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.

The fierce and shy wild cattle living in the park at Chillingham is but one flock of four roaming at Woburn, Dynevor, and Cadzow. Earlier on, such herds were a common feature in the British landscape, probably kept for their ornamental and symbolic value. Known in the 12th century as Tauri Sylvestres, they have apparently always been considered a wild sub-species. The herd at Chillingham, though, was first mentioned in 1645. Today, about 130 animals live in the 150-ha large park in Northumberland. The herd is protected from being earmarked, a true sign of their “wild” status.

These flocks of wild cattle were treated as a kind of super-deer eaten on festive occasions, such as at the Archbishop of York installation feast in 1466. At the celebrations, six wild bulls were roasted and served. It appears the white cattle survived as potent medieval status symbols alongside other wild species. Evidence from Auckland Castle indicates a herd of White Cattle was kept in the 15th-century deer park for ornamental reasons together with wild horses.

From Wales, we know that white cattle were used as a coin to measure fines payable to the Lords of Dynevar. In AD 1210, a Welsh Marcher lord tried to bribe King John with a White bull and four hundred cows.

It is usually supposed that the wild cattle living in the parks are descended from free-living cattle, which is otherwise well documented. Thus  we lear from Fits-Stephens description of London from 1174 (from his biography of Thomas Becket) how there to the North were “tilled fields, pastures, and pleasant, level meadows with streams flowing through them”. Not far off spread “out a vast forest, its copses dense with foliage concealing wild animals – stags, does, boars, and wild bulls.”.

However, from medieval reports we also know that herds of cattle were regularly moved from one deer park to another. In 1277 Edward I specifically ordered wild cows and bulls to be taken to Windsor Forest. Whether or not elaborate hunts were staged at the deer parks remains unknown.

Recent studies of the genetics

One of the distinguishing features of this subspecies of cattle appears to be its white coat. Studies of their DNA have shown that the colour reflects a chromosomal homozygous translocation which also causes testicular hypoplasia. Also present in the white Galloway and the Irish Moiled, it is also found in the Northern Finncattle and the Swedish Mountain breed. It has been suggested that the cattle were initially imported to The British Isles in the maelstrom of the Viking conquests.

Just as two breeds of sheep in Northwest England as well as horses and dogs have been identified as having Scandinavian roots, the scientists reporting on the genetic makeup of the Chillingham herd suggest an affinity. This, however, remains to be confirmed by further studies of the ancient Scandinavian cattle breeds.

How did the herds survive?

The survival of these herds is remarkable as the hypoplasia caused by the genetic makeup has another consequence. Accompanied by a reduced testicular functionality is poor sperm quality, which should have led to the extinction of the white herds centuries ago.

However, studies of the breeding patterns of the herds show that the Chillingham cattle breed all season, competition between the bulls is fierce, and oestrous cows are repeatedly mounted. Thus, in a study between June 1980 and December 1981, the biologists and rangers noted how 15 to 17 mature bulls carried out 71 mountings within a fortnight leading to 22 calves nine months later. Paternity to these calves could not be ascertained. Thus, the animals appear to have found a way to compensate for the genetic deficiency. It should be noted that reproductive performance is a key indicator of the long-term sustainability of any livestock production system, and that testicular hypoplasia is a morphological and functional reproductive disorder that affects bulls around the world, which might lead to aggressive breeding patterns among some semi-feral herds (for instance at Mols Lab in 2022). The incident was later villified by a group of animal activists deploring “the rape of the cows” and led to the deplorable culling of the young bulls punished for their apparently genetically sound pattern of breeding, develop to compensate for this particular genetic challenge.

This insight has significant consequences for the upkeep of this (and other herds) of these rare, semi-feral types of cattle. It would be wrong to believe that artificial fertilisation would be able to save a subspecies like the famous white cattle. Quite the opposite.

SOURCE:

Conservation of rare wild-living cattle Bos taurus (L.): coat colour gene illuminates breed history, and associated reproductive anomalies have not reduced herd fertility
S. J. G. Hall, B. Brenig, R. A. Ashdown, M. R. Curry
First published: 02 September 2021 in Journal of Zoology (2021) Vol 315, issue 4.

Aspects of archaeology, history, landscape, material culture and structures of bishop’s houses in the English dioceses of Carlisle and Durham, and the Scots dioceses of Glasgow and St. Andrews c1450-1660.
By C.E.H. Smith
Thesis, Durham 2020.

Wild White Cattle of Great Britain
By Hellidon John Storer
London 1879

Race, Breed, and Myths of Origin: Chillingham Cattle as Ancient Britons
By Harriet Ritvo
In: Representations (1992), Vol 39 pp 1 – 22

READ ALSO:

VISIT:

It is possible to go on a guided tour of the park during the summer.
Joint Cattle and Castle tickets are available via the Wild Cattle website. Numbers on the Wild Cattle tours are restricted, so it is best if you book on line so as to avoid any possible disappointment. Visit www.chillinghamwildcattle.com for more information.

Also, the 12th-century Castle of Chillingham offers tours during the summer as well as stays in the self-catering aprtments in the Coaching Rooms. Unfortunately, no pets are allowed.

The post Wild Cattle in Britain – Descendants of Viking Cattle? 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

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Ed. by P. R. Shukla et al.
Cambridge University Press, 2022.

New Perspectives on the Medieval ‘Agricultural Revolution’. Crop, Stock and Furrow.
By Helena Hamerow and Mark McKerracher
Liverpool University Press 2022
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.

In a recent article, the position is outlined that rewilding is closely related to traditional nature restoration and, hence, just another form of human domination of nature. An anthropological analysis of this thinking shows how it is fundamentally mistaken.

In the 1920s and 1930s, an attempt was made to resurrect the aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius), the extinct wild ancestor of contemporary domestic cattle. The back-bred species produced was called the ‘Heck Cattle, named after the two brothers who carried out the project.

Since the aurochs at that point had been considered extinct since the 17th century and modern genetics science had not yet appeared on the scene, the animals were recreated by a clumsy and, in fact, just aesthetically inspired form of backbreeding involving Spanish Fighter bulls. Most of the animals died during the war. However, after WW2, the work continued to breed on a few remaining animals in München, and today Heck Cattle are used as part of eco-restoration projects in numerous places in Europe. Over 2000 animals live in Europe, of which 600 roam the infamous Oostvaardersplassen.

In a new article, the philosopher Eric Katz argues that the attempt to create the Heck cattle as a form of resurrected aurochs and their subsequent use in rewilding projects (as in the Oostvaardersplassen in the Netherlands) is a prime example of the ongoing human project of the domination of nature characterising the Anthropocene.

The Heck Cattle as Nazi Symbol

Eric Katz is known for his arduous fight for the natural world to be respected in its right. However, he is perhaps better known for his work to uncover the character of the first national environmental preservation policies in the 20th century forged in the crucible of the fascist and genocidal regime of Nazi Germany. Therin, the backbred aurochs came to play a symbolic role. Although the project began in the 20s and reflected the standard search for “national” cattle and “horses” in the romantic quest for the “homeland”, it was heavily promoted as part of the resurrection of the Early Medieval Germanic Empire. The dream was to fill the extensive “primaeval” forests of Eastern Germany with megafauna enacting, playing the role of prey in reenacting the glorious past of the German race and its future supremacy.

Undoubtedly, the German preoccupation with racial thinking played a part in this preoccupation with the eugenic endeavour to backbreed the Aurochs. Also, the idea that nature might be cleansed of its later impurities by returning to a more pristine and purer state of affairs does act like a vivid and dire remembrance of the Holocaust.

According to Eric Katz, however, the story of the Heck Cattle has a wider resonance in the Nazi form of landscape planning, which they sought to “Germanize”. In this project, the architect Alwin Seifert and the railway engineer Fritz Todt led the way to resurrect the “Heimat”, a somewhat untranslatable word with its very material and tangential connotations referring to the German peasant, his family, his farm, his village and his landscape – in short, his “Lebensraum”. In this crucible, the idea of history, geography, and ethnicity blended with the concept of the healthy and balanced life of the proper German. Thus, the idea was not just to restore the native flora and fauna but also remove the “degenerate” – we would say “invasive” – species. The result was the idea of a “Racialised Landscape” as opposed to the “Romantic Landscape” of the 19th century. In this racialised landscape, the Nazis dreamt of dark forests once again teeming with aurochs, bison, wolves and eagles, all animals which were recruited to enact the myth in the best manner of Roland Barthes.

The Oostvaardersplassen and Rewilding

Based on this idea of the “Racialised Landscape” filled with “potent and wild symbols”, Eric Katz uses the history of the first European rewilding project of the “The Oostvaardersplassen” to argue his point. The Dutch biologist Franz Vera’s creation was set at 60km2 or 6000 ha; the aim was to recreate an independent and autonomous ecosystem by releasing wild horses, wild cattle, and red deer into the nature reserve and leaving it to its own devices. As is well known, the project has been a success insofar as it did succeed in creating a biodiverse and lively nature reserve of marshland and grassland. However, the initial cruelty involved in fencing the area and letting the megafauna die of “natural” starvation and illnesses without letting the animals leave the reservation turned the place into a political, ethical, and social battleground. The early photos still reverberate on the internet and gave “rewilding” a seriously bad press. Due to the presence of the Heck Cattle and its ignominious connotations as “Nazi Cattle”, the Oostvaardersplassen has occasionally been likened to a Concentration Camp on Facebook.

The point Katz wishes to make, however, reaches further. In short, He claims that “Rewilding projects do not so much re-create a ‘wild’ nature free from human intervention and activity”. Rewilding is just another form of the human management of natural processes to achieve anthropocentric goals, he writes. He argues “that policies of rewilding have historical antecedents (and parallels in philosophical meaning) to the Nazi plans for re-creating an authentic Aryan landscape in the lands of Eastern Europe. The case history of the Heck cattle projects illustrates the danger of pursuing radical forms of management of the natural world.”

But does this argument hold, we may ask? Is it fair to judge a Dutch nature restoration scheme, which has served as a pilot project for the rewilding movement, just because it chose to use Heck cattle instead of the belted Galloways, which are now the primary breed used in extensive grazing and rewilding projects?

Does the use of Heck Cattle at Oostvaarder necessarily have to taint the general idea of rewilding as it is practised with joy, pleasure, and love elsewhere?

Rewilding? What is it?

To answer this question, Katz recounts the outline of the debate between different leading scientists and practitioners on how to understand rewilding, where the main element is forsaking (traditional) ecological restoration to further self-sustaining ecosystems devoid of human interference of any sort. Thus, the main difference is lodged in a different set of values considering the role of human management – on one hand, painstaking caring and, on the other hand, turning our backs to the rewilded enclave. However, Katz chooses to see these two positions as orientation points on a continuum where total abandonment is impossible. He rejects this distinction between the two approaches to nature, pointing out that none takes out “the imposition of human intentionality on natural ecosystems”. Both approaches are “infused with human purpose”.

Ktz wishes to make the point that we cannot escape the mortal sin of intervention, inscribed in our genes as human beings. “Thus, the fundamental philosophical issue in an understanding of rewilding is the role of this human management and control, for it is an ever-present reality in the re-created”, he writes. Whether we wish for it or not, the result is hybrid landscapes. Following this, Katz points out (quoting Drenthen 2018) that “There is no escaping from history: all rewilding landscapes are layered cultural landscapes”.

A cultural and political question?

This leads to Katz’s conclusion, which claims that any “rewilding” project represents a form of “cultural politics” just as classical well-ordered restoration policies do. And in the end, any light-handed management of a particular human intervention might lead to a situation that limits the autonomy of the people who formerly lived on and off the land. Even if the wish to culturally dominate both animals, landscapes, and human races might hopefully never again reach the apogee of Nazi thinking, it does harbour the germs and spores. “But affirming the obvious fact that contemporary rewilding projects are not based on Nazi ideology or anti-Semitism does not remove rewilding in general from the overall process of human management, control and domination of nature”, Katz writes and concludes: “Rewilding is a policy that seeks the conscious transformation of the natural world into a human and culturally determined landscape. Rewilding does not restore nature or re-create a wild and spontaneous natural system. Rather, the acceptance of rewilding as a valid environmental policy acknowledges that nature and natural landscapes no longer exist and that the entire world is an artefact produced by human management and control”.

How to counter this argument?

How should we engage with Katz’s arguments? One way is to do a “cultural” and “anthropological” analysis of the formulation in this final conclusion. The point becomes to review Katz’s and others’ position on rewilding as an expression of a cultural stance rather than a philosophical set of arguments.

“No longer exist”, he writes, positing the idea that once upon a time, authentic nature and natural landscapes did, in fact, exist, whether in Paradise or the Pleistocene. Thus, whichever way he looks, he seems unable to escape the idea that once we did not exist as human beings but were just animals incapable of reflection and narration. At some point, however, we metaphorically speaking “ate from the apple” and were kicked out of this pulsating and perfect ecosystem to try and come to terms with our potential to interfere. Which he correctly points out, we have been doing ever since we shed the ape skin of our forefathers.

The interesting point to make here, however, is that Katz’s form of thinking, as viewed by anthropologists, may be considered just one of four different cultural or political takes on how to deal with nature, which, from an anthropological point of perspective, may be considered of as “Thought Styles” (presented best in Douglas 1995). Originally, these “Thought Styles”, as argued by Douglas, were characterised structurally through the organisation of their corresponding social landscapes. However, later anthropological thinking (Schousboe 1990) demonstrated the advantage of looking upon them as not just thought styles organising sociality but also thought styles structured temporally – with the position of Katz’s representing the narrative nostalgia of the ultimate modern “restorer” as opposed to the future-oriented constant moving and pulsating post-modern “creator” busy recruiting co-creators – in the rewilding connection the countless myriad living beings inhabiting nature.

In this sense, rewilding represents not just a method of nature restoration representing the usual interventionist activities of the social engineer dreaming of the authentic past lost forever, but rather the fun and play involved in letting loose to see what happens in the time to come.

Granted, from a formal philosophical point of view, both positions (indeed all four) may be deemed interventionists. However, to judge them ethically, we need to see them as differentiated as to their outcome. What type of nature view is best to preserve Gaia for future generations, is the question we might ask? As opposed to the alternative: Which nature view allows for the free flourishing of people and peoples to the detriment of the wilder world?

While one (Katz’s) is hopelessly caught up in the traumatic loss of the aurochs and the nostalgia for the time before 1627, when the last living specimen was allegedly lost, the rewilding position notices the fact that studies of aDNA unambiguously show that aurochs and domesticated cattle mixed and matched up through history. And yes, backbreeding by the Heck-brothers was part of a deplorable fascist enterprise creating a more pure and “Germanic” world. However, the modern-day Tauros project supported by Rewilding Europe is part of quite another venture focusing on releasing the joy of playing around by reimagining a more pulsating, vibrant world filled with the ongoing creation of the future.

Karen Schousboe

SOURCES:

What the Heck Cattle Have to Do with Environmentalism: Rewilding and the Continuous Project of the Human Management of Nature
Eric Katz
In: Ethics, Policy & Environment
Online 13 June 2023

Rewilding in layered landscapes as a challenge to place identity.
By M Drenthen
Environmental Values (2018) Vol 27 No 4, pp 405–425.

Thought Styles: Critical Essays on Good Taste 
by Mary Douglas (Author)
Sage 1995

Slangen i paradiset : unges holdninger til fremtiden
By Karen Schousboe
Undervisningsministeriet 1990

READ MORE:

Return of the Mighty Beast, the Aurochs

The post Is Rewilding just Another Form of Domination of Nature? appeared first on Wilder Europe.

In the 18th century, the aurochs – the wild cousins of our domesticated cattle – still roamed Moldavia. Never more than variety, they were just the wild version of the common species, the Bos Taurus. To claim that the last aurochs died out in 1627 in Mazovia in Poland is to insist that the species – the Bos or the common cattle – became extinct at that point.

Instead, as with wild horses, we might consider the different animals as belonging to one species comprising different varieties – from feral and semi-feral animals (such as the Exmoor pony) to full-blooded domesticated race-horses worth tens of millions of dollars.

What we should not subscribe to is the idea that they belong to different “races” or “breeds” – being the classification system, which only applies to domesticated breeds.

Nevertheless, a dedicated project aiming at “backbreeding” the Aurochs – the so-called Tauros Project – has worked on the presupposition that it is possible to “reconstruct” the B Bos primigenius, also known as the Aurochs. Recently, the release of a herd of these animals has been received with enthusiasm by people working in the rewilding movement. The question is, how should we understand this project?

The Tauros Project

Just as feral and semiferal varieties of horses are highly prized, and several projects work to back-breed the different varieties with the intact capabilities to live in the wild, the Dutch Tauros project (Stichting Tauros) has worked since 2009 to “backbreed” a modern-day version of the aurochs based on identifying the common “aurochs-genes” in the primitive European breeds still roaming wilder Europe.

The backbone of the projects consists of thirty ancient and more “primitive” breeds of the ordinary Bos Taurus, initially sequenced. In 2015, these results were compared to the successful sequencing of the first complete sequenced genome from a humerus bone from a British Aurochs, predating the first neolithic peasants. All-in-all, 38 breeds have now contributed to the project.

From this comparison, the scientists were able to identify seven Iberian breeds to be closest. Using those breeds and a few others, the scientists in the project worked to backbreed a type of cattle which phenotypically aligned with the extinct aurochs – primarily size, colour and the curvatures of the horns. The aim is 2030 to create a series of herds consisting of at least 150 animals, each living free and wild in rewilding areas all over Europe.

A flock of these backbred animals were recently released into the Greater Côa Valley in Portugal for the first time. More precisely, three Tauros bulls and 12 cows, four of which are pregnant, arrived in Portugal following their transportation from the Netherlands by Stichting Tauros (the Tauros Foundation). The animals were released into an enclosed paddock so that they could acclimate to their new environment, whilst the team monitored their health and behaviour for a couple of weeks before release. A few days ago, the animals were finally released into the free in a valley once home to the ancestor of the Tauros, the aurochs. Traces of the ancient bovine can still be found as part of prehistoric rock engravings within the Côa Valley, paying tribute to a long-standing cultural relationship with these animals.

Ecological role

As a result of their grazing and browsing habits, the newly released herd will contribute directly to creating varied and biodiverse habitats whilst removing dense vegetation and reducing the risk of devastating wildfires, which will allow native woodland to regenerate. With bulls weighing more than a ton, the animals will be able to set their mark seriously.

They also play a crucial role in the trophic food chain. The Côa Valley is already home to Iberian wolves and vultures, both of which will significantly benefit from the return of a large bovine. Whilst lesser-known scavenging invertebrates, birds and small mammals will also thrive due to their presence.

Restoring open plains grazing

Like much of Europe, Portugal has been experiencing the depopulation of rural communities for decades. People moved away from working the land, and vast numbers of grazing livestock were lost. Once open landscapes are now being covered by dense scrub vegetation or vast swathes of young forest, both poor in biodiversity and susceptible to wildfire.

“Large herbivores play an essential role in consuming biomass and creating more resilient landscapes to protect against wildfire,” explains Rewilding Portugal’s Head of Conservation, Sara Aliácar. “They will also be excellent at spreading seeds to help restore the habitats that have already been lost to fires, improving spaces for wildlife.”

The long-horned Tauros are entirely self-sufficient, requiring no further supplementation post-release. As they free-roam, they can also innately defend themselves from predation. As the animals restore the landscape, opportunities for local people will increase too.

Every summer, fires threaten Portugal’s forested areas. Grazing and trampling remove excess combustible material and lowers the risk of wildfires. Also, the large grazers will contribute to the future carbon sequestration needed to fulfil the climate goal of the Paris Convention.

The Tauros are not alone in their restorative role. They will join some of the 25 native-breed Sorraia horses Rewilding Portugal and partners have already released. A herd of 13 horses free-roam the northern part of the Ermo das Águias region, whilst the Tauros have been released in the south. The team look forward to the two species meeting and grazing the land together, just as their wild ancestors would have done.

The benefits of introducing semi-wild herbivores to these regions are already apparent. Wilder, naturally-grazed landscapes are now showing the early signs of becoming a nature-rich mosaic of biodiverse habitats.

“This is the first release in Portugal, and we plan to introduce Tauros to more areas within the Greater Côa Valley as we continue to improve connectivity,” says Deli Saavedra, Head of Landscapes for Rewilding Europe.

The releases will help to realise the rewilding vision for the area, with the Rewilding Portugal team and local partners now working to strengthen an important 120,000-hectare ecological corridor between the Douro region in the north and the Malcata region in the south. Their efforts are supported by a grant from the Endangered Landscapes Programme.

The Ancient Animal – the Bos Primigenius

So, what is the modern-day Taurus? To answer, we have to uncover the story of the wild aurochs, which roamed unhindered from China to the British Isles for several millions of years until 14.000 years ago. During this period, the great Eurasian Steppe was covered in temperate open forests alternating with steppe landscapes. The natural range would have shifted with the climate between glacial and interglacial periods.

The earliest archaeological evidence for the domestication of the aurochs dates back to the Middle East ca. 9000 BC. At the same time, the first domesticated cattle in Europe were archaeologically documented in the seventh millennium BC in Spain. This domesticated bovid was, perhaps, imported via the Donau and the Mediterranean. The Balkan Buša breed may genetically represent this early cattle, while the semi-feral Maremma in Tuscany may have Etruscan and earlier roots.

Until recently, scientists believed that the aurochs mainly lived in forests with closed canopies preferring riverine landscapes. New evidence suggests that the animals were always grass-eating animals moving effortlessly through the more or less open forested landscapes covering the Eurasian steppes. Ultimately, this preference for open forests and grassland led to a conflicted situation or “end-game” between the early Neolithic peasants and their domestic flocks.

A study from the submerged site at Neustadt in the Bay of Lübeck tells part of the story. The site was excavated in 2000-2006, and thousands of shards, faunal remains, plant and macrofossil remains, and flint artefacts were uncovered. Also, analysis of lipid residue of charred food crusts in Ertebølle pointed-based and Funnel Beaker pottery was studied to determine the shift from late foragers to early farmers in the settlement. The site was settled for over 600 years between 4400 and 3800 BC and fell within the transition phase.

The faunal remains comprised 12,693 bones, with a third identified at the species level. Of the 26 species in the material, the harp seal was the most common (14%), followed by wild boars (11%) and aurochs (10%). Red and rode deer, harbour porpoises and water voles played minor roles. The percentages are based on MNI – the minimal number of individuals.

Interestingly, domesticated cattle and sheep or goats comprised only 2% of the assemblage. Radiocarbon dates of the domestic cattle – identified with aDNA – dates it to ca. 3950 BC (4226-3705), the timespan generally accepted as the period when the early Funnel Beaker People migrated to Europe (c. 4300) to emerge in modern-day Northern Germany c. 4100-3950 BC. The study, however, shows that domesticated cattle played an insignificant role during the transition period compared to the continued hunting for large mammals, including the aurochs in the oak-dominated forests and open grasslands of the period.

In terms of size, the Aurochs differed from cattle. The bull might weigh over a tonne and feature shorter trunks and longer legs. Elongated heads and impressive horns might reach 120 cm in length and were black, while cows were smaller and had reddish brown coats. Descriptions indicate the animal was swift and agile. In terms of temperament, it could become hot-tempered and aggressive when confronted.

Interbreeding

One of the challenges identifying aurochs and domesticated cattle in archaeological assemblages is the wide variety of sizes among individuals of the two biological varieties. Due to an overlap of sizes, a clear distinction is not often possible. Although part of the domestication process was breeding smaller dairy cattle, the Aurochs cow might be just as small as a domestic bull, making the identification complicated without aDNA. Also, during the transition period (c. 4100 – 3900 BC), climatic and geological shifts caused a significant rise in sea levels producing the archipelago in the Baltic and Kattegat creating genetically isolated populations of Aurochs, perhaps causing a series of phenotypical changes in terms of size.

Part of the domestication process in Europe was the breeding of more miniature cattle. Scientists have suggested that the smaller sizes reflected poorer diets offered to animals, which were kept close to the peasant farm for reasons of their manure. However, studies of the bone- assemblages in Northern Europe show another trend. Here, domesticated cattle appeared in the early phase to increase body size. This fits well with the conclusion that occasionally – and perhaps intentionally – interbreeding (introgression) took place.

Genetically, ancient cattle all over Europe have been shown to carry mitochondrial DNA from both the Middle Eastern pool and the Aurochs, indicating that introgression from wild aurochs into domestic flocks took place and was probably more widespread and frequent than hitherto expected. It appears purposeful restocking with wild aurochs was relatively common among herders in peripheries such as Northern Europe, Switzerland, and perhaps Spain.

Thus, casual interbreeding between aurochs and domesticated cattle continued in Antiquity in the same way as interbreeding of feral, semi-feral and domestic horses was common. This might occur as a happenstance when wild stallions or bulls recruited domesticated mares or cows to join their flocks. But it was definitely also intentionally practised, as witnessed by the famous cups from the 6th century BC Vafio in Greece, which show us in great detail how a capture might be organised – mildly by luring the bull to discover a willing cow. Or more wildly, by capturing the ferocious bulls with nets. This evidence aligns with the famous description of the Aurochs by Caesar:

“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.”
From: Caesar De Bello Gallico, chapter XXVIII

Inbreeding or backbreeding?

Scientific studies and historical sources thus document that both interbreeding and inbreeding continued to take place up until the extinction of the last herd at Jaktorow in 1627. We may therefore ask whether the backbreeding of the Tauros makes sense. Might we not be just as satisfied with the present-day descendants devolved through interbreeding programmes of all sorts? And – cutting to the chase – is this what the backbreeding programme of the Tauros and other similar programmes consist of?

Granted, the auroch was a larger and perhaps more ferocious animal with a different appearance and colour than the domesticated ox. However, wilder and more primitive breeds continue to live as descendants of animals intermixing in medieval and premodern landscapes. And yes, we do need megafauna to help the ecological restitution of our landscapes. But do we need animals created as part of an intentional backbreeding programme?

We may well ask: Does the modern backbreeding of the Stichting Tauros make more sense than the programme the zoo directors Heinz and Lutz Heck instigated in the 30s? A backbreeding programme, which in the best Nazi tradition of racial thinking, aimed to recreate the “Ur Tiere” of the Germanic youngsters hunting for horns in Caesar’s vignette. An endeavour which resulted in the Heck cattle and, ultimately, should not be mistaken for the Tauros backboned by the Stichtung.

Further, what will happen if any of these carefully bred new/old varieties are let loose for real in wilder Europe and begin to create an admixture with local cattle or even the European bison or visits? The latter animals are already genetically documented to be mixed with cattle, likely reflecting the Aurochs and Bison intermingling in the large great East European wildernesses in Late Medieval Europe. Currently, the wilderness at Bornholm housing a celebrated herd of European bison has been obliged not to include wild or semi-feral cattle in the planned National Nature Park there, as “they might mingle”.

Also, the backbreeders of the Tauros programme seem not to have gone the whole way, discarding some of the more likely candidates for breeding, the temperamental fighting bulls from Spain. This restraint has been called for to initally avoid a popular revolt when letting the new Tauros loose. As opposed to this, the descendants of the Heck cattle (curiously know as the Taurus) are known to be less “friendly”. Thus, a few years ago, these considerations led the managers at Lille Vildmose to move their Heck Cattle from a small forest close to the beach, where people walkws by, and further inland to a rather dreary enclosure. Another argument was the cost.

To some extent, the question of backbreeding has to be debated in the same manner as reenactments and archaeological reconstructions. Indeed, we might gain substantial new knowledge about the wild ancestors of our domesticated subspecies by tweaking the genes of their descendants. On the other hand, if trophic rewilding ultimately means letting nature run its course while building robust ecosystems, we need megafauna to ambush our well-ordered mindsets and traditional rules for nature planning. Thus, we might just let loose the more primitive descendants of the Bos Primigenius and the Bos Taurus to mingle as evolution would dictate.

The situation resembles the challenge posed to curators left with a crumbling medieval ruin on the brink of falling apart due to wind and weather. Do we rebuild the ruin, creating a pastiche? Or do we try to protect the ruined sites from our imagination and phantasies?

Karen Schousboe

FEATURED PHOTO:

Tauros set free in the Coa Valley © Rewilding Portugal and Claudio Noy 2023

NOTE:

The spelling of Tauros of Taurus is not used interchangeably here. The Greek spelling refers to the modern Dutch project of resurrecting the aurochs, while the Latin refers to the old project, also known as the Heck Cattle project.

BASED ON:

press release from Rewilding Europe: First Tauros release in the Greater Côa Valley will boost natural grazing
Rewilding Europe 2023

Stichting Taurus: Aurochs Genetics: A Cornerstone of biodiversity.
Rewilding Europe 2015.

SOURCES:

On the Origin of Cattle: How Aurochs Became Cattle and Colonized the World
By Paolo Ajmone-Marsan, José Fernando Garcia, Johannes A. Lenstra and the Globaldiv Consortium.
In: Evolutionary Anthropology (2010) vol 19 pp 148-157

Genome sequencing of the extinct Eurasian wild aurochs, Bos primigenius, illuminates the phylogeography and evolution of cattle
By Stephen D E Park, David A. Magee, Paul A. McGettigan, Matthew D. Teasdale, Ceiridwen J. Edwards, Amanda J. Lohan, Alison Murphy, Martin Braud, Mark T. Donoghue, Yuan Liu, Andrew T. Chamberlain, Kévin Rue-Albrecht, Steven Schroeder, Charles Spillane, Shuaishuai Tai, Daniel G. Bradley, Tad S. Sonstegard, Brendan J. Loftus & David E. MacHugh
In: Genome Biology 82015) Vol 16 mo 234

Cattle husbandry and aurochs hunting in the Neolithic of northern Central Europe and southern Scandinavia. A statistical approach to distinguish between domestic and wild forms
By Ulrich Schmölcke, Daniel Groß
In International Journal of Osteoarchaeology (2021) vol 31 no 1,

Transitions During Neolithisation Processes in Southern Scandinavia. New Insights from Faunal Remains and Pottery from the Site Neustadt LA 156 in Northern Germany.
By Aikaterini Glykou
In: Past Societies. Human Development in Landscapes. Ed by Johannes Müller and Andrea Ricci.
Sidestone Press 2020.

The history of the European aurochs (Bos primigenius) from the Middle Pleistocene to its extinction: an archaeological investigation of its evolution, morphological variability and response to human exploitation
By Elizabeth Wright
PhD, Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield. 2013

Investigating cattle husbandry in the Swiss Late Neolithic using different scales of temporal precision: potential early evidence for deliberate livestock “improvement” in Europe
By Elizabeth Wright
In: Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2021) volume 13, Article number: 36

Ancient DNA analysis of Scandinavian medieval drinking horns and the horn of the last aurochs bull. 2018
Maiken Hemme Bro-Jørgensen, Christian Carøe, Filipe G. Vieira, Sofia Nestor, Ann Hallström, Kristian M. Gregersen, Vivian Etting, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Mikkel-Holger S. Sinding,
In: Journal of Archaeological Science (2018) Vol 99, pp 47-54

READ ALSO:

The post Return of the Mighty Beast, the Aurochs 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.

In the Roman Empire, the story was told of how the twins, Romulus and Remus, were suckled by the Capitoline wolf. Later, they founded the Eternal City on the Palatine and Aventine Hills, nourishing a rich mythical and artistic legacy. This suckling wolf may be found on coins from the 3rd century BC and the following 600 years. Without a doubt, the wolf had a special place in the Roman imagination.

Although a serious threat to smaller grazing animals, the wolf was never considered a demonic beast but rather a part of the natural order. As such, the Roman shepherds defended themselves and their flocks with the help of large white dogs equipped with spiked collars. Columella wrote that white dogs were preferable because they were easily distinguished from the grey pelts of the predators. Another method was to tie a bleating lamb in a dug-out pit, luring the wolf to its grave, where it might be bludgeoned to death. In general, though, wolves were not regarded as dangerous to men. Thus, Horace wrote a poem about a wolf who fled from him in the wilderness beyond his farm in the Sabine woody mountains. Neither were wolves hunted for their meat or their pelt, and bears and serpents offered more medicinal options. Finally, the Romans do not appear to have hunted wolves for pleasure. One reason may be that the wolf is challenging to hunt with a spear or a bow and arrows, thus offering no particular sport as opposed to bears, hares and other herbivores. The paucity of archaeological remains also witnesses to this Roman attitude toward wolves. Therefore, they were not introduced into the arena where all sorts of predators roamed to kill prisoners subjected to this fate. Nor do wolves seem to have been kept in the small zoos, vivaria, which the elite created as part of their sumptuous villas.

It appears, the fate of wolves differed from all the other top predators used in the Roman arenas and spectacles. Based on this evidence, Mika Rissanen (2014) has suggested that there might have been a taboo among Romans against hunting wolves.

Christianity

However, this changed with the advent of Christianity and the proliferation of the stories told about Christ as the good shepherd, protecting his herd. Now, the wolf was diabolically coupled with the devil and enhanced with its fame as an animal able to devour whole flocks of sheep. As such, the wolf was singled out as a common metaphor in both the Old and the New Testaments for the heretic, the false prophet and the devil.

Noteworthy, also, was the Christian concern with speech as the defining attribute of people (as opposed to animals) and the corresponding notion that wolves might steal a person’s communicative skills. This myth about the “Lupus in the Fabula” was known in Antiquity from the writings of, among others, Terence, Cicero, Plautus, and Plinius. St. Ambrose of Milan repeated this idea, thus lifting the motif into the writings of Isidore (560–636). He wrote: “To the situation, as in “the wolf in the story”: peasants say that a person would lose his voice if he saw a wolf in front of him. Thus, the proverb, “the wolf in the story,” is said to someone who suddenly falls silent. (Isidore: Etymologies I:xxxvii,27 [1]).

Following Isidore, Hrabanus Maurus (780–856) conveyed this superstitious story in his De Rerum Naturis in Book 8, 1:

Others call them wolves and say they are like lions because, like a lion, the wolf has strength in his feet, whence whatever he presses with his foot does not live. And seeking blood, he is a ravenous beast, of which the peasants say that he will destroy a man if the wolf sees him first. Whence it is said that the man falls suddenly silent: The wolf in the fable…The wolf, therefore, is rarely found to have good intentions but often the opposite.
(Transl. from: De Rerum Naturis, Book 8, nr. 1).

However, the clergy also preached that wolves might be tamed. Thus, we hear about the wolfish Danes, who tried to silence their opponent, the English King, Edmund the Martyr, in AD 869 by killing him. However, as is told in the later vita, to silence him, the Wolfish Danes had to cut off his head and throw it into a thick forest. From here, though, the decapitated head called out to the men searching for him. According to the legend, they found his head cradled in the lap of a speech-protecting wolf (Passio Sancti Eadmundi).

Such fabled “domesticated” wolves were not uncommon. Another example is known from the legend of the Wolf from Gubbio in Italy, in which St. Francis tamed a wolf which had been attacking livestock and humans for several years. Gubbio felt under siege as no one dared venture outside the walls. Finally, though, the saint took it upon himself to seek the animal in its lair. Here, he made the sign of the cross and commanded the wolf to cease his attacks, to which the wolf docilely acquiesced, after which he entered into a peaceful pact with Francis. Afterwards, the pair entered the city of Gubbio to preach at the centre of the town. There, with the tame wolf at his feet, Francis was quoted as saying: “How much we ought to dread the jaws of hell if the jaws of so small an animal as a wolf can make a whole city tremble through fear?” The story goes on to tell that the wolf lived peacefully in the town feeding from scraps offered by the citizens.

Unfortunately, the story of the wolf from Gubbio does not present us with its broader context. However, we know Umbria and the rest of central Italy after 1197 was enmeshed in a civil war fought between a series of Holy Roman Emperors, numerous factions, independent cities and the Popes creating a war-torn and violated countryside characterised by bands of mercenaries roaming from skirmish to skirmish. Well known is the story of how dreams of chivalry lured Francis of Assisi to sign up as a soldier to end up in a harsh prison, and also, how these experiences were catalysts for his later “career” as a saint. Likely, the story of the Wolf from Gubbio must be read as both an allegory and a story reflecting reality.

The fact is that wolves moving around through devastated and dead landscapes littered with rotting corpses may turn into occasional scavengers.

Occasional Scavengers

In AD 842, the Carolingian Empire splintered when the three grandsons of Charlemagne fought at the Battle of Fontenoy. In the aftermath, an otherwise unknown Engelbert wrote a lament describing how the dead lay naked while vultures, crows and wolves devoured their flesh. Here we meet the wolf as one of the threesome Beast of Battle, the eagle, the raven and the wolf – the occasional scavengers roaming the battlefields of yesteryear (Engelbert at the Battle at Fontenay [2]).

A few years later, this ferocious animal moved west, where it arrived in 846 to attack and devour “with complete audacity the inhabitants of Western Gaul. Indeed, in some parts of Aquitaine, they were said to gather together in groups of up to 300, where they “just like army detachments” formed a sort of battle-line and marched along the road, boldly charging en masse all who tried to resist them” (The Annals of St. Bertin [3]). Likely, the wolfs here were a blended mass of Vikings and real wolves following in the path of the pirates and marauders, devastating the countryside of Northern France and England at this time.

A series of studies carried out in France and Belgium have shown how these and other anecdotal references have merit. Historical sources make it clear that the wolves actively sought the European Battlefields in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. However, they also seemed to flourish in numbers whenever rich pickings were offered on the battlegrounds. The sources documenting these matters may be found in the accounts of towns where bounties were offered and paid out. However, another ecologically founded explanation may be that wolves were better able to reproduce in war zones emptied of people who had fled to the nearest cities. Also, in wartime, men were more likely to be engaged as soldiers and not wolf-hunters, which required a concerted effort of digging pits, maintaining nets, keeping packs of wolf-hounds, sourcing cattle for bait etc. Nevertheless, the linkage between a growth in populations of wolves and war has been demonstrated during the Hundred Years’ War in France (1337-1453), the Thirty Years’ War in Germany (1618-1648), and Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland (1649-1653).

The most controversial part of this debate, though, is the linkage between the wolf as an occasional scavenger, its recourse to rotting corpses and the claim that wolves in this manner acquire the taste of human flesh, leading to them actively hunting for humans. This complex question has been studied by the French historian jean-Marc Moriceau, who has trawled through nearly 5500 instances of mortalities registered as being the victims of either predatory or rabid wolves between 1571 and 1890. His studies have shown that people were particularly vulnerable during the end of the French Wars of Religion, 1596-1600 and again in the middle of the 17th century. For instance, only eight victims of predatory wolves were counted between 1611 and 1630; and then suddenly growing more than ten times to 106 during the next decade. This growth might be compared to the rate of rabid attacks, which only doubled. Also, these attacks were concentrated in specific regions in France, with most attacks detected in 9 out of 118 departments. These nine departments accounted for more than 56% of the registered predatory attacks and may be grouped into three regions, one west of Paris, one surrounding Lyons and finally, some south of the Auvergne. As opposed to this, the attacks perpetrated by rabid wolves seem much less concentrated. As rabies is a random illness, it is, above all, linked to the density of wolves. Accordingly, the predatory attacks are not just a reflection of the density of wolf populations but rather their correlation with war zones and battlefields. Moriceau writes, “The temporal distribution of attacks shows a recurring link with armed conflict, particularly at the end or in the aftermath of civil or foreign wars, when higher numbers of corpses were left unburied. The link is very clear for the Wars of Religion at the end of the sixteenth century and in the aftermath of the Fronde in the mid-seventeenth century”.

Forest, Deers and Wolves

Finally, the role of hunting as an elite pastime played a significant role in casting the wolf as the bestial enemy.

Throughout the Middle Ages, hunting was the chief pastime of the elite – whether kings, warriors and nobles. Hunting was essential to constantly hone military skills and maintain a certain level of fitness. Also, it was an essential part of training young boys at court, introducing them to the camaraderie of happy hunting excursions and the manly culture involved in the formation of strategies, the reading of landscapes, the wielding of the weapons and the training of dogs, falcons and hawks. All leading up to the breaking of the game and the fabulous feast where the drinking horns were emptied, and the poets praised the events of the day.

At the centre of these noble rituals were well-stocked forests filled with games. At the time of the Carolingians, such forests were increasingly established as privileged hunting grounds for the kings and their nobles. We read about these forests forged out of communal woodland while severely restricting the peasants’ traditional hunting practices by snares, nets, pits and otherwise. A later decree from Italy indicates that Charlemagne may have intended to limit any peasant-hunting of “our game”. As part of this set of rules, efforts were launched to exterminate wolves and bears. Thus, Charlemagne commanded every village major throughout his kingdom to appoint two full-time wolf-hunters called Luparii. Exempt from military service and legal duties, they were paid by the local freemen. The skins were to be sent to the court. Hunting methods were poison, traps, pits, and dogs and should occur in May when litters were born. “Protecting the crown’s game in royal forests was the chief motivation behind Charlemagne’s program to exterminate wolves, although an added benefit was that it protected the livestock of nearby villages. It also compensated for the outlawing of public trapping, which previously had been the chief strategy for controlling wolf populations,” we read in Eric Goldberg’s study of Frankish hunting .

In AD 813, bishop Frothar of Toul (813¬–847) wrote a letter to Charlemagne boasting of his efforts in this direction. The letter reads: Although it is not yet time for me to give a complete account of my efforts, I would like to provide your Majesty with an interim report on how I have done in exterminating these terrestrial wolves. Since you granted me the diocese, I have killed 240 wolves in your forests. I say, “I have killed them” because they were captured on my orders and command”.[4]. With the size of the diocese of Toul covering perhaps 525.000 ha, this cull represented one wolf pr ca. 2000 ha. This number may be compared to the present situation in France, where 640 animals were counted in June 2022.

With the Carolingians, the cordoning off of medieval deer parks and forests took off. Together with this establishment of the privileged hunt followed the corresponding efforts to exterminate the wolf, the competitor par excellence. May we even claim, Charlemagne was responsible for the hate of wolves? Today, the status and camaraderie of hunting may no longer belong to the elite. Rather, it has evolved into a pastime enjoyed in the rural hinterlands.

However, perhaps the faint echo of the medieval culture of hunting may be found lurking behind the coveted licenses to kill wolves which haunts the rural communities of present-day wilder Europe?

FOOTNOTES:

[1 The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Ed. And translated by Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, Oliver Berghof with the collaboration of Muriel Hall. Cambridge University Press 2016, p.63

[2] Engelbert at the Battle of Fonteney. In: Carolingian Civilisation. A Reader. Ed. by Paul Edward Dutton. Broadview Press 1993, p. 363

[3]   The Annals of St-Bertin, trans. J.L. Nelson (Manchester, 1991).

[4]  As quoted in Goldberg, 2020, p 202.

FEATURED PHOTO:

Wolf devouring a lamb from: Der Naturen Bloeme by Jacob van Maerlant. Manuscript from Royal Library in Holland. KB KA 16 062 r. Source: Wikipedia

SOURCES:

Was there a taboo on Killing Wolves in Rome?
By Mika Rissanen
In Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica (2014)Nuova serie, Vol 107 No. 2 pp 125-147
Published by: Fabrizio Serra Editore

Lupus in Fabula
By Kenneth M. Abbott
In The Classical Journal (1956) Vo  52  No  3 pp 117-122

The History of the Wolf in Western Civilization: From Antiquity to the Middle Ages
By Malcolm Drew Donalson
Edwin Mellen 2006

In the Manner of the Franks. Hunting, Kingship, and Masculinity in Early Medieval Europe.
By Eric J. Goldberg
University of Pennsylvania Press 2020

Wolves and Warfare in the History of the Low Countries, 1000-1800
By Sander Govaerts
In:  Low Countries Historical Review (2022) Vol 137-1 pp 4-27

A Debated Issue in the History of People and Wild Animals. The Wolf Threat in France from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, 2014
By Jean-Marc Moriceau

Man and Wolf: 2000 Years of History
Website organised by Jean-Marc Moriceau

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