Little Ice Age in the Middle Ages - Essay Example

LITTLE ICE AGE Between 1150 and 1460 Western Europe experienced a general cooling of the climate. The term Little Ice Age was originally dubbed byF Matthes in 1939 to depict the climatic intervals that range in the span of 4000 years. Soon, this term solely described the widespread current period of mountain glacier expansion and is predictably defined as the 16th to mid 19th century period during which European climate was most strongly affected. It turned extremely cold between 1560 and 1850 that brought dismal repercussions to the people of Europe. It caused devastating effects in agriculture, health, economics, even arts and literature, which caused social strife and emigration. Due to the very cold climate, glaciations and storms took place and eventually tremendously affected those that lived near glaciers and the sea. These dramatic glacial advances often had important realistic consequences for nearby human populations. In the Chamonix valley which is quite close to Mont Blanc, France, numerous farms and villages were lost to the advancing front of a nearby mountain glacier. (Mann, ) The damage was so menacing that the commoners sought the help of the Bishop of Geneva to perform an exorcism of the dark forces which is presumed to be the ones responsible for such weather disturbance. During the late 17th and early 18th centuries such societal threats were common, since many glaciers extended well beyond their previous historical limits. Colder conditions combined with altered patterns of atmospheric movement, appear to be tied to the prevalent crop failures in the more northern areas of Europe during that time. During the 17th to 19th centuries, there are prevalent accounts of famine, disease, and increased child mortality in Europe which are partly related to the extreme colder temperatures and distorted weather conditions. Undoubtedly in the European society, not all effects of the climate changes were harmful. When the Thames River in London froze, it was celebrated with a winter carnival. Furthermore, the colder climate appears to serve as an inspiration for some writers during that time. Charles Dickens' idea of the old-fashioned white Christmas was a concept that bloomed from the icy winters and frequent cold weather. The Little Ice Age may have been more significant in terms of increased variability of the climate, rather than changes in the average climate itself. Based from Michael E Mann's write up on Little Ice Age, it is said that the most dramatic climate extremes were less associated with prolonged multiyear periods of cold than with year to year temperature changes, or even particularly prominent individual cold spells, and these events were often quite specific to particular seasons. In Switzerland, for instance, the first particularly cold winters appear to have begun in the 1550s, with cold springs beginning around 1568: the year 1573 had the first unusually cold summer (Pfister, 1995). The increased unpredictability of the climate truly led to extreme changes between unusually cold winters and relatively warm summers. A harsh winter followed the hot summer that precipitated the Great Fire of London in the year 1666. This also weather alteration further added to the restlessness of peasants who plagued the Bastille in Paris during the summer of 1789. The demise of the Norse settlements in Greenland that had been established during the early centuries of the second millennium has constantly been blamed from the cooling of the Little Ice Age. When the sea ice extended in the North Atlantic it certainly created problems for fishermen in Iceland and Scandinavia especially the Norse settlements in Iceland and Greenland. During the 14th century, the Norse settlements relied on trade with the mainland Europe but because of the increased winter some trade routes between Scandinavia and Greenland closed. With their food base affected since they are also unable to hunt sea mammals in the winter, Norse fortunes also declined rapidly. Malnutrition and premature deaths plagued even well-established settlements. Isolated communities became highly vulnerable to attack from hostile Inuit groups. Concurrently, the Inuit flourished during the cooler conditions since they were able to adapt to Greenland's harsh and unpredictable environment for thousands of years. The collapse of the Norse colonies in Greenland represented a complex reaction to changing climate conditions and their relations with communal dynamics. Outside of the North Atlantic region, the large-scale impact of the Little Ice Age becomes even less clear. What evidence is available suggests, instead, generally colder conditions anywhere from the 13th through 19th century, quite variable in timing from region to region, and is most cases punctuated with intermittent periods of warmth (Bradley and Jones, 1993; Pfister, 1995). The Little Ice Age caused great suffering in Iceland from the 17th to the 19th century, a time through which mountain glaciers advanced, hay crops fell stridently, and thousands of cattle perished of hunger and cold. In 1757 the sheriff of Salasysla in the northwest reported that "just in this year 21 cows and bulls, 1,292 sheep, 3,209 young lambs, and 151 horses have died in this one district. Forty-five people have died of hunger and wretchedness, and 15 dwellings have been deserted." He also reported poor fishing and added that it "will be a pure miracle if a third of the population does not die of hunger." In the cruel freezing years from 1750 to 1758, many fisher-folks migrated inland and descended on equally hungry farming relatives. Almost seventeen thousand people out of an island population of close to fifty thousand souls died of hunger and associated illnesses. The beginning of the Little Ice Age had an instant effect on European agriculture. Between 1300 and 1310, Northern European vineyards went out of production. There transpired a series of exceptionally wet and unusually cold summers between 1313 and 1317 which caused prevalent failures in the production of crops and famine that killed thousands of people. There were occurrences of cannibalism, and the entire villages were vacated or their populations destroyed. The wet, cool summers and disastrous harvests damaged the possibility of many small farming villages. Some thirty years later the Black Death plagued Europe, and among those that became highly affected were those weakened by earlier famines. By the beginning of the 15th century, most northern European farmers had entirely abandoned wheat cultivation. During the best of times in the north, wheat was a difficult crop to sustain, requiring constant tilling, regular and careful manuring, and meticulous rotation from field to field. English visitors to one Danish wedding ceremony even commented on the widely sodden ground and the absence of wheat fields. In Norway, upland farms lay deserter since the cold weather and epidemic had reduced the population by two-thirds over the previous century. By the 1430s many district tax collections had fallen to one-quarter of their level in 1300. Many poor families ate rye bread, which, a French doctor wrote in 1702, "is not a nourishing as wheat and loosens the bowel a little." Nevertheless, the bread crops never created any profusion. Beans and peas and made flour from buckwheat or chestnuts became sources of food for the farmers. Cattle were as important as cereal crops, since they are sources of supplies for meat and milk and even manure. But the farmers were somewhat caught in a vicious cycle, since they also needed animals to draw plows and to fertilize the soil. Their animals in turn necessitated wider grazing fields at the expense of cultivated lands. A 14th century almanac somewhat commanded the farmers "to multiply his livestock for it is this which will give the land the manure that produces rich harvest." Europe's peasants managed to survive on coarse soups and gruels during the 14th to the 18th century, the same way they lived during the prehistoric times. In 1430, long conditions of severe winter weather combined with very dry, hot summers and exceptionally wet springs and falls that caused devastations from England to the Alps. The Scottish Highlands erupted in warfare between hitherto peaceful clan (Fagan, 1999). The harsh winters reduced many Highlanders to producing bread from a miserable tree bark. A direct result of a famine-related disorder was the murder of King James I while he was hunting in Perth in 1436. This event caused the capital to be transferred to the stronghold of Edinburgh. Some of the greatest suffering came in the outline of the Alps. The Bishop of Geneva, Charles de Sales, led a procession of three hundred people as they made their way to the Alps. This move happened in June of 1644 and was noted that they went "to the place called Les Bois above the village where hangs, threatening it with total ruin, a great and terrible glacier come down from the top of the mountain." (Fagan, 1999) There various parish records that showed that the tiny mountain communities way high in the Alps suffered during the Little Ice Age. One French historian by the name of Le Roy Ladurie has linked the changes of Alpine glaciers to the continual cycles of ocean tides. After centuries during the Middle Ages of "low water", the ice sheets were high in the mountains. The greatest plunges occurred in the 17th century and once again in 1818-1820 another in 1850-1855, disfiguring villages and devastating Alpine pastures. By 1860 the great retreat began as the tide had turned. A few existing weather accounts provide evidences of how extreme weather conditions were. Ice occasionally blocked the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland and in 1695 it even enveloped the entire Norwegian coast. Incidentally, the most destructive weather often came in March, wherein in 1880 became three degree Celsius colder that the current average. This had serious effects for local farmers, who had scarcity of hay and had to resort to feeding their cattle with pine branches and straw. They had to slaughter their beasts while also experiencing poor harvests, partly caused by parasites that was present under snow cover and affected growing crops. In spite of their hardships, people from London made the most of the winters. They partied and skated on frozen rivers and utilized them as roads. Winter festivals are celebrated and a new mode In January of 1684, the diarist John Evelyn wrote of "frost more & more severe, the Thames before London was planted with bothes [booths] in formal streets, as in a Citty. It was a severe judgement on the Land: the trees not onely splitting as if lightning-strock, but Men & Catell perishing in diverse places, and the very seas so locked up with yce, that no vessells could stirr out, or come in." The tranquil, cold air trapped ascending coal smoke, causing severe air pollution. The "fuliginous steame of the Sea Coal" hindered one from viewing across the street and filled Londoners' lungs with "grosse particles." Evelyn also accounted stories of exceptionally cold weather as far south all the way to Spain "& the most southern tracts." Another legacy of this period was when poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife, Mary was having their vacation with friends at Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The weather was so cold that they had to stay indoors most of the time, entertaining one another with horror stories. An inspiration struck Mary Shelley as her greatest contribution, the story Frankenstein, was written. This is an immortal fable of human meddling with the forces of nature by attempting to create another human being turning him into a monster. In Shelley's tale, the monster and his creator meet their demise in a frozen Artic sea. While Londoners able to party in these conditions; the Scotts suffered tremendously. Between the years 1693 to 1700, it is accounted that up to one-third of the upland population died and during the years immediately following the union with England in 1707. The formation of Union is also resorted to the harsh climate. An official wrote: "During these disastrous years the crops were blighted by easterly "haars" or mists, by sunless drenching summers, by storms, and by early bitter frosts and deep snow in autumn. For seven years the calamitous weather continued, the corn [i.e. grain] barely ripening Even in the months of January and February, in some districts many of the starving people were still trying to reap the remains of their ruined crops of oats, blighted by the frosts, and perished from weakness, cold, and hunger." (source Fagan, 1999) In 1960 Northern and Western Europe experienced the coldest years and the years 1740, and 1816 to 1819 were years of continuous famine. In 1693, the harvest was the worst noted in Western Europe since the Middle Ages. It is said that France became a "great desolate hospital without provisions." (Fagan, 1999) The unusually heavy rainfalls which resulted to the failures of producing crops contributed to the strife that directed to the French Revolution. Aid came from South America which was not expected at that time. European farmers depended solely on cereals like wheat, oats, barley, and rye. This was before the discovery of the Americas. What formed the diet of millions of peasants are various porridges, like the Scotish oatmeal, and bread made from barleys. Although there are certain roots that are also eaten like carrots, parsnips, and turnips, but mostly they relied on cereals. Certain crops like wheat and barley are vulnerable to strong winds, excessive rainfall, and hail because they grow on long stalks above the ground. In addition to this predicament are the birds and insects which eat the ripening grains. In Northern Europe extreme weather conditions and the failures of the crops to produce brought severe cereal shortages which are contrary to Mediterranean and warmer climates. The agriculture that had burgeoned during the Medieval Warm Period was poorly suited to the Little Ice Age. Climatologist Jonathan Overpeck of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado said that people are lucky to the phenomenon of the Little Ice Age since during those times, climate changes are not nearly achievable for study. By being able to study the last several centuries, people should be able to trim down the uncertainty with regard to what is going to transpire in the next 50 years. Starting 1850, the climate began warming and eventually the Little Ice Age ended. Some environmentalists specializing in global warming firmly believes that the Earth's climate is still recuperating from the wrath of the Little Ice Age. References: Bradley,R S and Jones, P D 'Little Ice Age' Summer Temperature Variations: their Nature and Relevance to Recent Global Warming Trends, Holocene, 3, 367-376. 1993 Pfister,C Monthly Temperature and Precipitation in Central Europe 1525-1979: Quantifying Documentary Evidence on Weather and its Effects, in Climate Since A.D. 1500, revised edition, eds R S Bradley and P D Jones, Routledge, London: 1995 Pfister,C Winter Air Temperature Variations in Western Europe during the Early and High Middle Ages (AD 750-1300), Holocene, 5, 535-552. 1998 Fagan,B. Floods, Famine, and Emperors: El Nino and Fate of Civilization. Basic Books: 1999 Fagan,B. Floods, Famine, and Emperors: El Nino and Fate of Civilization. Basic Books: 2000 Read More