the future.
"King and Lionheart" is a song recorded by Icelandic alternative folk band Of Monsters and Men, written by co-lead vocalist Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and produced by the band with Aron Arnarsson and Jacquire King for the band's debut studio album, My Head Is an Animal. The song maintains its position on both issues of the album, appearing as the second track on both the original Icelandic and international versions of the album. After reaching No. 1 on the Icelandic Tónlist singles chart in 2012, the song was released as a radio-only single from My Head Is an Animal in the United States and the United Kingdom in March 2013. The song peaked at No. 17 on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart.
An onikuma is a mythological Japanese yōkai originating in the Kiso Valley in Nagano Prefecture. It is a bear-like creature that has been known to walk upright. They sneak into villages at night to carry off livestock for food. It was described in the Ehon Hyaku Monogatari, a collection of supernatural tales published in 1841.
Mýrdalssandur is an outwash plain on the south coast of Iceland.
Hjörleifshöfði is a 221 m (725 ft)-high inselberg in southern Iceland. It consists of palagonite. The mountain is located on the Mýrdalssandur outwash plain about 15 km (9.3 mi) east of Vík í Mýrdal, and was an island in the Atlantic Ocean.
Ice cauldrons are ice formations within glaciers that cover some subglacial volcanoes. They can have circular to oblong forms. Their surface areas reach from some meters to up to 1 or more kilometers.
Katla is an Icelandic mystery-drama television series created by Baltasar Kormákur and Sigurjón Kjartansson. The show premiered on 17 June 2021 on Netflix.