Global Middle Ages

 Recently medievalists have begun talking about what is called "the global Middle Ages," that is extending their study beyond western Europe to what was going on in the rest of the world in the same period of roughly 500 to 1500.  It was also intended to make it clear that Europe's Middle Ages could not be taken as some sort of model for white Christian nationalism:  isolated, uniform in religion and skin color, dismissive of outsiders.

The earliest versions of trying to make medieval history global were somewhat awkward.  "First let's talk about Charlemagne.  Now let's talk about Great Zimbabwe in Africa.  Now let's have a brief interlude on imperial China, followed by the Aztecs."  This clearly didn't advance understanding very far.  Nor did attempts to compare institutions in different places that had essentially no contact with each other (though at least this approach didn't treat different cultures as a series of self-contained, unrelated units).  For example, for a while it was common to try to make comparisons between Japanese "feudalism" and that of medieval Europe, an attempt made problematic from the beginning by creating a rigid and a-historical model of "European feudalism," to which Japanese institutions, defined as second-class, could be compared.

More recently there has begun to be more emphasis on interactions between western Europeans and peoples beyond their borders.  There was always interaction with Byzantium, the Greek Roman Empire, centered in what is now Turkey.  Although Latin Christendom and Greek Orthodoxy have declared each other heretics since the eleventh century, learning and ideas and a great deal of trade went back and forth.

The Muslims who predominated in much of the Mediterranean basin from the seventh century on were a constant presence.  Sometimes, as in the Spanish peninsula and southern Italy (especially Sicily), Christians and Muslims got along at least part of the time.  In other cases, especially the Crusades, there were fierce religious wars, which the Europeans almost always lost.  The Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem of the twelfth century was marked by congenial Muslim-Christian interactions in between the fighting.

Eastern Europe was certainly known to the West.  The kingdom of Hungary, the grand duchy of Lithuania, and the Rus kingdom centered at Kiev all sent their princesses to marry western monarchs.  The West knew at least something about sub-Saharan Africa, as occasional elephants were brought to Europe (a medieval picture of one appears below), and the pope wrote to the Christians of Ethiopia (though it is unknown if they ever wrote back).

 Europeans were certainly aware of Asia.  Their silk came from China along the Silk Roads, and their spices came from Southeast Asia, brought to the Mediterranean by Arabic traders.  The arrival of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, a horde that came from Mongolia in central Asia (as you probably already guessed), certainly got everyone's attention.  Marco Polo is famous for his own trip to China, where he lived for many years during the time Mongol rule stretched from Europe to east Asia.  (That's Marco shown below.)

The one area with which Europe really did not have contact was the Americas.  Vikings reached what is now the Canadian Maritimes around the year 1000, but there was no lasting contact or influence, despite what some Scandinavian-Americans may tell you.  Still, that they arrived there at all is an indication that medieval Europe was not sealed off from the rest of the world.

There's lots more to be said about the idea of a global Middle Ages.  I'll continue the discussion next time.

© C. Dale Brittain 2024

For more on medieval culture, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.  Also available in paperback.

Vikings in the New World

When humanity's ancestors left Africa, maybe 120,000 years ago, some turned left and ended up in Europe, while others turned right and ended up in Asia and some, eventually, in the Americas, crossing during the end of the Ice Age when the seas were lower and people could get across between what is now Siberia and Alaska.  (In fact people left Africa in several waves, and many of course stayed, but let's keep it simple.)  When the Vikings met the people they called Skraelings in the Canadian Maritimes around the year 1000, the circle was complete, and people whose ancestors hadn't seen each other for 120,000 years met again.

I've discussed the Vikings before on this blog, but here I want to focus on their visits to the New World.  You can't really say they discovered America, because the natives knew it was there the whole time, and Columbus, not Leif Eriksson, was responsible for permanent contact between Europe and the Americas.  But they definitely got there in their long ships.

The Vikings/Norsemen were a lively lot, with exploration, raids, trade, colonies, and permanent homes from Scandinavia to the British Isles to France (Normandy) to Sicily (where they established a kingdom) to Ukraine, Russia, and Byzantium.  Everybody they met they called Skraelings, "the other," people who weren't them and therefore inferior.

Starting in the late ninth century they headed west from the Shetland and Hebrides islands, where they'd been well established, to see if there were any more good islands out there, and ended up in Iceland.  This became a very successful settlement, where a language very close to Old Norse is still spoken today, and the glaciers are balanced by the hot springs heated by volcanos.  The only big problem was that once they cut down the trees they didn't grow back, not having nearby trees to reseed them (as on the mainland).  But the Icelanders were mostly sheep farmers anyway.

From Iceland they kept exploring west and got to Greenland in the late tenth century.  The sagas tell that the explorers came back talking about how "green" everything was there in order to lure settlers, omitting to mention that most of Greenland is under a sheet of ice a mile thick (unfortunately now melting).  Several Viking colonies were established, which lasted until the late Middle Ages, when the climate cooled and their sheep-farming (their principal occupation beyond fishing) just wasn't working.

In the meantime, explorers kept heading out, going north with the current up the coast of Greenland, where they hunted walruses, then west to Baffin Island, and south along the coast of what is now Labrador.  Here they doubtless encountered Eskimo ancestors (who were heading east themselves and eventually reached Greenland, after the Vikings did, though their descendants survived when the Norse ones did not).

South of the Arctic Circle the Vikings got to L'Anse-aux-Meadows, on the northern tip of Newfoundland.  This seemed like a much better place than what they'd been seeing recently.  They called the region Vinland because wild grapes grew there.  There were already people (ancestors of what are usually called Indians, or in Canada First Nations people) with whom they had an uneasy relationship.  This is all described in the saga of Leif Eriksson, but for a long time it was considered fanciful.  Then archaeologists started digging and found all sorts of Viking objects, as well as the remains of the sod long-houses they had built.  L'Anse-aux-Meadows is now a "living history" site, with reenact ors and everything, as well as ongoing archaeology.  You can visit it, and Newfoundland would love you to do so.

Vinland really was too far out, so although there was at least some Viking habitation there for twenty years or so, including women and families, they pulled back to Greenland.  This has not kept Scandinavian-Americans in Minnesota from imagining that they somehow made it a couple thousand miles further overland to reach their homeland.

© C. Dale Brittain 2017

For more on the Vikings, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.