Post by Lady Rosalind Avalle on Oct 6, 2008 11:24:15 GMT -6
The Little Ice Age
from "The Little Ice Age," by Brian M. f*gan
Prior to 1315, Europe basked in warm, settled weather, with only the occasional bitter winters, cool summers, and memorable storms, like the cold year of 1258 caused by a distant volcanic eruption that cooled the atmosphere with its fine dust. Summer after summer passed with long, dreamy days, golden sunlight, and bountiful harvests. Compared with what was to follow, these centuries were a climatic golden age. Local food shortages were not unknown, life expectancy in rural communities was short, and the routine of backbreaking labor never ended. Nevertheless, crop failures were sufficiently rare that peasant and lord alike might piously believe that God was smiling upon them.
Nothing prepared them for the catastrophe ahead. As they labored through the warm summers of the thirteenth century, temperatures were already cooling rapidly on the outer frontiers of the medieval world.
The Little Ice Age began with a deluge. Seven weeks after Easter, endless rainstorms assailed Northern Europe. Freshly plowed fields turned into lakes. Vineyards that had prospered in Europe's warming period became submerged. One early commenter wrote the ceaseless rains were almost Biblical in proportion. Throughout the spring and summer, the rain failed to let up, and a chilly August became an equally cold September. All manner of local engineering structures began to fail, from d**e to royal manor. All became inundated. The harvest of 1315 was a disaster.
The weather most certainly had an effect on warfare, as 1315 was a year in which all of Europe was embroiled in one form of conflict or another. War merely increased the suffering of the people following the failed harvest of 1315, as armies fed from depleted stocks and left empty granaries in their wake. However, when the rains of 1315 failed to end, Europe's war machine staggered to a halt. Villages staring down at advancing armies celebrated when the invaders suddenly turned and fled, but their joy did not last long. Famine swept across Europe.
The famine ran rampant across Europe's sodden cities and towns despite price controls and taxes installed to prevent merchants from hoarding grain for the production of ale. Tax incentives were inadequate against Europe's population growth, one that had expanded in England from 1.4 million to 5 million by 1300. Within France's (modern) borders, its population had similarly expanded from 6.2 million in the late eleventh century to about 17.6 million or even higher. The legacy of the warming period meant increased agricultural production on light, sandy soil incapable of absorbing sustained rainfall. Rye crops failed entirely, and thousands of hectares of cereals never ripened in the summer of 1315, nor could hay be cured properly. Some estimates place that half of all arable land was lost to the rains.
Even before the rains, population growth had forced a strain on production throughout Northern Europe. Those towns and villages away from the coast or major waterways were very vulnerable to food shortages. In a time when most villages and towns survived at subsistence level farming, Medieval farmers had little options for dealing with rainfall and cold. In better times, villages could exchange grain and other vital commodities with relatives and neighbors to relieve food shortages on a small scale, but not when the entire continent suffered the same disaster.
Many villagers abandoned their land, telling (often false) stories of entire communities left abandoned or deserted. Paupers ate dead bodies of diseased cattle and scavenged growing grasses in fields. In the English countryside, peasants lived off foods that they would not normally consume, often of dubious nutritional value, and became weakened by diarrhea and dehydration, becoming even more susceptible to disease. As one village after another failed, huge swaths of countryside were utterly abandoned due to a shortage of seed corn, draught oxen, and the lack of a productive and healthy workforce.
This spiral into utter catastrophe lasted for seven years before normal harvests brought a measure of relief. The horrendous weather continued through 1318, with extensive flooding in the Low Countries in 1320 and 1322. When the rains ceased in 1322, it was not met with relief. A bone-chilling winter immobilized shipping over a wide area while thousands more perished from hunger and disease. The climate of Europe's late warming period gave way to wild and unpredictable weather marked by warm, very dry summers in the 1320s and 1330s, with a notable increase of storms and high winds in the English Channel and North Sea. The moist, mild westerlies that had nourished Europe throughout the Medieval Warm Period turned rapidly on and off, as the climate oscillated from one extreme to the other.
The Little Ice Age had begun.
Note: You can access the full-text version here: books.google.com/books?id=LwvkmXt5fQUC&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=medieval+scotland+climate&source=web&ots=K2YHeGBYvD&sig=ZuEApCtLLoADatbDY4g-DOgdZYQ&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPA44,M1. It's really an interesting analysis of the relationship between Europe's developing culture, the shock of a changing climate, and population and migration patterns.
from "The Little Ice Age," by Brian M. f*gan
Prior to 1315, Europe basked in warm, settled weather, with only the occasional bitter winters, cool summers, and memorable storms, like the cold year of 1258 caused by a distant volcanic eruption that cooled the atmosphere with its fine dust. Summer after summer passed with long, dreamy days, golden sunlight, and bountiful harvests. Compared with what was to follow, these centuries were a climatic golden age. Local food shortages were not unknown, life expectancy in rural communities was short, and the routine of backbreaking labor never ended. Nevertheless, crop failures were sufficiently rare that peasant and lord alike might piously believe that God was smiling upon them.
Nothing prepared them for the catastrophe ahead. As they labored through the warm summers of the thirteenth century, temperatures were already cooling rapidly on the outer frontiers of the medieval world.
The Little Ice Age began with a deluge. Seven weeks after Easter, endless rainstorms assailed Northern Europe. Freshly plowed fields turned into lakes. Vineyards that had prospered in Europe's warming period became submerged. One early commenter wrote the ceaseless rains were almost Biblical in proportion. Throughout the spring and summer, the rain failed to let up, and a chilly August became an equally cold September. All manner of local engineering structures began to fail, from d**e to royal manor. All became inundated. The harvest of 1315 was a disaster.
The weather most certainly had an effect on warfare, as 1315 was a year in which all of Europe was embroiled in one form of conflict or another. War merely increased the suffering of the people following the failed harvest of 1315, as armies fed from depleted stocks and left empty granaries in their wake. However, when the rains of 1315 failed to end, Europe's war machine staggered to a halt. Villages staring down at advancing armies celebrated when the invaders suddenly turned and fled, but their joy did not last long. Famine swept across Europe.
The famine ran rampant across Europe's sodden cities and towns despite price controls and taxes installed to prevent merchants from hoarding grain for the production of ale. Tax incentives were inadequate against Europe's population growth, one that had expanded in England from 1.4 million to 5 million by 1300. Within France's (modern) borders, its population had similarly expanded from 6.2 million in the late eleventh century to about 17.6 million or even higher. The legacy of the warming period meant increased agricultural production on light, sandy soil incapable of absorbing sustained rainfall. Rye crops failed entirely, and thousands of hectares of cereals never ripened in the summer of 1315, nor could hay be cured properly. Some estimates place that half of all arable land was lost to the rains.
Even before the rains, population growth had forced a strain on production throughout Northern Europe. Those towns and villages away from the coast or major waterways were very vulnerable to food shortages. In a time when most villages and towns survived at subsistence level farming, Medieval farmers had little options for dealing with rainfall and cold. In better times, villages could exchange grain and other vital commodities with relatives and neighbors to relieve food shortages on a small scale, but not when the entire continent suffered the same disaster.
Many villagers abandoned their land, telling (often false) stories of entire communities left abandoned or deserted. Paupers ate dead bodies of diseased cattle and scavenged growing grasses in fields. In the English countryside, peasants lived off foods that they would not normally consume, often of dubious nutritional value, and became weakened by diarrhea and dehydration, becoming even more susceptible to disease. As one village after another failed, huge swaths of countryside were utterly abandoned due to a shortage of seed corn, draught oxen, and the lack of a productive and healthy workforce.
This spiral into utter catastrophe lasted for seven years before normal harvests brought a measure of relief. The horrendous weather continued through 1318, with extensive flooding in the Low Countries in 1320 and 1322. When the rains ceased in 1322, it was not met with relief. A bone-chilling winter immobilized shipping over a wide area while thousands more perished from hunger and disease. The climate of Europe's late warming period gave way to wild and unpredictable weather marked by warm, very dry summers in the 1320s and 1330s, with a notable increase of storms and high winds in the English Channel and North Sea. The moist, mild westerlies that had nourished Europe throughout the Medieval Warm Period turned rapidly on and off, as the climate oscillated from one extreme to the other.
The Little Ice Age had begun.
Note: You can access the full-text version here: books.google.com/books?id=LwvkmXt5fQUC&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=medieval+scotland+climate&source=web&ots=K2YHeGBYvD&sig=ZuEApCtLLoADatbDY4g-DOgdZYQ&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPA44,M1. It's really an interesting analysis of the relationship between Europe's developing culture, the shock of a changing climate, and population and migration patterns.
