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European Middle Ages

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The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History

Abstract

This chapter introduces the state of the field in the historical climatology of the Middle Ages in Europe. This region and era witnessed significant human historical changes, as well as climatic phases identified as the Medieval Warm Period and the beginnings of the Little Ice Age. Starting with the work of Hubert H. Lamb and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie in the 1960s, the field has seen a continual extension and refinement of research. Historical climatologists of medieval Europe have drawn on both narrative and administrative sources, which have provided both qualitative weather descriptions and information on climate proxies. Use of these sources poses particular methodological challenges, but historical climatologists have developed seasonal temperature and precipitation indices and long phenological records covering parts of medieval Europe.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Browning, 1992; Gregory, 2010; Mango, 2002.

  2. 2.

    Bradbury, 2007; Costambeys et al., 2011; Wilson, 2016.

  3. 3.

    Keen, 2005.

  4. 4.

    Kleinhenz, 2004.

  5. 5.

    Kiss, 2011.

  6. 6.

    Lamb, 1965.

  7. 7.

    Le Roy Ladurie, 1967.

  8. 8.

    E.g., Le Roy Ladurie and Baulant, 1980; Le Roy Ladurie, 2004; Le Roy Ladurie et al., 2006; Lamb, 1977, 1982.

  9. 9.

    Alexandre, 1977, 1987.

  10. 10.

    Schwarz-Zanetti, 1998; Pfister et al., 1996, 1998a, 1998b.

  11. 11.

    Glaser, 2013; Wanner, 2016.

  12. 12.

    Litzenburger, 2015.

  13. 13.

    Berlioz, 1996, 1998; Berlioz and Quenet, 2000.

  14. 14.

    De Kraker, 2005, 2006, 2013.

  15. 15.

    Buisman and Van Engelen, 1995–1998; Van Engelen, 2006; Van Engelen et al., 2001; Shabalova and Van Engelen, 2003.

  16. 16.

    Gottschalk, 1971–1977; Camenisch, 2015a, 2015b.

  17. 17.

    Rohr, 2006, 2007, 2013.

  18. 18.

    Wetter and Pfister, 2011.

  19. 19.

    Jäger, 2010.

  20. 20.

    Wozniak, 2017; Dutton, 1995, 2008.

  21. 21.

    McCormick et al., 2007.

  22. 22.

    Pribyl, 2014, 2017.

  23. 23.

    Britton, 1937.

  24. 24.

    Lamb, 1977.

  25. 25.

    Titow, 1960, 1970.

  26. 26.

    Bell and Ogilvie, 1978.

  27. 27.

    Ogilvie and Farmer, 1997.

  28. 28.

    Pribyl et al., 2012; Pribyl, 2017.

  29. 29.

    E.g., Brandon, 1971; Stern, 2000; Addison, 2006; Schuh, 2016.

  30. 30.

    E.g., Ogilvie, 1984, 1991; Ogilvie et al., 2000.

  31. 31.

    Retsö, 2014.

  32. 32.

    E.g., Huhtamaa, 2015, 2017.

  33. 33.

    E.g., Brázdil and Kotyza, 1995.

  34. 34.

    Dobrovolný et al., 2015.

  35. 35.

    Kiss, 2009, 2011; Kiss and Laszlovszky, 2013; Kiss and Mikulić, 2015.

  36. 36.

    E.g., Camuffo, 1987; Camuffo and Enzi, 1995.

  37. 37.

    Pavese and Gregori, 1985.

  38. 38.

    Bauch, 2016a, 2016b; Schenk, 2012.

  39. 39.

    Telelis, 2000, 2004.

  40. 40.

    Ellenblum, 2012.

  41. 41.

    Preiser-Kapeller, 2015.

  42. 42.

    E.g., Haldon et al., 2014; White, 2011.

  43. 43.

    Pribyl et al., 2012; Camenisch, 2015a.

  44. 44.

    Camenisch, 2015a.

  45. 45.

    Pribyl, 2014.

  46. 46.

    Grandsen, 1982.

  47. 47.

    Hartman et al., 2016.

  48. 48.

    Storm, 1977.

  49. 49.

    Titow, 1960, 1970; Schuh, 2016.

  50. 50.

    Rohr, 2006, 2007, 2013.

  51. 51.

    Wetter and Pfister, 2011; Daux et al., 2012; Labbé and Gaveau, 2013.

  52. 52.

    Rohr, 2015.

  53. 53.

    Grotefend, 2007.

  54. 54.

    Cheney and Jones, 2000; Titow, 1970.

  55. 55.

    E.g., Lamb, 1977; Alexandre, 1987; Schwarz-Zanetti, 1998; Glaser, 2013; Shabalova and Van Engelen, 2003; Litzenburger, 2015; Camenisch, 2015a, 2015b; Pfister, 1999.

  56. 56.

    Schwarz-Zanetti, 1998; Litzenburger, 2015; Camenisch, 2015b.

  57. 57.

    Camenisch, 2015b.

  58. 58.

    Pfister et al., 2009.

  59. 59.

    Van Engelen et al., 2001; Wetter and Pfister, 2011; Daux et al., 2012; Labbé and Gaveau, 2013.

  60. 60.

    Pribyl et al., 2012; Pribyl, 2017.

  61. 61.

    Brázdil et al., 2010.

  62. 62.

    Hoffmann, 2014.

  63. 63.

    Büntgen et al., 2016; McCormick et al., 2007.

  64. 64.

    E.g., Wanner, 2016.

  65. 65.

    Hoffmann, 2014.

  66. 66.

    Fagan, 2000; Behringer, 2010.

  67. 67.

    Ogilvie and Jónsson, 2001.

  68. 68.

    Hoffmann, 2014.

  69. 69.

    Pribyl et al., 2012.

  70. 70.

    Jordan, 1996; Aberth, 2013; Pribyl, 2017.

  71. 71.

    Jörg, 2008; Camenisch, 2015a; Camenisch et al., 2016.

  72. 72.

    Camenisch, 2015b.

  73. 73.

    E.g., Büntgen et al., 2011, 2016.

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Acknowledgment

We thank Gerrit J. Schenk (Technical University of Darmstadt) for important information concerning literature on medieval climate reconstruction and climate impacts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, Institute of History, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Rohr & Chantal Camenisch

  2. Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

    Kathleen Pribyl

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  1. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Sam White

  2. Institute of History, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Pfister

  3. Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Franz Mauelshagen

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Rohr, C., Camenisch, C., Pribyl, K. (2018). European Middle Ages. In: White, S., Pfister, C., Mauelshagen, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_22

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