{"id":11105,"date":"2019-12-27T14:21:33","date_gmt":"2019-12-27T21:21:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11105"},"modified":"2020-01-10T09:45:15","modified_gmt":"2020-01-10T16:45:15","slug":"fimbul-winter-and-the-plague-the-horrible-mid-6th-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11105","title":{"rendered":"Fimbul Winter and the Plague: The Horrible Mid-6th Century"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mid-6th century must have been a terrible time in the Mediterranean world, in Western Europe, and probably other places as well.<\/p>\n

\"RaidsIf you look up “t<\/a>he plague of Justinian,” you will find that much has been written on a bubonic plague outbreak during the rule of the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian, peaking around 540\u2013541 CE. Apparently that is part of a larger disaster that started around 536.<\/p>\n

David Keys, author of Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization<\/em><\/a>, speculated that this plague, which spread from the Middle East to Britain (if not farther)<\/a>, might have contributed to the collapse of Romano-Celtic Britain in the face of Anglo-Saxon invasion,<\/a> despite the best efforts of King Arthur (whoever he was).1<\/a><\/sup> That hypothesis is based on assuming that the Romanized Britons had more trade contact with the Mediterranean world, which exposed them to the plague, whereas the English were more isolated. But who can say for sure?<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

I was introduced to Catastrophe<\/em><\/a> by my friend and mentor, the English witch Evan John Jones,<\/a> who had bought it shortly before I visited him in Brighton, and I stayed up late a couple nights speed-reading it after he and Val, his wife, had long gone to bed.<\/p>\n

All that concatenation of volcanic eruption-plague-and climate change was brought back to mind by this article, “The Long, Harsh Fimbul Winter is not a Myth<\/a>,” subtitled, “Probably half of Norway and Sweden\u2019s population died. Researchers now know more and more about the catastrophic year of 536.”<\/p>\n

\"\"

Reconstructed Bronze Age house in Norway, typical of houses built up until 536 CE (Wikimedia Commons).<\/p><\/div>\n

In essence, massive short-term climate changes slammed Scandinavia, northern Germany, and the Baltic region in the 530s, leading to abandonment of farms and settlements and the projected deaths of up to half of the peoples there.<\/p>\n

“First came the Fimbul winter that lasted three years. This was a warning of the coming of Ragnarok, when everything living on Earth came to an end.”<\/p>\n

This is how the story of the long harsh winter, called the Fimbul winter in Norwegian, begins, both in Norse mythology and in the Finnish national work of epic poetry, the Kalevala.<\/p>\n

But why are stories that warn of a frozen end-time found in Nordic mythologies?<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

[Swedish archaeologist Bo] Gr\u00e4slund was first to suggest that the Fimbul winter was a real event, and that it took place in the years after 536. He also pointed out that the 13th century Icelandic historian Snorre in his book Edda was not only concerned that it was very cold and the winters were snowy \u2014 Snorre was also concerned because there were no summers for several years in a row.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whereas David Keys looks toward a volcano in Indonesia as the culprit, the Scandinavians are suspecting an eruption in Central America or Mexico:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis must have happened somewhere near the Equator. Maybe it was El Chich\u00f3n volcano in southern Mexico,\u201d [climate scientist Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist] said.<\/p>\n

The tiny particles from the two volcanic eruptions remained in the atmosphere for several years, leading to strong cooling in the northern hemisphere. Ljungqvist points out that there are now a number of studies of annual rings in old trees that confirm this.<\/p>\n

He points out that the cumulative effect of two huge volcanic eruptions in the years 536 and 540 was what made this cooling quite exceptional and very long lasting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The archaeological evidence is chilling, no pun intended:<\/p>\n

In Denmark, archaeologist Morten Axboe found that large quantities of gold and other precious metal jewellery were sacrificed right after the climate shock.<\/p>\n

Axboe’s theory is that these sacrifices were actions of desperate people. They sought to mollify higher powers and asked them to bring the sun back into the sky.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

In Rogaland and the surrounding areas, until the disaster 1500 years ago, there were many skilled goldsmiths.<\/p>\n

Both they and their craft disappeared.<\/p>\n

The same thing happened to the many talented potters who had lived in western Norway before the Merovingian Period, from J\u00e6ren in the south to Sogn in the north.<\/p>\n

It would take another thousand years before equally fine pottery was made in Norway.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can’t blame people for thinking that this was The End, or at least a good preview of what The End would look like.<\/p>\n

And one more item:\u00a0<\/strong>The inscription on this 6th-century runestone from south-central Sweden appears to have been influenced by the horrible winters.<\/a><\/p>\n

  1. Roman forces had been withdrawn from Britannia in the early 400s<\/a> and that colony more or less written off, although Britain retained a lot of Roman culture for a time. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The mid-6th century must have been a terrible time in the Mediterranean world, in Western Europe, and probably other places as well. If you look up “the plague of Justinian,” you will find that much has been written on a bubonic plague outbreak during the rule of the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian, peaking around 540\u2013541 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,88,100,134,175,56],"class_list":["post-11105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archaeology","tag-britain","tag-history","tag-norse","tag-norway","tag-rome"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2T7","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3038,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3038","url_meta":{"origin":11105,"position":0},"title":"Violent Gladiators Plague Rome","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Sounds like \"news you can use from the 3rd century CE,\" doesn't it. Actually, it is today's news.","rel":"","context":"In \"Rome\"","block_context":{"text":"Rome","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=rome"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3999,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3999","url_meta":{"origin":11105,"position":1},"title":"Ring-Dancing Monkeys and Black Death Rubbish","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"At Got Medieval, Carl Pyrdrum re-debunks the persistent, authentic-sounding story that the nursery rhyme \"Ring around the Rosies\" has anything whatsoever to do with the Black Death of the 1340s. It does not. As any good English plague survivor********** could tell you, the plague was caused by sin and best\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Druids\"","block_context":{"text":"Druids","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=druids"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":340,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=340","url_meta":{"origin":11105,"position":2},"title":"It's all about birds Things\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 26, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"It's all about birds Things found while Web-surfing. Snopes.com debunks the story that the song \"The Twelve Days of Christmas\" contains hidden references to Christian doctrine, adding that the \"five golden rings\" are ring-necked pheasants. If true, that would establish an earliest date for the song: when were those birds\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6623,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6623","url_meta":{"origin":11105,"position":3},"title":"No, “Ring around the Rosie” is not about the Black Death","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 24, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"For one thing, there are multiple versions recorded by folklorists and they do not \"all fall down.\" From the Library of Congress blog: The claim that the rhyme is related to pestilence is even younger; the folklorists who diligently recorded the rhyme itself in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"folklore\"","block_context":{"text":"folklore","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=folklore"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7290,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7290","url_meta":{"origin":11105,"position":4},"title":"Odds and Ends: Runic Duct Tape, Ebola, Etsy","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 19, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 Real Heathens fix stuff with runic duct tape. Or \"sticky tape,\" direct from Orkney to you. To save you checking your Futhark, it says \"Orkney Orkney Orkney.\" I have the matching mug. \u2022 Was the famous plague of 432 BCE in Athens an early outbreak of Ebola? The Athenian\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"commerce\"","block_context":{"text":"commerce","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=commerce"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10304,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10304","url_meta":{"origin":11105,"position":5},"title":"Baltic Gothic: A Quick Review of “November”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 20, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"In rural 19th-century Estonia, as depicted in the film November, people did not merely put out food offerings for the Dead on All Souls Day \u2014 they fed them. And talked to them. And if the Dead wished to enjoy a sauna, a fire had already been lit. And then\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"death\"","block_context":{"text":"death","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=death"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11105"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11134,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11105\/revisions\/11134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}