The Edge of the World:
A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe
Michael Pye
c. 2015.
The author uses the land around the North Sea to show how civilization evolved -- trade, not war. Commerce, not crusades.
Cover the millenium + from 700 to 1700, from the end of the Roman Empire to the Amsterdam in its glory in 17th century.
Just as Homer/Hesiod described the Mediterranean Sea, the author will compare the North Sea, from Dover to Bergen, from Dublin to Gdansk.
An interesting book. I'm not sure everyone likes his writing style. An enjoyable read.
This is the history of the Low Countries (along the water) during the European Dark Ages, greatly impacted by the Vikings, and the plague. It begins with the Frisians in about the 6th or 7th century and continues through Antwerp, Bruges, Brugundy Netherlands in the 16th century.
The Age of the Vikings
- begins with the raid on Lindisfarne Abbey 793
- ends in the mid-12th century
A timeline would have been helpful.
Some key dates:
- From wiki: Dark Ages -- European Middle Ages, 5th to 15th centuries
- Charlemagne: 742 - 814; laid foundations for modern France, Germany, and Low Countries
- (Viking Age, late 8th to mid-12th century) -- not that Viking Age begins at end of Charlemagne age
- Robert Grosseteste: 1175 - 1253; statesman; philosopher; bishop; revered as a saint in England but never canonized; founder of tradition of scientific thought
- Matthew Paris: 1200 - 1259; Benedictine; English chonicler; St Albans Abbey
- Roger Bacon: 1220 - 1290; baton passed from Aristotle to Roger Bacon; Franciscan; U of Oxford
- Plague: peaked in Europe, 1346 -- 1353; again, spread through water routes; pied piper of Hamelin: earliest record (stained glass window in Hamelin): 1300
- Burgundy Netherlands: 1384 - 1482; union of Valois-Burgundy & Habsburg heir; comprised large parts of present-day Belgium and the Netherlands; as well as Lux and parts of n. France
- Hanseatic League: 1400 - 1800; dominated Baltic trade
- gobbets, p. 65
- murrain, p. 96
- skerries, p. 112
- A close reading suggests he covers the entire book in this introduction, from the 5th century to the 15th century
- 1700: first "changing" rooms on a beach; Scarborough; "where the idea of seaside was beginning"; the beginning of the spa, the "cure"; so when I visited Scarborough in 2002 or thereabouts, I was "going" where it all began
- along the coast of Zeeland; near Middelburg; storm of January, 1647, exposed stones of Domburg -- page 5; stones/prayers to a goddess called Nehalennia; also stones/altars to known gods: Neptune, Hercules; but Nehalennia, with 26 altars, had not been know for a millenium - hmmm, why did she fade away? Sometimes with a basket of apples; always with a dog looking up at her.
- shoreline storms opened up the site several times, but the last time the site was opened by storms was 1866
- three cultures here at Domburg:
- Roman temple to an unknown goddess
- settlement which looked like center of trade
- Viking settlement
- Frisians, Domburg
- Bede
- the Vikings
- the Vikings
- shoes
- ordeals
- 13th century: managing water
- Robert Grosseteste
- Hansa
- beguines and beguinages
- beguines: Christian lay orders; generally women; particularly in the Low Countries;
- 13th to 16th centuries
- wool; needed water
"This medieval horror had very long consequences. It is the start of the process we still know of anxious, insistent social controls, of policing lives (the "nanny state"); and what goes with it, an official suspicion of the poor and the workless, who are never just unfortunate. Our nightmares begin with their nightmares, in the 1340s."Chapter 12: The City and the World
- Burgundy
- Bruges
- Antwerp
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