Wilderness is an increasingly rare landscape resource characterized by the IUCN as “protected areas that are usually large, unmodified, or slightly modified, retaining their natural character and influence, without permanent or significant human habitation, and are protected and managed to preserve their natural condition.”Retaining Wilderness Areas” is therefore listed at the top of its 21 action-oriented targets for 2030 in the Convention for Biological Diversity.

Unfortunately, not much true wilderness can be found in present-day Europe. However, Iceland still possesses large tracts of rugged wilderness.

In this realm, glaciers and ice caps intertwine, while vast sandunes and gravel plains stretch into hills and rugged mountains with their peaks reaching for the heavens. Between them rivers are fed by ancient glaciers, while hot springs  breathe life into the land cut through by gorges and valleys. Once forested, the cover is mainly grass and herbs in summertime.

Unfortunately, the protection is precarious, especially due to threats from renewable energy exploitation that encroach upon Iceland’s unique treasure. Other threats consist of tourism overflow and off-roading in wintertime. “Winter driving off-road over snow and ice remains an issue that requires further attention,” writes Carver and his research team.

Recently, this group of scientists posted a new method to map the icelandic wilderness to secure it from further encroachment, or at least to prevent entrepreneurial activities from being undertaken without public consultations.

This new approach to mapping wilderness is based on internationally recognized methods and customized to suit the unique nature of Icelandic landscapes. The scientists have used spatially explicit models of wilderness attributes that measure human impact from vehicular access, land use, and visible human features, rather than relying on proxy measures such as buffer zones. Seventeen wilderness areas are identified across the Central Highlands and surrounding areas, totaling some 28,470 km2. These are then compared to existing mapping projects, including the EU Wilderness Index.

The character of these areas is described using additional spatial data models on openness, ruggedness, and accessibility from settlements, along with information on mobile phone coverage and grazing patterns.

This is the most detailed mapping of wilderness in Iceland to date and represents an important step towards the formal definition of boundaries for wilderness areas meeting IUCN Category 1b and the Wild Europe Working Definition in Iceland.

Tourism – A Dilemma

Icelandic wilderness is a highly marketed tourism product, intended to offer “primitive” forms of recreation, opportunities to experience solitude, and a chance to find freedom away from the constraints of urban living. In 2004, a study was carried out in Iceland’s Landmannalaugar Wilderness based on 550 questionnaires and 12 in-depth interviews. While satisfaction was high and most tourists experienced the area as “unspoiled” wilderness, they also sought good basic services and infrastructure. In 2004, 20% considered the place overrun. This figure had grown to 33% in 2009.

One such dilemma occurred at Landmannlaugur Wilderness, where there used to be a path between the main center and the local hot spring. Tourists used to have the extra sensory experience of walking through the wetland to the spring. However, twenty years ago, the plants gave way, and the caretakers capitulated, installing a bridge. During the last decades, the number of tourists – and hence impact – on the wilderness has grown.

Cultural and Natural Heritage in the Wilderness

Landmannalaugar is a convenient stepping stone for nature tourists on the way to Vatnajökull. Before reaching the daring gletchers though, a visit to Þjóðveldisbærinn, the so-called Commonwealth Farm is recommended. A reconstructed farm based on the Stöng Farm, the medieval predecessor is believed to have been abandoned after the Hekla eruption in 1104.

The farm opens up into the central hall giving access to the sitting room, the store rooms and the bathrooms. Next to the farm is a reconstruction of the small church, which was excavated in the 80s. Stöngs farm figures in the now lost Gaukur’s saga. Visitors are invited to “see” the Iceland World through the preserved. Gaukur Trandilsson, is reported to have been an exceptionally gentle and brave man and fosterbrother to Asgrimur, who ended up killing him. Gaukur is also mentioned in Njál’s Saga and Íslendingadrápa, and a Runic inscription on the orkeney islands, which read: “These runes were carved by the man who was the most knowledgeable of runes in the west of the sea, using the axe that belonged to Gaukur Trandilsson in the south of the land”. Part of Games of Thrones was filmed at the farm and in the wilderness further inland towards the real wilderness of Iceland, the Vatnajökull.

SOURCES:

New Approaches to Modelling Wilderness Quality in Iceland
By Steve Carver, Sif Konrádsdóttir, Snæbjörn Guðmundsson, Ben Carver and Oliver Kenyon
In: Land (2023) Vol. 12 Issue 2,

Adapting to Change: Maintaining a Wilderness Experience in a Popular Tourist Destination
By Anna Dora Saethorsdottir
In: Tourism Today (2004) No 4, pp. 52-65

Managing popularity: Changes in tourist attitudes in a wilderness destination
Dóra Sæþórsdóttir
In: Tourism Management Perspectives (2013) Vol 7, pp 47-58

The Representation of Icelandic Medieval Heritage in Tourism
By Mariko Komaru
Thesis: Faculty of Life and Environmental Science. University of Iceland. 2021

The post Wilderness in Iceland? appeared first on Wilder Europe.

After WW2, the green revolution paved the way for making Europe self-sufficient regarding food. Helped by the EU, this industrialisation increased global production by introducing high-yielding varieties and streamlined animal production systems. Though highly efficient, the shift also caused widespread deterioration of biodiversity, degrading soils, lowering the groundwater tables, increasing salinisation and deforestation, and introducing a regime of pesticides. Further, widespread rural inequalities lead to migration out of the countryside and, in the last decades, widespread abandonment of marginal lands. The disappearance of traditional knowledge of agricultural systems, such as in the transhumance in the Mediterranean and the bocage systems in France, should be added to this list. Although not all agricultural landscapes today look like Mecklenburg in Northern Germany with its vast agro-industrial landscapes featuring fields up to 100 ha, or the “Zone Agroindustrielle” east of Paris, the devastation of the cultural landscapes has been widespread.

This development has also been the case in Spain. Nevertheless, the Iberian peninsula is still home to five of the EU’s seven internationally recognised “Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems”, so-called GIAHS, a system set up by FAO in 2002. The Iberian Peninsula was recently surveyed with the GIAHS model to recognise further agroecosystems worth preserving as intangible heritage. The criteria are food and livelihood security, agro-biodiversity, local and traditional knowledge systems, distinctive cultural values, and specific features of landscapes and seascapes. By developing these criteria and utilising GIS, the Spanish authorities have pinpointed fifty potential sites worth protecting.

Significant are the sites belonging to 56% of the farmland in Spain known as “dehesas” (and in Portugal as “montados”). Half of this typical landscape in the southwestern part of the Iberian Peninsula is found in the northern part of Andalusia in the Sierra de Aracena y Picos de Aroche stretching north of the Guadalquivir from Huelva, Seville, Cordoba, and Baeza. Originally covered by woods hosting gall, cork and holm oaks, this landscape was cleared to make way for the dehesas. As well as grazing livestock, mostly cows and fighting bulls, the dehesas – or defences, originally meaning a reserved pasture – were and are used for the production of cork, firewood, and charcoal, as well as grazing. Some of the villages flanking the dehesas date back to prehistoric times, while others owe their existence to the out-migration of the Muslim population after the Reconquista and the slow Castilian repopulation. Most villages grew up around fortress-like churches or hilltop castles constructed to deter the Portuguese to the west and the Nasrid kingdom at Grenada to the east.

As it stands today, the dehesa-landscape was the immediate result of the Castillian conquest, when the Muslim population gradually migrated from leaving an abandoned landscape where natural ecosystems were allowed to take over. For a short while, much of the the landscape was used for activities such as hunting, fishing, and beekeeping. Only gradually did the exploitation of the landscape characterised by “modern” dehesas – that is, enclosed pasturelands – take over after the final conquest of the Nasrid kingdom and the population growth following the wars and plagues, which marred the 14th and 15th centuries.

Although it is believed the system with dehesas existed in Roman, Byzantine and later Islamic times, the present-day version thus dates to the period of repopulation, which occurred in the later Middle Ages. Their main function was to serve as more or less common, more or less privately owned pastures for drought cattle. One common feature was the active prohibition against pigs and poultry accused of uprooting the ground and fouling the water. However, the dehesas were not just used for drought cattle. Sometimes, dehesas were enclosed and used for regular cattle ranging by larger landowners and the cities located along the Guadalquivir.

Today, these dehesas are recognised by the EU as farmlands with a “High Natural and Cultural Value”, implying these agroforestry systems also score high on biodiversity. Protected as a specific EU habitat, much of the landscape featuring the dehesas is recognised as Natura 2000.

Two Forms of Conservation Policies

However, the question remains how to preserve this unique cultural landscape and/or its nature best? And further: is it worth protecting the dehesa-landscape from a biodiversity perspective?

One system set up by the Spanish authorities is the identification of the belt as a network of Protected Natural Areas, parts of which – as said – have also been designated Natura 2000. However, this system is challenged by the abandonment by people of the traditional sylva–pastoral landscape, with an accompanying shift from pigs to poultry, horses, and olive groves, but also furthering the encroaching scrub and forest.

Another option, though, is inducing forest expansion together with more or less active rewilding, returning to the “Reconquista” landscape with its natural barriers of Mediterranean wild forests used as open nature reserves and hunting grounds. This is, to some degree, the policy adopted by the National Parks spread along the Northern border of Andalusia. Apparently, these parks struggle to integrate the abandoned farmland into their natural range without losing the distinctive fauna and flora characteristic of the dehesas.

These two policies and options have been claimed to represent two adverse methods of conservation where the cultural and natural landscapes are set apart and not allowed to mingle, thus establishing what in the literature has been termed a “cultural severance”.

“The progressive degradation and marginalisation of the rural landscape and the associated deterioration of environmental and social conditions are factors correlated with the increasing land abandonment of smallholder farming over the past decades”, writes Villodre et al. in a recent article (Villodre 2023)”, on behalf of the cultural-landscape-faction. They posit that “among the main arguments against rewilding are the loss of valuable cultural landscapes and high nature value farming systems, the decrease in landscape heterogeneity or the negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem Services”. In a project led by the University of Extremadura and carried out together with stakeholders, plans have been laid to enrich the grassland of the dehesas by bettering the regeneration of trees and the sowing of fodder crops.

Opposed to this, the Nature-landscape-faction argues for a type of (passive) rewilding, letting the abandoned details being swallowed by the wilder natural landscape dominating the sierras.

One example of such a more integrated landscape is the UNESCO Global Geopark – the Sierra Norte de Sevilla Natural Park – characterised by rich and diversified nature. This is a landscape of gently rolling hills clad in dense evergreen oaks, which covers 177.000 ha and is very sparsely populated. However, a third of the park is still taken up with dehesas, where pigs continue to graze. Thus, the dehesas borders a rich landscape of wilder nature inhabited by boars, deer, otters, badgers, wolves, polecats, and wild cats, while overflown with eagles, griffons, black vultures, black storks, red kites, and eagle owls. Also, the landscape is teeming with a significant population of endangered butterflies. Thus, in a situation where the wild nature of Europe is endangered, the preservation of large tracts of abandoned dehesas should seem an unnecessary luxury. When all is said and done, a dehesa is an enclosed pasture more or less extensively exploited for grazing and coppice. The upholding of a dehesa, thus, does not depend on the next-door neighbouring dehesas. As opposed to this, wild nature needs large tracts of undisturbed land where animals and plants can roam. Why, then, should we preserve and protect the dehesas?

Arguably, however, the dehesas sustain high levels of biodiversity if kept under an adequate management regime. This is the main conclusion of a meta-survey carried out in 2022 (Rodríguez-Rojo 2022). In general, the dehesas, with their intermediate tree covers, scrub patches, and natural microclimates, offer a varied and beneficial home to a wide variety of species thriving in a mosaic landscape. However, if the management becomes too proactive – for instance, removing dead tree stumps and clearing shrubs, the advantages tend to disappear. “Small-scale features and natural microhabitats such as traditional stone walls, canopy shrubs, piles of pruning debris, or temporary watercourses have been shown to contribute substantially to the biodiversity of macroinvertebrates, reptiles, and small mammals, writes Rodríguez-Rojo et al. (2022)

On a more detailed level, other studies of the dehesas considered as low-input farming agroforestry systems have shown that, taken as a whole, the dehesas do feature significant numbers of species and rich biodiversity. However, systematically measuring flora and fauna on nine general habitat categories inside dehesas from wood pastures to water bodies, it was shown that abundance and species richness varied widely and that the proportion of shared species was low among the different micro-habitats. The most important conclusion was that the high diversity of the dehesas depended on the coexistence within the farms of habitats, which, although marginal, seemed to harbour a disproportionally high number of species compared to the small areas out of the whole which they occupied. This might mean that it is, in fact, not the dehesas as such, but rather the wilder fringes which support their value as natural reserves. (Moreno et al. 2016). In short: heterogeneity seems to be the key to the high biodiversity attached to the dehesas.

Another study has also demonstrated this conclusion carried out in 2020 when a group of scientists published an index on how to evaluate threatened biodiversity (Diaz 2020). Lucky for us, they applied their model to the forests of Andalusia comprising the following habitats: Oak forests, other forests, shrubland, grassland and dehesas. The method employed consisted of selecting threatened species according to the official regional red list and evaluating their status according to a weighted index of differences in threat status, sensitivity to disturbance, and their functional role. The final list included 224 species: 81 plants, 76 birds, 31 mammals, 22 anthropods, six reptiles, five amphibians, and three molluscs. Fine-scale maps covering 43,864 km2 were then plotted with the biodiversity index calculated for each threatened species registered. Based on this, the scientists found that the dehesas averaged a conservation value of only 80-150. Albeit more than the oak forest (40-100) and the other forests (50-110), the best results were found in shrubland and grassland bordering the dehesas and yielding 200-250.

From Passive to Active Rewilding

Pondering the diverse habitats– dehesas, grasslands, shrublands and forests –  it appears they each contribute and have a role to play. However, the quality of biodiversity seems to be attached less to the different habitats and rather the mixture of the different intermingling zones in the sierras – with wilder nature in the inner hills and mountains bordered by semi-open shrub- and grassland, which in their turn is adjoined by the dehesas and the traditional silvopastoral farms on the gently sloping countryside reaching down to the banks of the river and its tributaries. To name one example, the griffon vultures are best served in a semi-open landscape filled with carrion from both wild deer and livestock, while reforestation or monocultures like olive groves hinder their survival in the sierras.

Perhaps, the real solution is to accept that returning to an actively rewilded landscape might solve the problem. What we do know is that the forestry landscape of the sierras in the Southwestern Iberian Peninsula before the neolithic revolution consisted of the fluctuating landscape where wild roaming animals – aurochs, wild horses, boars and numerous top predators such as lions, wolves, bears and lynx roamed the terrain, slowly opening up the woodland to turn it into a semi-open grassland much like the traditional dehesas looked like before they were fenced in, and claimed as private property.

However, advancing active rewilding will involve the traditional Spanish farmers abandoning their role as custodians of the cultural landscape of their dehesas, agroforestry farms, and famed products. On the other hand, though, they may gain a new and less stressful role as custodians of the wild nature currently reclaiming the sierras of Southern Spain.

Unfortunately, as long as agribusinesses and lobbyists support the discourse on cultural landscapes as part of the national heritage, this may not happen, despite the vested interests in nature tourism and the economics of climate adaptation, which should lead the way.

SOURCES:

Prioritising conservation actions towards the sustainability of the dehesa by integrating the demands of society
By Carlos Parra-López, Samir Sayadi, Guillermo Garcia-Garcia, Saker Ben Abdallah, and Carmen Carmona-Torres
In: Agricultural Systems (2023), Vol 206.

Characterization of potential Spanish territories for creating a national network associated with the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems
By Cintya Elizabeth Manrique Anticona, Jos´é Luis Yagüe Blanco, and Isabel Cristina Pascual Castano.
In: Land Use Policy (2023) vol 131.

Origin, Typology and Evolution of the Dehesas in the south of the Iberian Peninsula during the Late Middle Ages (13th to 15th Centuries AD)
By Maria Antonia Carmona Ruiz
In: Landscapes and Resources in the Bronze Age of Southern Spain. RessourcenKulturen(2022) vol 17 (pp. 135-144.

Exploring the causes of high biodiversity of Iberian dehesas: the importance of wood pastures and marginal habitats
By Gerardo Moreno, Guillermo Gonzalez-Bornay, Fernando Pulido, María Lourdes Lopez-Diaz, Manuel Bertomeu, Enrique Juárez & Mario Diaz
In: Agroforestry Systems (2016) vol 90, pp 87-105

Which Factors Favour Biodiversity in Iberian Dehesas?
by Maria Pilar Rodríguez-Rojo, Sonia Roig, Celia López-Carrasco, María Manuela Redondo García, and Daniel Sánchez-Mata
In: Sustainability (2022) Vol 14 no 4

Abandonment and management in Spanish dehesa systems: Effects on soil features and plant species richness and composition
By Reyes Tárrega, Leonor Calvo, Ángela Taboada, Sergio García-Tejero, and Elena Marcos
In: Forest Ecology and Management (2009) 257(2):731-738

The perception of tourism sustainability by stakeholders. The case study of the “Sierra de Aracena y Picos de Aroche” Nature Park, “Sierra Norte de Sevilla” Nature Park and “Sierra de Hornachuelos” Nature Park (Andalusia, Spain)
By María Bahamonde-Rodríguez, F. Javier García-Delgado, and Giedrė Šadeikaitė
In: Land( 2022), vol 11

Land use and land cover dynamics in the dehesa of Sierra Morena Biosphere Reserve (Sierra Norte de Sevilla Natural Park, Spain), 1956-2007
By Juan Manuel Mancilla-Leytón, Antonio Puerto-Marchena and Ángel Martín-Vicente
In: Madera bosques (2017) vol.23 no.2

A comprehensive index for threatened biodiversity valuation
By Mario Díaz, Elena D. Concepción, José L. Oviedo, Alejandro Caparrós, Begoña Á. Farizo, and Pablo Campos
In: Ecological Indicators (2020) Vol 108

Willingness to accept for rewilding farmland in environmentally sensitive areas
By Rubén Granado-Díaz, Anastasio J. Villanueva, and José A. Gómez-Limón
In: Land Use Policy (2022) Vol 116

The post Rewilding or Landscape Conservation in Andalusia? appeared first on Wilder Europe.

In 2050 the world is expected to be carbon neutral. However, this technical effort is insufficient to keep temperatures from overstepping 1.5 °C. We also need to find ways to sequester vast amounts of the carbon emitted in the last 250 years. Hence, the UN also calls for removing an additional 500-1000 Gt of atmospheric CO2 already let loose and storing it on the planet between now and 2100 (equivalent to 7-14 Gt CO2 per year). To put this in perspective, the world’s forests already sequester 7.6 Gt per year. The need and obligation to enhance our current level of sequestration mean that we might have to double up the capacity of our forests.

One way to achieve this goal is by doubling the area of forests, meadows and extensive grasslands as of now! Another is to “animate the carbon cycle” and harvest an additional sequestration of an average of 6.5 Gt C worldwide.

While turning carbon neutral takes time and costs CO2 on the way when building windmill parks or nuclear installations, the beauty of the forest solution is that it might be orchestrated overnight. We just have to stop using considerable tracts to grow feed for animals and instead rewild them. Simply put,  we may just set the action in motion by planting mixed forests, reclaiming the waterways, and letting large herbivores loose.

The Case for EU

In the EU, one opportunity is offered by the widespread agricultural abandonment suffered on marginal lands and a proposed shift towards wildlife ranching. In the EU 2020, 40 % of the total land is actively managed by farmers. To this should be added 15%, which is already either not worked or entirely abandoned. Furthermore, an additional 3 % of the total agricultural land in the EU is projected to be abandoned before 2030, adding 10 to 20 mill ha to this pool. As much of this land is farmed to feed animals, the only consequence will be the need to shift the European diet from north to south towards a more wholesome Mediterranean version (more vegetables and less meat).

Rewilding Mediterranean Rangelands

Much of this abandoned farmland lies in Southern and Eastern Europe (with Spain expected to suffer the most due to climate changes and desertification).

Although large wild herbivores and carnivores were traditionally abundant in the Mediterranean landscapes, the Roman Empire led to a near-complete extermination opening up for domesticated livestock to fill the niche in most of Western Europe. Until the dissolution of the fascist regimes in Spain and Portugal, these more traditional agricultural systems continued to favour extensive forms of pastoral production, including the care for extensive and semi-feral livestock, such as the large flocks of wild horses in Galicia and Northern Portugal, which used to roam there. Also, transhumance had a role to play in terms of biodiversity, disseminating seeds across vast stretches of land and regions . However, after entering the EU, large-scale industrialised farming was furthered, leading to the abandonment of more marginal lands, thus emptying the landscapes of animals and people. One consequence has been the more widespread and intense wildfires releasing copious amounts of carbon as well as causing severe losses of human lives and property.

What is needed?

• A courageous new policy adopting an active trophic rewilding policy
• A new ethos regarding nature conservation – from protection to ecosystem restoration
• An increased supply of animals – the need to develop ambitious and international breeding programmes of “pools” of wild animals stemming from free-range flocks
• Reorientation of subsidies from production to ecosystem restoration

The Return of the Ice Age?

One of the questions raised by the rewilding movement is whether this paradigm implies a return to long-bygone landscapes or whether the project is future-oriented. Without a doubt, the latter is the case as rewilding foremost works to reconstitute and reconstruct robust self-regulating ecosystems where nature and the remains of our threatened biodiversity may once more flourish.

However, the question is not mute. We shall never return to any world that was. Nevertheless, we may still use history to inspire us to imagine what kind of landscapes we might encounter in the future, if rewilding became a dominant and preferred paradigm – as should be the case because of its climatic advantages. Might it be a version of the Pleistocene landscape before, during, and immediately after the Last Ice Age? Or – as is it more likely – might a version of the Early Medieval Landscape be the next vision forEuropean Nature?

To ponder this question, we must explore some aspects of what took place in nature and landscape during and after the Roman Empire.

A Return of the Early Medieval Landscape?

“There is a third kind, consisting of animals called URI. These are a little below the elephant’s in size and have the appearance, colour, and shape of a bull. Their strength and speed are extraordinary; they spare neither man nor wild beast which they have espied. With much effort, the Germans hound them into pits and kill them. The young men harden themselves with this exercise and practice this kind of hunting. Those who have slain the greatest number of them and can produce their horns publicly to serve as evidence receive great praise. But not even when taken very young can the animals be rendered familiar to men and tamed. The size, shape, and appearance of their horns differ much from the horns of our oxen. These they anxiously seek after, to bind the tips with silver that they may be used as cups at their most sumptuous entertainments. ”
(Caesar De Bello Gallico, chapter XXVIII)

The period of megafauna was undoubtedly the Pleistocene, which ended 11.700 years ago. It included aurochs, wild boars, giant deer, elephants and massive predators. This assembly of animals roamed the Mediterranean when food for herbivorous animals was widely available in the forests along coastlines and rivers whose estuaries, marshes and lagoons would serve as grazing for these large animals. Although extinction began long before the Roman Empire flourished, the Mediterranean forests’ destruction followed in the Roman Army’s footsteps with its insatiable need for energy, metal, building resources, timber for shipbuilding, animals for entertainment and leather for shoes. In this connection, hides from the “Urus” – the auroch – were especially sought after. Thus, a riot broke out among the Frisians, who were obliged to pay their taxes in hides, when the Roman governor in AD 28 suddenly demanded hides from aurochses. The Frisians, who could not meet these demands, suffered forced requisitions of cattle, confiscations of land and enslavement of the families of defaulters, which eventually led to rebellion an mass slaughter.

Thus, judging by Caesar, the Romans not only demanded their hides as tribute, they also tried to domesticate the aurochses. And even though Caesar denied the feasibility, we may judge by the size of Roman cattle that they probably succeeded again and again in mingling domesticated cattle with the grand wild beasts roaming the ancient landscape.

However, these breeding programs fell apart after the Fall of the Roman Empire, leaving the Early Medieval People in a wilder landscape with their small and insignificant animals. At the same time, the diminished flocks of aurochses retreated to the peripheries of Eastern Europe to become extinct as a distinct wild variety in the 16th – 18th century. We do know, however, that more or less semi-feral cattle and horses continued to roam the landscapes. (Hence, it never involved much ingenuity to back breed a passable version of the aurochs as part of the so-called Taurus Project).

To sum up, most European peasants in the Early Middle Ages moved through a vastly different and much more animated landscape than ours, in which wild horses and aurochses mingled freely with semi-feral flocks of cattle and horses. Once again, Europe was home to a much more extensive pastoral economy. Granted, the large areas of the loess landscape in present-day Eastern France and Western Germany continued to be farmed intensively. Incidentally, this landscape became the core of the Carolingian world and the recreation of the West Roman Empire in 800, when Charlemagne was crowned in Rome. However, the traditional pre-Roman agricultural system was once again dominant on the peripheries. 

How should we imagine this landscape? At its core was one or more independent semi-pastoral peasant holdings consisting of intensively cultivated fields near the farm, surrounded by more or less extensively used pastoral grounds – meadows, grazing forests and more remote wildernesses. We know, this landscape came about in the sixth century following tumultuous climatic and political upheavals, widespread cooling in the north and the devastation caused by the Justinian plague. And we know the next four to five hundred years gave the European nature and landscape a much-needed breathing space following the intense overexploitation caused by the Roman Imperial army and administration. 

Perhaps, we might be inspired by these events?

Karen Schousboe

SELECTED SOURCES

Abandoned Farmland: Past Failures or future opportunities for Europe’s Green Deal? A Baltic case-study
By Kristine Valujeva, Mariana Debernardini, Elizabeth K. Freed, Aleksejs Nipers, and Rogier P.O. Schulte
In: Environmental Science & Policy (2022) Vol 128, pp 175-184

Addressing challenges for large-scale trophic rewilding
By Deli Saavedra, Néstor Fernández, and Jens-Christian Svenning
In: Journal for Nature Conservation (2023) Vol 73, 26382, p. 2)

Animating the Carbon Cycle: How Wildlife Conservation Can Be a Key to Mitigate Climate Change
Oswald J. Schmitz and Magnus Sylvén
In: Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development (2023) Vol 65, No 3, pp 5-17

Dynamics of rural landscapes in Marginal Areas of Northern Spain: Past, Present, and Future
José Antonio González Díaz, Rafael Celaya, Felipe Fernández García, Koldo Osoro, Rocío Rosa García
In: Land Degradation and Development.
(2019) Volume 30, Issue2, pp. 141-150

Grasslands and scrublands in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula: Silvopastoral systems and nature conservation
By Fransisco Javier Silva-Pando, Maria José Rozados Lorenzo & María Pilar González Hernández
In: Pasture Landscapes and Nature Conservation. By Bernd Redecker, Werner Härdtle, Peter Finck, Uwe Riecken, Eckhard Schröder
Springer Verlag 2002

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Open Access

Trade-offs between passive and trophic rewilding for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning
By Andrew J. Tanentzap a, Georgia Daykin a 1, Thea Fennell a 1, Ella Hearne a 1, Matthew Wilkinson b, Peter D. Carey a, Ben A. Woodcock c, Matthew
In: Biological Conservation (2023) Vol 281

The post Rewilding – the Natural Climate Solution appeared first on Wilder Europe.

But still nearer to the dawn and the abode of Eurus, in the flowering bosom of the earth lies a region upon which the sun, still mild in its first rising shines lovingly, for its fire is in its first age, and has no power to harm. There, a tempered heat and a favouring climate impregnate the soil with glowers and rich greenery. This little retreat harbours the scents, produces the spices, contains the riches and delights of all the regions of the world. This little retreat harbours the scents, produces the spices, contains the riches and delights of all the world. In this soil ginger grows… The crocus pales beside the purple hyacinth, and the scent of mace competes with the shoots of cassia. Amid the flourishing wilderness strays a winding stream, continually shifting its cours, rippling over the roots of trees and agitated by pebbles, the swift water is borne murmuring along. In this well-watered and richly coloured retreat, I believe, the first man dwelt as a guest – but too brief a time for a guest. Nature created this grove with affectionate care; elsewhere the wilderness sprang up at random.
(From: Bernardus Silvestris: cosmographia, verse 317 ff. Translated by Nigel Palmer 1994)

The essential source to grasp the Christian approach towards nature is Genesis, which came in two Biblical versions – the Priestly and the Yahwist accounts, with the former recounting the story of the creation of the world and the latter focusing on Adam and Eve and The Fall of Man.

Of these two approaches, the Yawist account of the history of Adam and Eve (Gen., II –III) fired up the imagination in the first millennium, while the Priestly account of the creation of the world (Gen., I, 1 -27) became more prominent in the 11th century to peak in the 12th and 13th centuries. This shift in theological priorities coalesced with the 12th-century Renaissance, the growth of academic institutions and the early pursuit of scientific studies.

Late Antiquity and Early Christianity

As usual, thinkers and learned people in the Early Middle Ages took their point of departure in the inherited wisdom from Antiquity. The primary input came from Empedocles via Plato and Aristoteles and was “scientific” in that it focused on the interplay between the four elements: Earth, water, air, and fire. Later, Aristoteles added the fifth aether. The world in Antiquity was created and continuously recreated from these ingredients. In the writings of Plato, another common denominator was the Demiurge: The Craftsman, Opifex, or Artifex, who forged the world. Plato argued in Timaeus that creation was an emanation based on pre-existing ideas that proceeded from the pre-existent, chaotic and eternal “matter” to become the four elements.

However, the Christian cosmogeny differed from these Platonic and Aristotelian models in so far as Christian thinking was obliged to ponder the text – Genesis. To some extent, Plato was more straightforward to accommodate than Aristoteles with his studies of the physical realities of the world. Yet both foundered upon closer Christian inspection. Filtered through this Christian lens, creation was obliged to be considered a process which took place ex nihilo, “out of nothing”. Also and according to Scripture, recreation would occur as for-ordained in Revelation. Further, the transcendent God speaking (the Word of God) performed this creation and recreation. Thus, while early Christian thinkers leaned towards Neo-Platonism more than Aristotelian thought, they were nevertheless more interested in explicating Genesis than aligning this text with the thinking of pagan philosophers.

The early tradition

In the 1st century AD, Jewish philosophers such as Philon of Alexandria pondered the conundrum concerning “ex nihilo”. Later, in the fourth century, Basileus the Great and St. Ambrose wrote theological exegetical works to explain how the world came into being. At the same time, Basileus expounded the text of Genesis in nine Lenten sermons in Greek – later translated by Eustathius – and St. Ambrose wrote the first poetic rendition of an Hexaemeron in Latin, a written exposé concerning the biblical narrative in Genesis. Later, St. Augustine of Hippo, Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede built on these texts in their commentaries. Curiously, the Greek title of the genre, Haxaemeron – or the six-day’s work – was kept. The Latin equivalent – De operibus sex dierum was never in common use.

The Vienna Genesis

A common denominator for these texts was the focus placed on the Yahwist version of Genesis, emphasising the creation of mankind and what followed. As opposed to this, the story of the creation of the physical world – the light and darkness, heaven and earth, sea and land, plants and animals- was largely ignored.

One of the earliest illuminated manuscripts solely touching upon Genesis, the Vienna Genesis from the 6th century, is an exemplary illustration of how the story of Adam and Eve was placed in the foreground. The Greek manuscript must be characterised as Byzantine. The preserved part opens with the creation of Adam and Eve, the Fall, and the Expulsion. Another, albeit only fragmentarily preserved manuscript, The Cotton Genesis, is complicated to compare since it was burnt to ashes in the Cotton-fire, and only a few fragments are preserved. Furthermore, these two manuscripts appear to be unique. A corresponding type of manuscript has not been found in Latin.

As opposed to this, the West favoured manuscripts paraphrasing Genesis, but in the vernacular. An early example is the so-called Caedmonian or “Old English Genesis” in the Bodelian (Bodelian Library,ms Junius 11). Other examples are the Millstatt Genesis in Old Middle High German (Kärntner Landesarchic, MS 6/19), The Second Wiener Genesis (Österichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod, 2721) and finally, the Egerton Genesis in the British Library (MS Egerton 1894). Apart from the late Egerton Genesis, the focus in these texts was on the narrative of Adam and Eve; as was the case in the great Carolingian Bibles such as the ‘Moutier-Grandval Bible (BL, Add MS 10546), The Vivian Bible (BnF, Lat. 1), The Bamberg Bible (The Staatliche Bibliothek, Msc. Bibl. 1), and Charles the Bald’s Bible (the Bible of San Paolo fuori le mura). Behind the frontispieces of these manuscripts lies a tradition where the story of the Creation begins with the forming and enlivening of Adam and ends with Abel’s murder.

The Creation of the World

In the 11th century, however, the Priestly version of Genesis superseded the Yahwist, emphasising the actual creation of the natural world. One result was an explosion in the “new” genre of the Hexaemeron. Scholars have registered more than 200 different hexamera, most of which can be dated to the 12th or early 13th century when Aristotle was rediscovered, and the scientific exploration of the physical world became the talk of the town in academic circles at the burgeoning universities. It seems as if all the great philosophers and theologians in the 12th and 13th centuries participated in a hexameral community. Among many, Adelard of Bath, William of Conches, Hugh of Amiens, and Thierry of Chartres might be mentioned. The latter’s work inspired Peter Abelard, when Heloise asked for such a text to inspire her congregation of nuns at the Paraclete (The Expositio in Hexaemeron). Other famous examples were the Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris, the prosimetrum De Planctu Naturae by Alan de Lille (ca. 1160-1170) and the Architrenius of John of Hauville from c. 1184-85. A late example is the Hexaemeron of the Dane, Anders Sunesøn, writing in Paris and Lund ca. 1200. However, just as many may be mentioned demonstrating the proliferation of the fashion.

One of the central questions raised by this literature was how to grapple with the historicity of Genesis, so to speak, “the Truth of What Happened”. Increasingly, Genesis should not be understood as a neoplatonic or allegorical text but as a scientific and literal text. At this point, the 12th-century scientists and theologians (as said) became profoundly inspired by Aristoteles, which meant that following the initial creation ex nihilo, a manifestation of a force of nature, the “vis naturae”, entered the equation. In general, all had to agree that what happened during the six days of creation was the manifestation of God’s Will. However, when God had established the nature of things, the forces of nature were believed to keep the wheels running. And what’s more, out of this “plasma”, even new forms of beings and animals might come into being. For instance, Abelard wrote of how mules must be considered a new animal and how the phoenix might be reborn out of flames. However, the different writers of hexaemera did not agree on when this “vis” became operable – when creatio stopped, and generatio took over. Thus, Christian de Thierry thought the “vis” worked its way after the first day, while Abelard was more reticent. On the other hand, the latter wrote polemically on the physical determinism of the astrologers, as did Anders Sunesøn. Definitely, the jury was still out.

In the first half of the 12th century, these questions led to vitriolic debates among the “old” and the “new” theologians concerning the status which should be given to this “vis”. The problem was that with this new perspective, the creative force of science came afore to the detriment of the role of God and humans – thus challenging the need for redemption and salvation, and – not least – the church’s central role. If nature ruled the roast, the question was, which role played humans? This question was central to the great schismatic debates between Pierre Abelard and the old theologians in 1120 at Soissons, when in the end, he was obliged to throw his book into the flames.

The art of creation 1000–1200

With Chartres and Paris as the intellectual hotspots, an intellectual war raged among a group of people reaching from north to south. Later, at the end of the 13th century, the more public pictorial and artistic framing of the story of Genesis came to reflect this debate, spreading the idea among the common man that Adam and Eve did not just live through their Creation, Fall, and Expulsion. Simply put, setting the scene led to a popular reimagination of the landscape as Paradise.

Evidence of this was uncovered in 1999 when an art historian, C. Rudolph, published a preliminary inventory of illuminations in Biblical manuscripts. While only seven extant images telling the Priestly version of Genesis can be counted in the 11th century, this grew to 61 in the 12th century and 233 from the 13th century. Also, these many illuminations came from France, Germany, England, Italy and elsewhere. And some of these images did indeed create a new and more scientific approach towards Genesis, such as the one presented in the so-called Caedmonian from c. 1000, which shows the creation of the earth on a double page (pages 6 and 7).  However, the endless fascination of the story of Adam and Eve did not falter. It continued to dominate in early wall paintings, such as those preserved in Hardham in Sussex, England, and Råsted Church in Jutland, Denmark, both from the early 12th century. However, at the end of the Middle Ages, the foreshortened motifs of these murals were expanded into pictorial cycles, such as the one from Fjanefjord in Denmark, depicting the creation of the physical world, the story of Adam and Eve and ending with Judgement Day (ca. 1500).

One of the early pictorial cycles containing this double or triple set of motifs may be found on the south portal of the Cathedral in Uppsala in Sweden, from the end of the 13th century. After a fire in 1204, the Cathedral was moved to a new location, where building began in 1272 in the French Gothic style. We know the design was supervised by a French master builder, Étienne de Bonneuil, who was invited to Uppsala according to a promissory from 1287. The frieze on top of the south portal dates from this time and shows in six roundels the creation ex nihilo leading up to the creation of Adam and Eve. Below, friezes set into the sides of the portal tell the story of the Fall and the Expulsion. Here, we find one of the earliest pictorial renditions of the more “scientific” part of Genesis, which grabbed the attention of the intellectual elite in the 12th and 13th centuries.

The 12th-century Renaissance and the reinvention of natural beauty

Out of the Hexaemera grew another genre, the cosmographies or natural histories of the high Middle Ages. One of these early works is the Cosmographia from ca. 1150 by Bernardus Silvestris, who wrote a poem about nature pleading with Noys – the divine providence – to foster a more well-ordered and pleasing form of chaos. In the first book, the megacosmos, Silvestrus told us how the hierarchies of angels, the heavens and the world’s disposition took place and what this world looked like before man entered the equation in the second book. Part of this natural world is a collection of 118 lines listing no less than 126 plants, echoing the Nature of Things by Lucretius, the Natural History of Pliny, the Etymology of Isidore and other lexicographic works of Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. This catalogue of plants gives us a hint of how the natural world was viewed.

According to Silvestris, plants could be divided into three parts: the forest’s trees, the fruit-bearing trees and the aromatic trees as they might be found in their natural habitats. Further, among the trees listed were a number of thorny bushes, perhaps reflecting the natural landscape around the Loire. After the description of the trees followed a catalogue presenting the herbs leading to the description of Paradise quoted above, thus mixing the genres – the scientific report and the poetic rendition of the locus amoenus, the pleasance par excellence (Curtius 1953).

Although Silvestris’ work is not a full-blown Natural History such as those compiled by Albertus Magnus and Bartholomaeus Anglicus a hundred years later, it offers us a vivid picture of the Christian landscape, which he and his contemporaries saw when looking through the tinted glasses of the texts in his library. With him, we envision a remote wilderness barely commanding comments serving as background to a bucolic idyl offering running water, a pleasant climate and a well-stocked medicinal cabinet.

In this perspective, humans were recruited as partners of God, participating in upholding the earth as a microcosm of the Divine universe. By ploughing, sowing, and harvesting the land and tending to the forests, the meadows, and fishing waters, the natural and formed world became the symbol of the reclaimed Paradise, the locus amoenus (the beautiful place as venerated by in Antiquity by Theocritus, Vergil, and later Horace and Servius).

Thus, in a letter to the King of Cyprus from 1267, Thomas Aquinas wrote about where to build a city. “The site should claim the inhabitants by its beauty”(1), he wrote in 1267, adding that the best setting for beauty would be running waters through meadows and surrounded by forests, mountains, and groves.

Finally, it should be mentioned how this rediscovery also included the creation of deer parks and gardens as places for pleasure. The idea of these loci amoeni feasted on the antique poets and was widely adopted in the Middle Ages.

The Locus Horribilus and the sacralisation of the countryside

In classical literature, the untamed wilderness did not figure prominently. The Romans considered the wilds a place for harvesting ferocious predators or feral people for performances intended to stage the death and destruction of precisely this wilderness. While hunting in a Northern pre-Christian context was considered an animistic or shamanic movement through a continuum of more or less cultivated wild spaces, the Romans, copying the Greeks, considered wild animals as totems of the Gods (the owl of Minerva or the peacock of Juno). Foremost, though, they considered these animals to be either domesticated or obliterated. Some “monsters” existed, such as the Pan (faun), the Silenus (satyr), the Pegasus and the Basilisk. However, the medieval phantasies of dragons and other terrifying monsters were not a particularly prominent part of the very civilised world of the Mediterranean.

Not so in the Christian world, where Jesus followed in the footsteps of Elias and famously spent 40 days in the desert among the wild animals. Here, the prophets and saints lived in the mountains, caves and wastelands in Late Antiquity. Later, the impassable forests were added to the list in the Middle Ages. These were known as the loci horribiles, where saintly men were meant to brave the wilderness of the monsters, demons, ferocious predators and their own hearts. “And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes”, claimed Isaiah (Isaiah 35.7, KJV). The advice was adamant. Those places were not only designed as temptations. Rather, the vast wildernesses were intended to be conquered, inhabited and cultivated, in short civilised. Numerous large monastic institutions founded throughout Europe and in the early and high Middle Ages were at their core the “invention” of a wayward hermit and saint.

In the High Middle Ages, however, the Cistercians entered this project with singular gusto and a renewed fanaticism establishing abbeys in rural hinterlands. These Cistercian foundations were known for their economic drive. As such, they became the crucibles for new agricultural technologies, such as hydraulic engineering. Surrounded by broad fields, irrigated meadows, running canals and managed forests with roaming studs of horses, the Cistercian Abbeys became favourite darlings of the European royal families, and even royal mausoleums such as the Alcobaça Monastery in Portugal. At the end of the 13th century, the Cistercian houses numbered more than 500 and might be found from Trondheim in the north of Norway (Tautra Abbey) to Sicily (the Vallebona). Vallebona means the “good valley”.

The Sacred Sites

However, in the interstices between the pagan (Germanic and Norse) ideas of landscapes and the Roman and Christian civilised and well-ordered cities, villas, villages and monasteries fell a multitude of so-called sacred sites. Marked out in the terrains by trees, springs, groves or islands – they constituted more or less vaguely remembered places where Heaven and Earth were destined to meet. As such, they were either desecrated or confiscated for Christian purposes by hermits or local religious people bent on converting the populace. Marked out by chapels, altars, crosses and later crucifixes, they often retained the spiritual connotations of whatever religious fervour was associated with the place. Also, these places were often staged as the endpoint of pilgrimages. Sought by pilgrims flocking to experience the mystique and spiritual enthusiasm attributed to the site led to the construction of the wider European network of paths leading to salvation.

FOOTNOTES:

(1) Quoted in: Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century, By Clarence Glacken. London 1967, p. 270

SOURCES:

European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages
By Ernest Curtius
Princeton University Press 1953

Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth Century: New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West
By M. D. Chenu. (Ed. and trans. J. Taylor and L. K. Little)
Chicago University Press, 1968

Hic Homo Formatur: The Genesis Frontispieces of the Carolingian Bibles
By Herbert L. Kessler
In: The Art Bulletin (1971), Vol. 53, No. 2 (Jun., 1971), pp. 143-160

Creatio mundi: Darstellungen der sechs Schöpfungstage und naturwissenschaftliches Weltbild im Mittelalter
By Johannes Zahlten
Series: Stuttgarter Beiträge zur Geschichte und Politik)
Klett-Cotta 1979

Plant names in the Comographia of Bernardus Silvestris.
By Nigel F. Palmer.
In: Scientiarum Historia 20 (1994) 1-2, pp 39–56)

Inventing Medieval Landscapes. Senses of Place in Western Europe.
Ed by John Howe and Michael Wolfe
University Press of Florida 1996

In the Beginning: Theories and images of creation in Northern Europe in the twelfth century
By Conrad Rudolph
In: Art History (2003) Vol 22

The Place of Nature in Twelfth-Century Spirituality
By Sara Ritchey
First published: 09 July 2009

Authority and Imitation. A Study of the Cosmographia of Bernard Silvestris
By Mark Kauntze
Series: Mittellateinische Studien und Texte, Volume: 47
Brill 2014

The post The Medieval Landscape as a Pastoral Christian Cosmos appeared first on Wilder Europe.

For most of the Middle Ages, natural forces spelled numerous disasters in the form of floods, water erosions, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, storms and droughts. In this perspective, landscapes were experienced as constantly shifting, feeding a sense of awe and fright among people suffering at the visible hand of the invisible God, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans [1].

While the Roman landscape in Antiquity had been considered an orderly construction with a peaceful centre – the villa surrounded by civilisation – the landscape of the Early Middle Ages in Northern Europe was univocally sensed as a scary place into which Christian athletes and ascetic monks might seek to find solace amid empty wildernesses, deserts, caves or among wild beasts in the arenas. Later, we may even find their ancestors battling dragons while trying to reclaim a final resting place [2].

We get a sense of this pervading idea of constantly shifting baselines in the writings of the Venerable Bede (672-735) in his famous description of the sparrow, which finds a brief moment of solace in the warm hall during winter.

Thereafter, another of the king’s chief men, approving of his wise words and exhortations, added: “The present life of man upon earth, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the house wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your ealdormen and thegns, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter into winter again. So, this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before, we know nothing at all. Therefore, if this new doctrine tells us something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.” By Divine prompting, the other elders and king’s counsellors spoke to the same effect [3].

The Landscape in Beowulf

Another take on this “frightening” landscape may be found in the 7th-century poem Beowulf, where descriptions point out the liminal character of the outlying landscape.

At the centre is the civilised built compound featuring a grand mead hall, Heorot [4]. Attached to this dwelling are the living quarters of the king and queen and likely other buildings such as stables, a baking house and a smithy. Access to this settlement is a stone-paved road leading from the shore to the hall. In between lies the “land” through which the shoreguard guides them. The text says that Heorot shine “ofer landa fela” v. 311 (over many lands). Further, this land is bordered, fitted with a “landgemycu, literally “land-boundaries” (v. 209b) located at the cliffs – the “brimclifu, or the “beorgas steape” Later, we are told that the monster Grendel is a “mære maercstapa” – a renowned transgressor or borderliner (literally one who steps over the mark).

Three other words in the Beowulf-text expand on this cosmos with a dwelling surrounded by land and bordering on the sea.

One is -hlið, which is usually translated as (steep)slope. The word is also found in Old Norse (Old Icelandic: hlið, Danish and Norwegian: li(d). Further, the suffix may be found in a series of placenames all over Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon England and denotes a hill or mountainside ending abruptly in a hollow or dead ground at the foot. In the poem, Grendel emerges from a misthleuðum, a damp and spooky hollow of mist. After he is fatally wounded, the monster returns to his fenleoðu, the hole in the marshes, fens. Another topographic word, -hop, also feeds our imagination with its connotation of a place outside the well-ordered world. In Beowulf, we meet the suffix as in fen-hop, an enclosure in the fens or marshes, also known in Kent and Essex. The etymology is probably “hof”, an enclosed “farm”, or “dwelling”; a fen-hop likely refers to a dwelling on higher ground in the marshes. Possibly, it means the same as a wharf, the artificial mounds erected in the marshes by Frisians. Indeed, “remote and secret” outliers in the landscape. Finally, a third topographic word, gelad, also touches upon this watery, marshy landscape. In old English, the word refers to a course, a way, a lode, a watercourse or simply a water crossing. We may imagine that the fen-gelad and the uncuð gelad in Beowulf mean difficult water crossings in the marshy fens.

To sum up: the world of Beowulf seems to consist of a sea, a marshy and misty foreland filled with monsters and challenging to traverse, and – finally – ending in a hollow beneath a steep cliff. On top of this overhang, a paved road leads inland (through the land) to Heorot, the shining hall of Hrodgar.

The layout of this land reminds us of the cosmology of the Norse people, as do other settlements.

Gudme – Cosmology in the Landscape

In Scandinavia, several places are called Gudme, Gudum, Gudsbjerg, Gudhjem (Gudhem), or Gudumlund. Meaning “the home, the mountain or the forest of God”, such places are known from both Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

In Funen in Denmark, in the Lundenborg area, a central place from the Late Roman Iron Age was excavated 9n the 1980s and 90s, documenting how people perhaps planned the location to be a visual rendition of the Germanic cosmology. At the centre of a large settlement estimated to consist of 40-50 farms lay a great hall, unique for its times as to its size and construction. In and outside the hall, more than ten hoards have been excavated consisting of Roman gold and silver coins, golden neck- and armrings, and the finished product, bracteates and other golden jewellery revealing Gudme’s character as a ceremonial and ritualised centre recasting and repurposing imported golden objects to prestige gifts visualising the cosmology and beliefs of the people living at or travelling to Gudme. Part of this cosmology is marked out by the three hills located to the north, south and west of Gudme, Gudbjerg, Albjerg and Galbjerg, meaning, respectively, the hill of the gods, the hill of the shrine and (likely)the hill of sacrifice (of galtr = boars) or enchantments (galdr). To the west was Gudme lake, fed from local springs. From northeast to southwest Gudme and its main burial ground was skirted by the river Tange, and to the east lay Lundeborg with its sheltered landing place, the gate to the Home of the Gods.

Perhaps, Gudme was a reimagination of Asgaard, a symbolically invested site mirroring the fabled “home of the Gods”? Featuring Idavoll – the high ground – with its hallowed centre with the great hall and the additional buildings, it may have mirrored Gladsheim with Hlidskjalf (Odin’s high seat), Vingolf reserved for the women, and Vallhall reserved for the (slain) warriors. Also, the smith, with his central work, cut out transforming ingots to bracteates were located at the centre. At the back to the west would have been Urd’s and Mimer’s Wells, while the entrance to the compound would have been through the burial ground along Tange Å to the southeast. May this have been understood as Niflheim or Hel? Anyway, the entrance into the “Home of the Gods”, Gudme, is believed to have passed through here from Utgard (Lundagaard) – the equivalent of the outer world of Grendel and his mother.

FEATURED PHOTO:

Lien (the hlið) bordering the foreland and the shore at Slettestrand on the Jammerbugt in Denmark © Schousboe 2021

NOTES:

[1] The expression was introduced by the German Theologian, Rudolph Otto (1869-1937), to describe a basic concept in the phenomenology of religion, that is the awe-inspiring discovery of the numinous.

[2] This fate was part of the so-called translation of St. James from Jerusalem to Santiago. After his decapitation in AD44 in Jerusalem, the story was told in the 9^th century that the Apostle was returned to Galicia on a rudderless boat. After reaching land, his apostles had to fight a dragon, tame a herd of wild oxen and overcome a local king bent on destroying them and their cargo. Luckily the bridge broke down between the king’s wilderness and the civilised resting-place they found under the “Marbled Arches”. See Translating the Relics of St. James. From Jerusalem to Compostela. Ed. By Antón Pazós. Routledge 2017.

[3] Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Book 2.13 (ed. Lapidge, SC 489, 364). Translation:
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England, A Revised translation with Introduction, Life, and Notes by A. M. Sellar. London, George Bell & Sons, 1907.

[4] The “Beowulf”-Poet’s Vision of Heorot. By Karl P. Wentersdorf (2007). In: Studies in Philology, Vol. 104, No. 4 pp. 409-426

SOURCES

Scandinavian ‘Central Places’ in a Cosmological Setting
By Lotte Hedeager
In: Central Places in the Migration and Merovingian Periods. Papers from the 52nd Sachsensymposium, Lund, August 2001

Gudme-Lundeborg on Funen as a model for northern Europe?
By Lars Jørgensen, Copenhagen
The Gudme-Gudhem Phenomenon: papers presented at a workshop organized by the Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology (ZBSA), Schleswig, April 26th and 27th, 2010 / [ed] O. Grimm & A. Pesch, Neumünster: Wachholtz , 2011

Gudme on Funen: a central sanctuary with cosmic symbolism?
By Olof Sundqvist
IN: The Gudme-Gudhem Phenomenon: papers presented at a workshop organized by the Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology (ZBSA), Schleswig, April 26th and 27th, 2010
Neumünster: Wachholtz , 2011, p. 63-76

The post The Frightening Landscape in Northern Europe in the Early Middle Ages appeared first on Wilder Europe.

In a geopolitical sense, Europe was and is a peculiar appendix. Turning a physical map of the Northern hemisphere upside down, we cannot fail to see the peculiar promontory which Europe constitutes. As a mushrooming appendix, it crowns Eurasia, the largest continental landmass on earth. Traditionally and for historical reasons, we are used to considering Europe a continent. Nonetheless, this is, at best, an approximation fabricating the idea that Europe is something apart. Moreover, we lose the ability to see its basic geographical properties, which form a genuinely watery seascape.

To the South, surrounded by the Caspian, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean and to the North, The Baltic, the North and the Norwegian Seas, Europe sort of falls into the Atlantic Ocean. Finis terrae west of Lisboa is often considered the westernmost outcrop. However, similar places are located up and down the western coastline, such as the cliff called Finisterra west of Santiago de Compostela, where pilgrims throw their walking sticks into the foaming seas at the exact spot where some believe the remains of St. James landed in his coffin on his rudderless boat. Alternatively, we may point to Land’s End pushing into the Cornwallis Sea from Penwith or the cliffs at Dingle Bay in Ireland. All of these places are truly awe-inspiring. Yet, when we stand on these high cliffs, we are aware of a despairing feeling: we have nowhere further to run. At least, it must have felt like that for some of those wandering people in the Early Middle Ages, who were constantly on the lookout for a place to forge a better future than that offered as slaves to the constant influx of people pulsating through the great steppes of the Eurasian hinterland stretching from China to the Hungarian Plains.

We know from the study of historical languages that on these rocky coasts or marshy islets in the tidal wetlands, the olden people sought refuge – Norse, Frisian, British, Gaelic, Breton, Basque and Galician languages formerly spoken widely, came to be preserved as smaller or larger linguistic pockets in these landscapes bordering the Atlantic Seascapes. Here, they are still revered and (occasionally) spoken. One of these languages – Norse – even became the official language in Scandinavia when “cut” off from its common proto-Germanic roots.

Land relief in Europe shows great variation within relatively small areas. To the south hilly uplands coalesce with more mountainous landscapes which move upwards into the Apennines, the Pyrenees, and the Carpathians, circling the Alps to enter the broad, lower-lying northern plains and the fertile belt of loess. An arc of hilly and mountainous uplands also exists along the north-western seaboard, beginning in southwestern Ireland, continuing through Scotland, and up along the fjord-cut spine of Norway and Sweden.

However, each region or territory contains their own complex features with reliefs, plateaus, and river valleys petering out into deltas bordered by tidal shores and marshy fenlands. In general, the geology of Europe is multifarious and complex and exhibits a wide variety of vistas, from the volcanic landscape of Iceland to the deep Russian forests, the rolling plains of Hungary and the river delta of the Danube feeding the Black Sea.

One of the enduring and distinctive qualities of the different European people was their seafaring traditions and seaworthy capabilities. Evolved through centuries, they went by water on rivers, hugging coastlines or sailing out to conquer their neighbours. Forests and mountains would block and create borders, while water would unite.

Historically, this complex and constantly shifting physio-geographical landscape fostered a multivariate background for numerous people staking out a life and a living which eventually would be different from that of their neighbours in the next valley.

The history of Europe is the history of this nearly unfathomable diversity.

READ MORE:

Medieval Landscapes – Two Points of View

The post Medieval Europe in a Physiographical Sense appeared first on Wilder Europe.

Medieval landscapes may be perceived in numerous ways, such as, for instance:

• Geophysical landscapes (how did geography and climate set limits and create opportunities)
• historical landscapes (how did they physically shift through time)
• settled landscapes (how were they settled)
• inhabited landscapes (how were they lived in)
• farmed landscapes (how were they fenced, tilled, harvested and exploited)
• conquered landscapes (how were they subdued and exploited)
• landscapes of pilgrimages, migrations, or exile (how were landscapes set in motion)
• spiritual landscapes (how were landscapes imbued with sacrality)- and many more

Whichever way, we approach these landscapes – or reconstructions thereof – we have to remember that medieval ways of imagining landscapes differed fundamentally from ours.

We tend to think of landscapes as a given — something which is “there” and which we pass through on our way from here to hither. Occasionally, we may meet a changed sense of rhythm, discovering a tree newly felled by a storm or a brook meandering through a new hollow. Or we detect a new project or development on the cusp of being carried out. However, these shifts and modifications do not change that for modern and urbanised people, a landscape is a “thing” – a background, a stage set, a backdrop; something, through which we pass.

Such was seldom the case with medieval landscapes. The reason being that most people would spend most of their life in the open – herding cattle or sheep, tilling the fields, fishing in the rivers, walking to mill or market, going on a pilgrimage or to war, or simply just bivouacking as homeless people somewhere in the great outdoors. Anyone who has ever been out and about for more extended periods of time will know that suddenly, the landscape comes alive, shimmering and shifting with sights, sounds, smells, savours and stings. Here, the surroundings move. We should remember that in the Middle Ages most people were obliged to spend most of their lifetime outdoors.

However, delving into the meaning of such words as landscape and pagus, subtle differences might be detected. While the Germanic and Northern word vividly show the idea of landscapes as something constantly forged out of the great wilderness, the Mediterranean people moved into a more settled landscape, the pagus. At least, the elite envisioned it so.

Two Ideas about Landscape

Thus, the word landscape is impregnated with the etymologies of” land” and” shape”. Both words derive from Proto-Indo-European *lendʰ + *(s)keb via Proto-Germanic, From *landą +‎ *-skapiz, that is *landaskapiz m . As such, the word is found in all modern-day Germanic “languages”, such as English, German, Frisian, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Correspondingly, it may be found in any of these languages’ pre-runners such as Gothic, Old English, Frisian, Saxon, Dutch, High German, and Norse. Remarkably, also, the word seems to more or less mean the same throughout north-western Europe, where landscape means the form the land takes when shaped or wrought in a certain way according to the ideas circulated by people dealing with their land and its outer fringes in the process of becoming.

Intriguingly, though, the corresponding Latin word (with its Romanesque derivations) “pagus” has a more fixed meaning. Derived from Proto-Italic *pāgos, from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂ǵ- – “to fasten, fix”, thus perhaps “a space with fixed boundaries” – it does not involve the idea of land as something which may in any sense be wild or untamed. Rather, this word designates the already formed or shaped landscape, belonging to a “civitas”. Hence, pagus means district, province, region, area, countryside, territory – or simply village. Accordingly, in medieval Latin texts, pagus would foremost mean a settled landscape with hamlets and villages lying outside the city, while a smaller part thereof might be termed pagellus (a wapentake or a hundred) – or just about any delineated inhabited countryside. Derived from this are expressions such as “In Pago Austrasiorum” or “In Pago Allemanorum”, which is the land of the ethnic groups, in this case the Austrasians or Allemans. In classical Latin, Paganus would be a person living there, a rustic or rural person, in short, a peasant (same linguistic root). By derivation, “paganus” also came to mean “pagan”, an unlettered and accordingly heathen or uncivilised (unchristian) person. By the way, such pagans or peasants were best kept at a distance; hence “pago” might also mean a fence erected to protect tilled acres or vineyards – or the boundary between the wild north and the civilised south.

What we “see” here are two different medieval takes on any land – something which is in the process of being created, crafted or taken under the wings of less than sedentary people, as opposed to an already well-structured and organised piece of land consisting of a civilised centre and a somewhat rougher periphery. Lurking outside would be nature and wilderness.

Keeping this in mind, to explore any medieval “landscape” or “pagus” in Northern versus Southern Europe is to investigate the “ideas” or “thinking” behind the specific form which a landscape might take in various locations and corners of Europe and at any time between AD 500-1500. Hence, it stands to reason any overview will be sketchy.

Wishing to unlock how people in the Middle Ages regarded the landscapes in which they lived or moved around, we may proceed in three different ways: one is to study the philosophy and thinking exposed by medieval theologians, philosophers and cartographers who largely inherited the classical idea of what a “pagus” might mean. Another is to delve into the poetic and artistic renditions of landscapes presented in literature and figurative art inside wider Europe, in different contexts and different languages. A third possibility is to “read” the traces of the medieval landscapes as formed by people as they moved through the landscapes and set their mark, “authoring” and “ordering” their surroundings.

SOURCES:

Inventing Medieval Landscapes. Senses of Place in Western Europe.
Ed by John Howe and Michael Wolfe
University Press of Florida 2002

Life in Medieval Landscapes: People and Places in the Middle Ages
By Sam Turner and Bob Silvester
Windgather 2011

The post Medieval Landscapes – Two Points of View appeared first on Wilder Europe.

“There [in the common land] they gathered palm hearts, and asparagus, and oregano and mint… firewood to take to sell in the city for its supply and for the ovens to bake bread”.
From: AGS. Consejo Real, Legajo 24, F. 1, Years: 1505 – 1511. As quoted by Emilio Martin (2019) p. 288

Few years ago, a group of biologists from Madrid [1] carried out a study of wild edible plants in Spain. Based on a review of 46 ethnobotanical and ethnographical sources from Spain, plus fieldwork in some provinces, they were able to register a total of 419 wild plants belonging to 67 families used as vegetables, fruits, beverages and seasoning.

Among vegetables, the most common plant is fennel, wild salads and watercress. Other common herbs are bladder campion, wild asparagus, and Spanish oyster thistles. All of these are still regularly consumed as part of scrambled eggs or omelettes. Or they are used as a green delicatessen in soups eaten during Lent or mixed in stews.

Among fruits, wild blackberries are mentioned the most often, as are the fruits from strawberry trees. But acorns from oak trees are less eaten although they have been used  as an alternative in times of famine. To this group also belong sweet chestnuts and hazelnuts as well as wild apples, pears and plums. On the other hand, the fruits of hawthorn are seldom used today. The same goes for rose hips.

Many wild plants are used in beverages as teas or fusions, while certain wild fruits are commonly used to brew liquors. Also, there is the use of wild herbs as seasoning. Mentioned in the modern sources are oregano, rosemary, thymes of different varieties, mint, laurel, summer savoury, and wild onions. Finally, the survey mentions numerous sweet roots, which children used to search for and chew on as well as wild olives used for oil extraction and capers pickled in vinegar or brine.

From ethnographic studies, it appears that people consider these kinds of foodstuff as a famine food. Informants also refer to how wild plants were gathered and used during the Civil War in the 30s and the next decades. The question is, of course, whether the tradition to utilise such plants and fruits were a common practice in the Middle Ages? Or whether it was considered more of a famine food during this period?

As it happens, there are abundant late medieval sources, which can help us glimpse the role of wild harvests in an earlier time. The background is the events which took place after the conquest of Andalusia following the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212

Andalusia after the Conquest

From 1212 to 1252, the kingdoms of Castille-Leon and Aragon succeeded in conquering Andalusia. Only the Kingdom of Granada continued as a Muslim enclave until 1492. One of the consequences was a massive expulsion and migration of the Muslim population back across the Mediterranean. This led to a severe depopulation, calling for a vigorous effort to repopulate and settle the land, which was busy turning into a wasteland.

Thus, not only the reorganisation and with it the implementation of religious and juridical institutions in the newly conquered lands presented a significant challenge. Also, the repopulation was on the agenda. The influx of new settlers from the north, but also their continued subservience as well as defence demanded a serious deployment of administrative energy, as well as economic resources.

One of the first jobs was to get an overview of the land and its available resources. Hence, inspectors were sent to create registers, the so-called Libros de Repartimientos. Of these several are known. Best studied are the registers from Valencia, Murcia, Sevilla, Loja and Almeria. They tell us not only how the land used to be worked, but also how the new settlers were expected to go about the business.

Thus, the Libro de Repartimiento from Seville registered 258,611 ha land. Of this, 83% was registered as bread-land, 16% was covered in olive groves, and a mere 1% was either irrigated or laid out as wine-yards. Although irrigation-systems may have deteriorated because of the war, it does not seem likely that pre-conquest Andalusia should be thought of as a lush irrigated garden. This was serious farmland intended to grow and harvest the ubiquitous stable diet in the middle ages: grain and olives.

After the initial conquest, the land was partitioned to the people, who had taken part in the military venture. Initially, much of this took place as an equal distribution of land to settlers, who received it as quasi-owners with only a few obligations such as to work the land, keep the buildings intact and take part in the defence against Muslim intruders, invaders and pirates. Measures were also taken to prevent the selling back of the new settlements to absentee landowners or church institutions. Arguably, a new agrarian structure based on freeholding was obviously intended.

The partition thus resulted in a landscape characterised by numerous small and independent peasant-farms. More than 50% of the “new” holdings were small, using up 19% of the available land. Medium-sized estates constituted 47% and took up 68% of the land, while only 44 large estates tilled 12% of the land. All this land was distributed to royal retainers or people, who had taken an active part in the war. Although not all worked the land personally, very many did.

However, above and beyond this land, Andalusia offered ample un-appropriated land, some of which was also arable. This land was divided into so-called alfoces – huge districts, which were allocated to Andalusian town councils, nobles, and clerical orders and churches. Initially, this land was hardly cultivated, but during the 14th and 15th centuries we learn of numerous settlements instigated by such landlords and according to – sometimes – very different principles. Many of these projects aimed at setting apart vast areas for pasturing or – in the south – vineyards.

Also, despite the initial intentions of the royal government, land tended gradually to enter the market, and people with a long-term perspective soon began to acquire land cheaply laying the foundation for their future wealth. Accordingly, by the mid 14th century, the situation had changed dramatically. Now only 8,8% of the estates were small, 56% were medium-sized, while a staggering 35% of all estates were massive; the latter accounting for 67% of the land. One factor contributing was the rules of partible inheritance and communal ownership inside sprawling families. As time went by an initial plot of land simply became too small to nourish such clans. Another challenge was likely posed by the agrarian traditions and technologies, which the new settlers had brought from the North. Not always did they fit the sub-tropic climate of the South. Finally, there seems to have been a serious depopulation going on. We don’t have figures for the region before 1530. At that point an average number of people in the Cordoba region pr. km2 was 9 – 27 with an average of 11. This may likely have been halved around the mid 14th-century crisis, before and after the Black Death. With an average population density of 5 – 6 people pr. km2, and people living in nucleated villages and small towns, large tracts must have been experienced as virtually inhabited. A testament to this is the record of bear-hunting in the Cordoba region as noticed in the 14t century Libro de la Monteria [2].

Further, as the continued threat from the Kingdom of Granada and the Muslim Marinids, rulers of Marocco, took its toll, frontier warfare nourished a belligerent class of nobles, who tended to exploit their influential positions to gain control. The typical endgame was to enclose any un-appropriated or common land lying around waiting to be expropriated and used for cattle ranching. We know that it was mainly the city oligarchs and the administrative elite, who excelled in these practices.[3]

To sum it up: while the first settlers in the 13th century were mostly peasant freeholders, this had shifted at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th century. Now, the land was exploited by large, often absentee, landowners, who were utilising vast tracts of former communal land for cattle ranching and transhumance. In the post-medieval world, this led to the well-known landscape of latifundia, which, nowadays, is even more extreme. As of today, 2% of the landowners in Andalusia – mostly large-scale cooperations – control more than 50% of the land, which is worked by more-or-less illegal North-African immigrants, while 30-40% of the landed population is unemployed (2011-2013) @.

One consequence was, of course, peasant uprisings or revolts, which are mentioned for the years 1463-67, 1471-74, 1503-07 and 1521-1523. Although an incomplete catalogue, it does tell us that living conditions were seriously deteriorating in a period when gradual repopulation was taking place. Another might have been more widespread use of “famine foods” and migration to the rapidly growing cities. We get a good sense of this new landscape in the laments quoted in a document drawn up in 1492 in which we hear that “the rich and powerful men, who were well-connected within the town and many of whom held offices in the town council, had enclosed their farms from boundary to boundary and – as far as the common lands were concerned – prevented the poor peasants from entering with their livestock. And had denied them access to other resources, such as the gathering of asparagus and truffles, the hunting of rabbits and birds, and the fishing of rivers and streams”. [5: p. 479]

Wild Landscapes in Medieval Andalusia

This varied use of the wild landscape in medieval Andalusia was recently explored through the study of the numerous written notarial documents stemming from court-cases and land-arbitrations from the 13th to the 15th century [6].

Through the careful reading of the texts, a fascinating picture emerged of the various species of trees, bushes, and other plants that were exploited by the local communities between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Such texts recorded coppices, bushes, groves in valleys, as well as clusters of poplars, willows and reeds near streams; next to these might be meadows. Also, singular trees and bushes were abundant. Trees mentioned were holly oaks, fig trees, quinces, wild olives, poplars, labdanum trees, kermes oaks, holm oaks, ash, pomegranates, mastic trees, strawberry trees, palms, Iberian pear trees, pine trees and willows.

Another landscape type was the “mata” – a flat expanse covered in bushes of a diverse kind. These might be covered in a mixture of myrtles, brooms, oleanders, caper bushes, shrub oaks, buckthorns, common hawthorns, lesser bulrush, phillyrea, tamarisks and blackberry bushes.

Abundant sources document that these different types of trees, bushes and plants played significant roles as sources for firewood, timber, ash for bleach, soap, tanning. Also, they furnished wood for tools – handles, wheels, lathes, spinning wheels and loams as well as cork used as containers for food (cork has preservative qualities against insects). Canes, reeds, and lesser bulrush were used for mates and seats of chairs, while palms yielded material for hats and baskets, and other plants were used for dying textiles.

Also, meadows were abundant, filled with wild plants, which might play a nutritional or medicinal role. Mentioned in the sources are bishop’s weed, cane, artichokes, lilies, asparagus, branched asphodels, wild beans, fennel, thyme and spurge flax.

Finally, wild fruits and vegetables apparently played an essential role in the Middle ages as they still do today, where wild asparagus, thistles and fennel is collected and used in the local kitchen.

On top of this evidence, we also find the occasional mentioning of flax, hemp, agaves, woad, madder and saffron, which were all harvested and sold as dyestuff in Cordoba.

These vegetal landscapes, which were characteristic of the southern regions of the Crown of Castile from the 13th to the 15th centuries, were of great importance for nearby settlements whose inhabitants used the wild vegetation as a resource for firewood, building materials, tools, dyestuff, tanning materials, as well as wild foods and herbs.

By mapping the different types of vegetation, it becomes clear that Andalusian peasants not only had access to but also exploited a wide-ranging portfolio of landscapes characterised by a very diverse collection of trees, bushes and plants in the uncultivated peripheries of settlements and villages. At least, these resources were available until the expropriation of the commons took off in the mid 15th century as part of the formation of the latifundia, which came to dominate the post-medieval landscape.

Another critical factor, though, is the increased notice these texts took of the diverse trees and plants. While the corpus mentioned three wild plant species in the 13th century, seven were mentioned in the 14th century, but an astounding 39 different species were mentioned in the sources from the 15th century. Does this reflect the numerical increase in written sources? Or might it – perhaps – be a reflection of the increased interest in the use of more marginal resources at a time, when the peasants were increasingly pushed towards economic despondency? And towards the exploitation of local crafts catering for the growing urban markets?

Sources and Notes:

[1] Ethnobotanical Review of Wild Edible Plants in Spain
By Javier Tardío, Manuel Pardo-de-Santayana and Ramón Morales.
Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, Volume 152, Issue 1, 1 September 2006, Pages 27–71

[2] Libro de la Montería: Based on Escorial MS Y.II.19
By Alfonso XI (King of Castile and León)
Ed. and transl. by Dennis P. Seniff
Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, Vol 8., 1983

[3] Peasants in Andalusia during the Lower Middle Ages. The State of the Question in the Kingdom of Seville.
By Emilio Martín Gutiérres
In: Imago Temporis Medium Aevum vol 3, 2009, pp. 249 – 289

[4] Land: Access and Strugles in Andalusia, Spain.
By Marco Aparicio, Manuel Flores, Arturo Landeros, Sara Mingorría, Delphine Ortega and Enrique Tudela
Produced by: Educación para la Acción Crítica (EdPAC); Grupo de Investigación en Derechos Humanos y Sostenibilidad – Cátedra UNESCO de Sostenibilidad de la Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya 2012 -13

[5] The Medieval origins of the Great Landed Estates of the Guadalquivir Valley
By. E Cabrera
In: The Economic History Review, Vol 42, no. 4 pp. 465 – 483.

[6] The Vegetal Landscape of the southwest of Cordoba: a sample of the natural environment of Andalusia in the Late Middle Ages
By Javier López Rider
In: Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies
Published online 09.02.2018

FEATURED PHOTO:

View from the Castle at Almodovar. Notice the “wild” landscape along the river © The Villa Company

The post Wild Edible Plants in Medieval Spain appeared first on Wilder Europe.

In 1973 the French historian Pierre Toubert published a study of the landscape in the hills behind Rome in the Sabinian mountains in the 10th to 12th centuries.  In this study, he first launched the hypothesis that the ubiquitous hilltop villages in Italy were formed ex novo around a nucleus of small towers or “roccas” in this period. Later known as the Toubert-thesis of incastellamento, the castles complete with villages became to be understood as the products of lordly initiatives. As such, they signalled a movement from a more dispersed – and less well-controlled landscape – towards a dominated and controlled world. Where castles in northern Europe were built on the periphery of villages, they tended in a southern European context to be built together with or inside a village.

These small town-like settlements with houses crammed into narrow streets took many forms, depending on whether the castles were built in the centre or – as more often – above on the summit. Often equipped with churches (chapels), deep cisterns, and proto-industrial workshops, these fortified hilltops were part of a significant movement to fortify the landscape. Common to these were their character as venues for agricultural colonisation and expansion bankrolled by lords intent on exploiting the peasants while providing protection for them (and their other investments) against marauders, robbers, and invasions.

The early heartlands for this movement were Province and Italy, but Spain was also enrolled in this new fashion dotting landscapes with castles and subordinated settlements.

Rocca San Silvestro

Initially, one of the best studied of these types of settlements was the Rocca San Silvestro in Tuscany, situated behind the Campiglio Marittima, and constructed around ancient mines exploited by the Etruscans for copper, silver and lead. However, the first signs of a more permanent medieval exploitation stem from the late 10th century, when the count of Gherardesca planned the new settlement on top of the Rocca.

At the centre, he built a walled, noble residence surrounded by quarters for soldiers and servants. To the east of this citadel was a church dedicated to St. Sylvester. In front of this was a cemetery, from which the archaeologists excavated the remains of c. 300 individuals. To the west and north, lay the workshops, where metals were recovered. Below this lay the houses and huts of the miners and their families, probably 200 – 300. Finally, a complete 400 m long wall fitted with towers defended the castle and its village. Today, the site lies in the middle of a museum park where experimental archaeology is also carried out.

Tuscany

Later, however, several micro-studies demonstrated that the classic Toubert–Model was much too inflexible. It appeared that the history of the settlements and landscapes often played out with a different chronology.

According to this new model  – the so-called Tuscany-model voiced by Riccardo Francovich, Marco Valenti and others – the landscapes in Northern and Central Italy witnessed a much more complex devolution: first, the population in the 5th to 6th centuries was severely depleted due to climate deterioration, plague and war. From the end of the 6th century and through to the 8th century, the remaining Roman villas were finally abandoned while the (few) remaining people sought to establish more nucleated settlements – often on higher ground – to avoid the ravages of flooding, land erosion and violence. Next phase consisted of a gradual organisation of these settlements led by seigniorial powers constructing the new 10th century castles. This does not imply that some fortified villages were not founded ex novo, but it does imply this was not necessarily the general case. According to a survey from 2008, of 41 castelli or hilltop villages studied in Tuscany, only a third was created from scaratch.

Systematic large-scale studies of settlements, villages, castles, and landscapes in Tuscany carried out during the last twenty years have led to this conclusion. In a recent overview, Valenti has counted evidence from excavations and studies of 49 castles, three fortified settlements, four isolated houses, five caves, 18 villas, 12 churches, and three open villages covering the whole period from pre-roman times to late medieval.

As part of these excavations, it has been demonstrated that the houses in these Early Medieval villages or settlements were built of perishable material. Only very rarely was stone used and finds show signs of social hierarchy was nearly absent. Parts of these settlements were filled with “Germanic” pit huts to which materials were readily available after the reforestation, which took place after Late Antiquity. Such pit or sunken huts (Grubenhäuser) were built on top of pits dug a metre into the ground and approximately eight four to eight metres in diameters; roofs were supported by posts. It is believed that the practical knowledge of how to built with stones virtually disappeared. Timber palisades often defended these villages or nuclei inhabited by peasant families; however, the social fabric in these villages seems to have been highly homogenous. Excavated fabric, pottery and studies of diets indicate that social heterogeneity was not the order of the day. Also, paleobothanical studies have shown that agriculture was diverse and basically oriented towards subsistence.

In the 8th century, however, these Tuscan villages became more “orderly”: to one end a more distinguished or elite space might be discerned, while at the other end ordinary families kept living as before. One such example can be found at Montarrenti (near Sovicille at Siena), which may have had two defensive timber palisades to defend the upper and lower zones. Sometime between 750 – 850, the upper zone was transformed into an elite space surrounded by a stone wall. The end of this process was the construction of an elite domus consisting of two towers and later a palatio in the 12th century.

In due time these privileged spaces also offered presented some more specialised production facilities – granaries, forges, kilns, grinding structures, special workhouses for butchering and baking, etc. To this would often be added a chapel or church. Archaeological evidence about the distribution and consumption of food has helped to understand the new socially heterogeneous landscape of the 10th century.

One as yet undecided question is what role churches and church buildings played in this process. A preliminary conclusion is that these early medieval villages used churches built to service several of them and that these more often than not were located in between in the settlements and further down in the valleys. Later, the castelli or hilltop villages from the 10th and 11th century were gradually fitted with private chapels, which may well have been used by the villagers too.

Again, though, the picture is muddled. From Lazio, we thus know of the early medieval construction of so-called domuscultae, papal houses and churches, which were constructed in the countryside. Later, however, also these were broken up to be restructured as castelli in the 10th -12th centuries.

Valmarecchia and Salerno

Another such micro-analysis, which has uncovered a multitude of stories behind the fortified hill-top villages is the surveys conducted by Daniele Sacco on the sub-region of the Valmarecchia (in the hinterland of Rimini on the east coast of Italy).

Finally, a study of the hinterland of Salerno should be mentioned. Here the Normans (11th – 12th centuries) were responsible for a widespread incastellamento, which was devised to control and subdue the local populace increasingly placed “sub dominio et defensione”. Incited by the widespread violence in the countryside these peasants donated their land to lords, whether ecclesiastical or secular, For this, they received the right to continue to farm their land typically based on sharecropping contracts. Supplemented with taxes, work and other obligations, conditions could and would be varied. However, as was the case with Valmarecchia, the fortified hilltop villages in the mountains behind Salerno did not represent new settlements. Typically, the castles were built in the midst or near existing population centres, thus not evidence of widespread population movements as Toubert initially argued.

Conclusion

To conclude: As should be expected the development of the Italian landscape took many forms and at different times according to local traditions and geographical conditions. However, a general summation leaves us with the picture characterised by distinct phases: at first, the Roman villas and latifundia combined with dispersed settlements fell into disuse and ruin. After this, people moved together in villages, some of which were erected on hill-tops. Later seigniorial power led to castles and fortifications being built into or next to these villages creating the fortified hill-top villages, which became the norm in the 10th to 12th centuries; and which may still be seen towering over the medieval landscape of Italy.

SOURCES:

Territorial Lordships in the Principality of Salerno 1050 – 1150.
By Valery Ramseyer
In: Haskins Society Journal (2001), pp. 79 – 94

Exploring Valmarecchia. Diachrony of Population Development from the Roman Age to the Late Middle Ages in Central/Northern Italy: a Case Study of Emilia-Romagna (Southern Area) and Marche (Northern Area)
By Daniele Sacco
In: Lac 2014 Proceedings

Les structures du Latium médiéval : Le Latium méridional et la Sabine du IXe siecle a la fin du XIIe siècle.
By Pierre Toubert
Rome: École Française de Rome 1973

Architecture and Infrastructure in the Early Medieval Village. The Case of Tuscany
By Marco Valenti
In: Technology in Transition. A.D. 300 – 650. Ed. by Luke Lavan, Enrico Zanini and Alexander Sarantis. Brill, Leiden and Boston (2007), pp. 451 – 490

BEST INTRODUCTION:

Although much has been written about the Early Medieval history of the Italian hilltop villages, the best English introduction – altough nearly ten years old – it was written by Riccardo Francovich (1946 – 2007), who worked as an archaeologist at the University of Siena together with Marco Valenti and his team.

The Beginnings of Hilltop Villages in Early Medieval Tuscany
By Riccardo Francovich.
In: The Long Morning of Medieval Europe. New Directions in Early Medieval Studies. Ed. by Jennifer R. Davis and Michael McCormick Ashagate 2008 (Routledge 2016), pp. 55 – 82.

READ MORE:

From Constantine to Charlemagne: An Archaeology of Italy AD 300–800
By Neil Christie
Ashgate 2006 (Routledge 2016)

Framing the Early Middle Ages. Europe and the Mediterranean 400 – 800
By Chris Wickham
Oxford University Press 2005

Villa to Village: The Transformation of the Roman Countryside (Debates in Archaeology)
By Riccardo Francovich and Richard Hodges
Bristol Classical Press 2003
ISBN-10: 0715631926
ISBN-13: 978-0715631928

VISIT:

Rocca San Silvestro
Parco Archeominerario di San Silvestro
Area Naturale Protetta di Interesse Locale San Silvestro – Val di Cornia
Via di S. Vincenzo, 34/b
57021 Campiglia Marittima Livorno
Italy

Archeodromo Poggibonsi
Parco Archeologico di Poggibonsi
Fortezza Medicea, Poggibonsi (SI)

The Archeodromo is an open air museum which aims to create a full-scale rebuilding of the the core of the village from the 9th century as it was excavated a few meters away. Central is the large longhouse, of over 140 square meters, divided into a domestic area, a granary and an area dedicated to activities of daily living. Here the opportunity is to learn about about the small community of farmers and craftsmen, living in huts around the large house, and carrying out their duties according to the lord of the manor. The blacksmith forge weapons and tools, the carpenter carves wood, leather is  and the baker grinds the grain and prepares the bread. Inside the house, the weaver at the loom works with colored yarns from the workshop of the dyer; Meanwhile the garden is cultivated. The aim is to do a faithful recreation, which presents the participants with in-depth knowledge of what life was really like at the end of the first millenium in the hill-top village at Poggobonsi. each year, numerous events, summer schools and acdemic conferences are organised on site.

READ MORE:

Medieval Italian Hilltop Villages 2017

Valmarecchia – an Italian Medieval Landscape

Castle of Miranduolo

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Germany is (in)famous for its mining of lignite, also called brown coal. With a high content of moisture and emission of carbon dioxide (double of natural gas), it is known as one of the worst alternatives to sustainable energy on the world market. Heavily mined in the first part of the 20th century, it was an important source of energy before and during WW2; as it is today! Continued exploitation necessitated as late as in 2011 the resettlement of several hundred inhabitants in a small village, Pier, whose ancestors had lived in the region – it appears – since before Roman times.

One advantage of these open pits is, however, the archaeological possibilities they offer to survey large tracts of land without hindrance from existing buildings. The recent expropriation thus created a unique opportunity of studying a rural landscape and its changing social structures over several millennia. Since 2011, the so-called “Pier-Project” has been focusing on excavating and surveying an area larger than 70 ha. Recently, Timo Bremer published an overview in English of some of the results from this ongoing project. [1]

Medieval Landscape

Pier was the name of a village in Inden, located on the loess plateau rising above the flooded plain along the river Roer to the east. Obviously, this was an attractive location. With ample access on one side to the flooded meadows along the river and with abundant forests along the rivers, the site offered attractive opportunities for farming.

The early towns surrounding Pier – Aachen to the south-west, Jülich to the north, Cologne to the east, and Düren to the south – witness to the importance of the region. A fertile area with rivers and meadows it was densely populated between the 1st and the 4th centuries. With a production concentrated on the villas, it served as an important agrarian hinterland for the Roman fortifications along the Limes. It is likely that Pier itself was characterised as a vicus. Spoliae of a temple have been found dispersed in the surrounding settlements. During the next 2000 years – until the last inhabitants were resettled in the 21st century, it continued to exhibit this “central” character.

Merovingian times

From 450 – 700 CE the main finds stem from three cemeteries: one, the earliest from the 5th and early 6th centuries was located 50 metres west of the later church. From the 6th to the 8th centuries there were two additional cemeteries, writes Bremer. One was located beneath the church while another could be found 190 metres to the west. A few separate burials indicate that people were also occasionally buried on their farms.

The earliest church in Pier, from the 7th century, was probably a wooden construction. It is highly likely that this was at the centre of a magnate’s private residence. Later it was mentioned in a charter from 873 in which the Abbess Regenberga reserved half of the tithe owed to the church for herself. At this time, the local community was characterised by a regional population density: of 4.42 – 6.54 individuals per km2 for the wider region (not including cities).   Dense compared to that of the neighbouring parts of Saxony, but only half to a third of what it had been during the Roman Optimum, it served to demonstrate the importance of the region. [2]

High Middle Ages

Archaeological surveys did not provide a detailed overview of the exploitation of the landscape in Merovingian times. However, from the 11th to 14th centuries an excellent sense of the place can be obtained; also, it is possible to gain some insight into how it changed during this period.

At the centre, according to Timo Bremen, there was a core-zone around the church, which held three wells likely furnishing the whole village with communal water. This core did not seem to have been densely populated, but the exact structure is not quite clear. Opposed to this was the district in the periphery to the north-east, which was densely populated. Here people lived in sunken huts, often with kilns next to their houses, but no wells. People here probably lived as workmen, metal craftsmen (iron extraction) and perhaps small-time pedlars. Finds also indicate there was a textile industry (flax).

To the west of the church was a moated plot with a possible representative building in the centre; this was likely a motte construction. Further out to the south were two other such houses built of woods or stones, one of which was moated. Between the centre and the moated “House Pesch” – and to the north – several other settlements each consisting of two to four rectangular plots were located, each plot separated by straight paths. The buildings (potholes) on these plots indicate they home to ordinary farms. One of these settlements was located in the floodplain and probably took most of the income from extensive cattle farming.

Special interest accrued to the two noble residences off the core settlement. One, Haus Pesch, was mentioned for the first time in 922. It was nearly totally destroyed during WW2 (as was the whole area). Rebuilt stone upon stone after the war, it was torn down in 2013. Archaeological excavations showed that the place had been moated. In the later Middle Ages, the wooden house had been torn down and replaced by a more representative stone building. From the charter from 922, it appears the house may originally have functioned as a hunting lodge belonging to the Archbishop of Cologne. Later, its land was parcelled out under the name of Bonsdorf. But Bonsdorf is a toponym of Frankish date (the “dorph” or “torp” of Bonis)? It is likely there was a settlement there in Merovingian times out of which later grew the noble “House Pesch” (Pfesch meaning forest-meadow).

History of the People

It is evident, writes Timo Brennen, that the early elite focused on the settlement core near the later church. Here the remains of a Roman temple were found as well as the cemetery with the most prestigious Merovingian graves. On top of these, the first church was built, which was in all likelihood part of a magnate’s residence. Later in the 10th century, however, the lower nobility or local gentry moved out of the centre and built solitary and defensible residences on the outskirts. These new elite residences were obviously intended as symbolic statements about the nobility of their residents. Their references were the new and very impressive castles, which the landscape became increasingly dotted with in the 11th and 12th centuries.

To which extent the gentry continued to be in control of the local neighbourhood, which in the same period experienced significant growth as witnessed by the new residential area filled with workers and craftsmen, and the new settlements with farms surrounding the the village, is an open question. It is likely that the larger farms, which were built in the periphery of the nucleus, as well as the people living in the core of the village came to house peasants who established themselves as a “rural elite”. Without moats around their residences, however, they were clearly distinguishable from the “moated” gentry. Exactly who owned the land on which the workmen and craftsmen had squatted is nevertheless another question. Were they controlled by the local gentry? Or the rural elite living on the new farms?  Timo Bremer is of the opinion that it was the rural elite, who was in charge of the “new” village. Chances are, though, that power might shift back and forth according to who were able from time to time to rise above the landscape. Social membranes may very well have been porous and shifting.

Jülich and Düren

In the charter from 922, we hear about Pier as located in “pago Juliacensi”. Obviously, Pier and surroundings belonged to the wider sphere of Jülich, located 10 km north along the river Roer.

Jülich is first mentioned as Juliacum located on a major Roman road linking Cologne with Aachen and Maastricht. In the 4th century, it was fortified. Later, in the 5th century, it was taken over by the Merovingians. Out of this, a distinct district was forged, which was ruled by a count; in the later Middle Ages, it was turned into the Duchy of Jülich. The first count mentioned in the sources was Gottfried (905 – 947). Heavily bombarded during WW2 the town now lay in ruins. A single monument from the high middle ages was fortunately preserved, the Altenburg.

Sometime in the 11th century, this fortified site was constructed south of Jülich with a motte and bailiff. Two to three km northeast and across the river Roer from Pier, it is believed to have been part of a network of fortifications erected by the counts of Jülich. Altenburg plus others were intended as a line of defence against the attacks repeatedly instigated by the Archbishop of Cologne (who had interests in controlling not only the area but also the road between Cologne and Aachen.) This Altenburg was obviously a much larger fortification than House Pesch in Pier, which was comparably a small and only symbolically fortified place. Doubly moated and fortified with palisades, Altenburg measured 85 metres in diameter, while the baily measured 20 x 50 metres and was fitted with stone towers and possibly a stone wall.

To the south of Pier is Düren. Known from Roman time as Durum, Caesar conquered the place, and Durum soon became part of the supply area for Cologne. Later, the Franks led by Clovis passed through on their way to Zülpich to conquer the Thuringians. It is probably a reflection of this that we can read in the Frankish annals how the Carolingians possessed a royal palace there, Villa Duria (first mentioned in 747), which has been archaeologically located beneath the present church of St. Anna. Here, a Carolingian church was erected around 700, and in the years 761, 775 and 779 royal Frankish assemblies were held there; also Charlemagne used the villa as a stop-over when travelling from Aachen to Frankfurt. For a long time, this road was called the “Krönungsstrasse” or the “Aachen-Frankfurter Heerstrasse”.

Autoroute A4

Today, the autoroute A4 runs south of Jülich and north of Düren. With the bleak mining districts to the north, tourists on their way to Aachen pass along the last part of this ancient road, just four km south of Pier, when travelling from Cologne. It is not too much to claim that this is one of the central neural pathways of Europe.

As such, history tells us that it has been the scene of endless destruction. Beginning with Caesar in 53 BCE, it was later the march route of Clovis, who fought his way to conquer the Thuringians at Zülpich in 496 CE. Later, it was the scene of numerous armies marching back and forth with occasional chevauchées reported in the sources. During the religious wars in the 16th and 17th centuries the landscape was ravaged until finally plague hit. Following the Napoleonic wars, the region became once again part of Germany, this time under the orbit of Prussia. It is during the 19th-century, massive industrialisation once again secured the region wealth and prosperity. In 1944 and 1945, however, this ended with numerous bombings followed by the allied army fighting its way through this ancient corridor towards the Rhine. In November 1944 Düren was totally smashed with 99.2% destruction. Jülich to the other side suffered a destruction of 97.6%. In between, Pier and surroundings were also hit. Finally, after having been rebuilt by hand in the 50s, it nevertheless suffered a final defeat at the sticks of the excavators.

Left is only a fascinating archaeological story!

Karen Schousboe

Footnotes:

[1] Timo Bremer is archaeologist (PhD) and currently holds aposition as senior research assistant at the University of Bonn. His research interest focus on landscape archaeology, rural space and settlements.

[2] Untersuchungen zur Bevölkerungsdichte der vorrömischen Eisenzeit, der Merowingerzeit und der sp¨ten vorindustrielle Neuzeit and Mittel- und Niederrhein.
By Karl Peter Wendt, Johanna Hilpert und Andreas Zimmermann et al. In: Bericht der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission, Bd. 91, 2010. Philipp von Zabern 2012, pp. 288 – 289.

SOURCES:

Von der Spätantike zum Hohen Mittealter. Lanscahftsarchäologische Untersuchunge im raum Inden-Pier.
Presentation of project at the University of Bonn

Stiftung Archäologie im Rheinischen Braunkohlrevier

Landscape, Power and Settlement Dynamics. Notes on Archaeological Methods by means of Examples from Northern Rhineland, Germany.
By Timo Bremer
In: Cracow Landscape Monographs Vol 2. , pp. 69 – 79

The Social Structures of High Medieval Rural Settlements
By Timo Bremer
In: The Farm as a Social Arena. Ed. by Liv Helga Dommasnes, Doris Gutsmiedl-Schümann and Alf Tore Hommedal. Waxmann 2016, pp. 273 – 296.

FEATURED PHOTO:

Haus Venker, one of the medieval fortified manors near Pier. Photo: Udo Geilenbrügge. Source: Stiftung Archäologie im Rheinischen Braunkohlrevier.

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