Uncovering, reevaluating, and making sense of history is a fascinating endeavor. Trying to weave a coherent tale out of the vast sea of the past is quite the feat! The arrow of history casts yesterday into darkness, where it lies dormant waiting for a reflective eye to endow it with eternal life. 

The reflective eye(s) in this case are Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger, the authors of the delightful tome The Year 1000. As popular histories go it is cheeky, fast paced, and buoyant. I never thought I’d be so endeared to the peasant classes of early medieval England, but I suppose compassion and camaraderie have no expiration date. 

Grappling with a subject as vast as life in England in the Year 1000 requires a cognitive map, a point of departure through which the vastness of the subject can be explored more effectively and enjoyably. The Year 1000 finds its lead in the enigmatic Julius Work Calendar, the oldest surviving calendar in England, which currently resides in the British Library in London. 

Along with ancient maps, time worn calendars hold a special and mysterious appeal. Though daunting in their symbolic density and distracting with their illuminated calligraphy, they are more than mere arcana eye candy from years gone by. Calendars like the Julius Work were pivotal turning points in faith based self representation, allowing humans to stake a claim on the impersonal tides of time and knead meaning out of the raw material of the seasons.   

Through the medium of the Julius Work Calendar we can peer behind the curtain to get intimate with the OG millennials as they emerged from the Dark Ages. The Anglo Saxon period of English history began roughly in 450 AD. In the year 1000 AD England was still predominantly settled by the Anglo Saxon peoples. William the Conqueror’s 1066 invasion and subsequent colonization of the island was still decades away and frequent Viking raids and incursions was the key threat to Anglo Saxon society at the time. It was during this period that Christianity blossomed and a coherent Olde English identity was born. Here are some fascinating pieces of knowledge gained from the book that it might brighten your day to know.   

The field darkened

With soldiers blood, after the morning-time

When the sun, that glorious star,

Bright candles of God, the lord eternal,

Glided over the depths…

The Anglo Saxon Chronicle

They Had Great Teeth but Short Lives

People in 1000 AD were about as tall as we were with very healthy teeth. They could only expect to live into their early fifties, however. Why? Let this quote from Danziger and Lacey provide some insight into the hygiene of the time: “The sign of the cross was the antiseptic of the year 1000”. 

Countryfolk were Desert Island Companions Extraordinaire

“Skull measurements show that the brain capacity of someone living in the year 1000 was exactly the same as our own. These are not people we should patronize. They were the ideal type to choose as companions on a desert island, since they were skillful with their hands, and they could turn their hands to anything. They knew how to make and mend and when their days work was done, they could also be very good company, since one of the most important things they had learned in their lives was how to entertain themselves.” 

They Were Natural Storytellers

“The Anglo Saxons learned most of their folklore by heart. They could tell long, complicated tales of their family histories – who begat whom, back to when their ancestors had first arrived in England from the forests beyond the sea. And they loved to recite their ancient folk poems by heart – violent and bloodthirsty sagas of wild beasts and warriors, which retained the echo of the voyages that had brought their forefathers to the outermost islands on the edge of the great ocean.”

“What makes a bitter thing sweet? Hunger.” 

Alcuin, a Yorkshire schoolmaster who reformed education for Charlemagne in the 8th century

The English Language had Fascinating Roots

“The English language arrived in England, it has been said, on the point of a sword – and it arrived twice. Its first invasion was with the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and other tribes of Northern Holland and Germany who crossed the North Sea after 450 to fill the vacuum left by the departing Romans. They experienced little difficulty in assimilating the friendly British and they drove those who were recalcitrant back into Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Between 450 and 600 the Anglo-Saxons took over most of the area which corresponds to modern England. The invasion that made the decisive contribution to the language, however, was a second wave of Scandinavian trespassers – the Vikings who began to occupy the northern and eastern areas of England in the aftermath of raids that started in the 790’s.”

Computer analysis of the English language as spoken today shows that the hundred most frequently used words are all of Anglo-Saxon origin. 

There was Peace, Quiet, and Space Galore

“It was the quietness of life in a medieval English village that would most strike a visitor from today. In the year 1000 the hedgerows actually had a sound. The year 1000 was an empty world, with much more room to stretch out and breathe. With a total English population of little more than a million, there was just one person for every forty or fifty with whom we are surrounded today.”

The Fractious Heritage Behind British Town Names

By the end of the first millennium almost every modern English village existed and bore its modern name, and these names can tell us whether the identity of the village was primarily shaped by the Anglo-Saxons or Danes. Place names ending in ham, stowe, stead, and ton indicate an Anglo-Saxon origin. Viking settlements can be identified by towns ending in -by, – thorpe, -toft, -scale. 

The Rural Landscape was Familiar to our Own

“As the villager stood on the hilltop he would not have seen significantly more woodland than we would today. It is frequently supposed that medieval England was clad in thick forests, but Neolithic Britons had started cutting down trees and growing crops as early as 5000 B.C and the Romans were major land managers, laying down farms, roads, and villas across the countryside.”

You Knew Everyone in Town

“Village communities provided reassuringly constant backdrops for a life. You knew everyone, and everyone’s animals to boot. In the year 1000 the same Christian names were often passed down traditionally inside families but there were no surnames. There was no need for them yet.”

Slavery was Part of the Fabric of Society

The reliance on slave labour was a feature of life in the year 1000. “The basic underpinning of the rural economy was a slave class. Slavery was a penalty for a variety of offences, including theft and incest.”

“Though i am white with winters, I will not away”

Battle of Maldon

People Sold Themselves into Bondage

“People also surrendered themselves into bondage at times of famine or distress. It was a basic transaction – heads for food. In the year 1000 people could not imagine themselves without a protector. You had a lord in heaven and you needed a lord on earth.”

You Did Not Want to be the Year King

“Eostre was the goddess of dawn for the tribes of Scandinavia. Her name came from east, the direction from which the sun arrived every morning. Pagan tradition told of the ‘Year King’, the human victim who was chosen and sacrificed as winter turned into spring. Buried in the fields, his body would come magically to life again with the rising grain, and everyone could share in the miracle of his rebirth by eating the bread that was made from that grain.”

The Christian festival of Easter embraced these pre-Christian traditions.

Pestilence and Famine Were Features of Life

“I shall provide…the necessities for life. Unless the land fails.” – Piers Plowman stated in the late medieval fable. Natural disaster and the hardship and famine it created were constant spectres. People dated the years of their lives in relation to great famines and times of pestilence. In 962 alone there was a ‘very great pestilence’ and a ‘great fatal fire’ in London and famines occurred many times per generation. 

Feasting and Fasting Marked the Passage of the Summer

“Fasting was the church’s way of harnessing hunger to spiritual purposes, and Easter came at the end of the forty day fast of Lent. The epic poems of the time all come to rest in banqueting halls. Conviviality was at the heart of Anglo Saxon life and seasonal celebrations were moments for which the community lived.” 

Cursed July and the Midsummer Delirium 

According to the late medieval fable Piers Plowman, July was the month when the divide between rich and poor became most apparent. The spring crops had not yet matured and grain bins were more than likely not, empty.

“Historical accounts of these rural midsummer festivals depict the countryfolk wrapped up in fits of mass hysteria, and the historical accounts of these rural frenzies have explained the delirium in terms of the slender diet on which the poor had to subsist during the hungry gap. People were light-headed through lack of solid food and modern chemistry has shown how the ergot that flowered on rye as it grew mouldy was a source of lysergic acid – LSD.”

Imbibing in 1000 AD

“Mead was the reveller’s drink of choice. It was brewed from the crushed refuse of honeycombs. Less common was wine. Because the corked wine bottle was not invented until the 18th century wine was kept in wooden barrels and leather flasks and the grapes used rarely produced more than 4% alcohol. Beer at the time wasn’t quite strong enough to produce intoxication either. Like wine, the ale of the year 1000 had to be consumed without delay and probably had a porridge-like consistency. That being said, ale was safer to consume than water because the brewing process offered some protection against contamination.”

The Ceremonial Feast Was a Revelers Paradise

“The ceremonial feast was the setting in which the Anglo-Saxon monarch displayed his power and dignity. The royal court was something like a circus, touring an annual round of locations in which it successively satisfied and then exhausted its welcome.”

Capitalism was Taking Root

“In 1000 England enjoyed a prosperity and civilization unmatched in Northern Europe. The evidence is in the coins. England’s coinage was the most advanced in western Europe in the year 1000. Coins were issued for up to three years after which point they ceased to be legal tender. To redeem their value you had to take them to your local mint where for every ten you returned you received 8 or 9 of the new issue.”

The Viking Menace

Viking raids were part and parcel with life in the Dark Ages. A new wave of Viking raids began in 980. By this time the Vikings were everywhere. They were in Kiev, Byzantium, and had also moved into France, where they were met with hospitable treatment by the Normans. They based their longships in France and in 991 these same longships – 93 of them- sailed into the Thames estuary where the Vikings terrorized civilians and took bribes from townspeople. The raids became a national trauma and a feared spectre.

“The invasion of 1066 is generally thought of as French, and that was certainly true in linguistic terms. But its roots and self image went back to the Vikings. So while the years around 1000 saw a flowering of Anglo-Saxon civilization, they were also scarred by the crude and naked force that would bring that flowering to an end”

The Value of the Forest

“The forest was the mysterious home where the ancient spirits of the woodland lived. The forest was a place of refuge when the vikings came, and in times of famine it was the larder of last resort.”