Medieval Serfs harvest wheat (Wikimedia Commons)
In exploring the Middle Ages, one shouldn’t skip over exploring the basis of the medieval economy – agriculture, and how events such as climate, weather, and warfare could shape this foundational aspect of society. In present Western society, the majority of the population doesn’t need to worry about how their food is produced; grocery stores, restaurants, and even online retailers provide a seemingly endless supply of food from across the world. Occasionally, however, the impact of weather, climate, and crop disease can suddenly find its way into our food supply; the 2010 tomato crop failure in Florida serves as an example of this as restaurants across North America slashed the availability of this ubiquitous product. While modern infrastructure can usually weather the impact of such shortages, the agricultural societies of the Middle Ages could be strongly impacted by these changes. George Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire and its television adaptation provide a medium through which this impact can be explored as the people of Westeros must prepare for winters that can last months, years, or decades, even during times of war and hardship. To the people of Westeros, as to the people of the Middle Ages, the climate has a severe impact on their ability to survive; cold periods throughout the Middle Ages (as well as particularly wet periods) caused crop failure and starvation, just as the long winters of Westeros create starvation conditions. Such conditions, contributing to the frequently risky nature of agriculture, led to cooperation between Medieval farmers. The political climate also plays a role in both historical agriculture and that of A Song of Ice and Fire, as violence leads to the breakdown of the systems that feed everyone. By exploring Martin’s agricultural society and its response to his world’s unique climate, one can view the Westerosi version as an exaggerated and accelerated depiction of Medieval agriculture that can be used to introduce students to the ways climate and social values could interact with subsistence-level agricultural economies in the Middle Ages. Furthermore, this knowledge will students them understand how global poverty and climate change are issues our own world is currently facing and will continue to face in coming decades.
The Middle Ages saw an increase in agricultural output with advances such as the heavy plow, horseshoes, the horse collar, and reforms in crop rotation permitting more bountiful and less risky harvests, especially in regions such as Northern Europe that had previously been more difficult to farm than hospitable areas closer to the Mediterranean (Brown, 1994). Such technology is largely visible in Martin’s world; while specific farming practices are obscured from the reader, various characters observe horses being used as plow animals rather than team of oxen, with the ill-fated Eddard Stark serving as an example in the first book of the series (Martin, A Game of Thrones, 1996). Methods associated with non-European civilizations, such as terracing, do not appear in Westeros, nor do more modern forms of agriculture; this strengthens the implication that its agricultural system is meant to be similar to that of Medieval Europe rather than other regions or time periods. These similarities should be explained first as once students understand how the basic form of Medieval agriculture and that of Game of Thrones are similar, teaching them the ramifications of that layout in terms of risk and social structure will be more effective.
A Medieval depiction of an ox team drawing a plow, from the Trés Riches Book of Hours (Wikimedia Commons)
By war, weather, and climate, risk was pervasive in Medieval agriculture, just as it is in Game of Thrones. What the series does not demonstrate, however, is how the ‘smallfolk’ could manage this risk on a day to day basis. In an article exploring risk management in Medieval villages, Gary Richardson demonstrates that English peasants had several methods to pool risk and avoid personal disaster, including the establishment of village fraternities and the passing of “poor laws” (Richardson, 2005). “Accident, illness, fire, flood… or other peril”, most of which could be caused by poor weather and changing climate, were all reasons for which a fraternity would donate financial aid to impoverished members; furthermore, the aforementioned “poor laws” usually permitted troubled peasants to pick peas from the fields of their neighbours for self-sustenance (Richarson, 2005). As Metin Cosgel demonstrates in another article, Medieval lords were motivated to join in on distributing agricultural risk as the impact of crop failure would work its way up to them, impacting not only the lower levels of society, but the highest (Cosgel, 1992). Together, across Europe, these systems of community and risk management could create a sort of low-level safety net for times of hardship.
Martin’s world, however, shows no such leniency. Early in the series, while discussing what will happen winter arrives, Littlefinger remarks that Westerosi granaries hold “enough wheat for a five-year winter”, and that a longer winter would simply mean that they would “have fewer peasants” (Game of Thrones S02E01, “The North Remembers“). In contrast to the supportive nature of poor laws, this shows a complete disregard on the part of the nobility for the people who farm the land. Fraternities in the English sense are also absent in Game of Thrones, with the desperate smallfolk instead supporting groups such as the Brotherhood Without Banners or joining ones such as the Poor Fellows. What this demonstrates is that rather than closely emulating the impact of an agricultural economy on Medieval society, Martin focuses on the violent and dramatic aspects of Medieval agriculture that could flare up in extreme circumstances in the form of revolts and rebellions. Using the exaggerated of Martin’s world as an introduction to Medieval agriculture will help engage students and keep material from coming across as dull or dry; once introduced to the material, the aspects of community and cooperation within and across levels of society can be explored more in depth, providing a strong introduction to the shape of Medieval agriculture and its social implications.
A Depiction of the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, an example of a violent Medieval flare-up (Wikimedia Commons)
In his recent article exploring the historiography of the impact of climate change in Norway, Audun Dybdahl explores how previous scholars have demonstrated that periods of climate-induced crop failure occurred throughout the middle ages, emphasizing those in 14th and 15th century Norway (Dybdahl, 2012). He explains that bad years could cause starvation, changes in demographics and settlement, and could create widespread cases of malnutrition that opened the way for infectious diseases (Dybdhal, 2012). Giles Young and his co-authors further discussed the impact of climate change, maintaining that 14th and 15th centuries were periods of poor crop conditions all across Europe due to a mix of excessively cold and excessively wet weather (Young et al, 2012). However, as demonstrated by Brown, these failures had not always been the norm, with the 10th-mid 13th centuries being ones of increasing temperature that was hospitable to crops across Europe (Brown, 1994). While easier to maintain in years of plenty and harder in later years, the aforementioned systems of support would be able to keep Medieval society afloat, although they were often unable to wholly prevent death and famine.
Like his lack of leniency in terms of support for failing peasants, Martin shows no mercy when it comes to his environment. Winters that last for years are commonplace, and as Littlefinger demonstrated early in the show, the smallfolk are expected to die in significant numbers. It is worth noting that this disregard for the exposed is not universal, as the people of the North congregate in the Winter Town at Winterfell during the cold season. Rather than preparing for winter, the lords and ladies of Game of Thrones wage war on each other; the issue with this is summed up neatly from the Wall by Jon Snow, where he asks “but what good are swords without food?”, noting that some of the Free Folk “were already at the point of eating their own dead” (Martin, A Dance with Dragons, 2012). The coming winter in Marin’s world looks like it will be a harsh one, a potential second round of the Long Night, complete with White Walkers, Wights, and undead steeds. Roughly reflecting the Medieval warm period followed by times of agricultural difficulty in the 14th and 15th centuries, Martin’s climate change gives an exaggerated version of the impact climate and weather could have on Medieval agriculture. Using this exaggeration, students can be taught the realities of climate change and the detrimental impact it could have on Medieval society.
Old Nan shares the horrors of Westerosi climate change
Also worth discussing with students is the impact warfare could have on Medieval agriculture. Chevauchée, the practice of destroying the enemy countryside to prevent the harvesting of crops, demoralize the population, and damage crops, was used extensively throughout the Hundred Years’ War, fought primarily between England and France. While very fond of this tactic on foreign soil, the English generally avoided the use of this this method of warfare against their own people, as shown by their change in tactics during the Wars of the Roses (which overlapped and followed the Hundred Years’ War). This change is understandable as while effective against somebody whose future you don’t especially care about, it is an immensely bad idea to slaughter the population that you want to rule over and be fed by. A Modern Farmer article emphasizes the violence against the farmers of Martin’s world; Westerosi such as The Mountain are happy to slaughter the smallfolk who need to prepare the continent for winter, while groups such as the Brotherhood Without Banners were started because of soldiers from all sides of the conflict preying on the smallfolk. This contrast can be used to educate students about the impact warfare had on real Medieval peasants during different sorts of conflict, ranging from being kept largely safe, to being levied, to being raided and slaughtered.
Overall, Game of Thrones provides an effective medium through which the easily perceived as dry subject of Medieval agriculture can be approached. Students can be taught about the baseline similarities between agricultural practice in Game of Thrones and the Medieval world before moving on to the differences. The contrast between how risk management and cooperation was handled in the real world and how Martin handles these topics (no mercy, no friendship, but lots of starvation) can be examined to show that cooperation and intelligent risk management were necessary to form a functioning agricultural society. This cooperation can be seen to exist across layers of society, with real life lords being aware of the importance of the food produced by the peasantry, unlike the lords of Westeros. For an educator, the readings found in this bibliography will help establish a strong knowledge to go into a lesson about Medieval agriculture as they provide scientific, historiographical, social, and historical perspectives that should provide sufficient knowledge to teach a class about the subject. Ultimately, the goal of such a lesson should be to use Martin’s work as a way to engage students and teach them how agriculture helped shape Medieval society while connecting the issues of climate change and crop failure with present and future challenges.
Bibliography
Brown, Neville. “Climate Change and Human History. Some Indications from Europe, AD400-1400.” Environmental Pollution 83 (1994): 37-43.
Cosgel, Metin. “Risk Sharing in Medieval Agriculture.” Journal of European Economic History 21 (1992): 99-110.
Dybdahl, Audun. “Climate and Demographic Crises in Norway in Medieval and Early Modern Times.” The Holoscene 22 (2012): 1159-1167.
Richardson, Gary. “The Prudent Village: Risk Pooling Institutions in Medieval English Agriculture.” The Journal of Economic History 65 (2005): 386-413.
Young, Giles, Danny McCarroll, Neil Loader, Mary Gagen, Andreas Kirchhefer, Joanne Demmler. “Changes in Atmospheric Circulation and the Arctic Oscillation Preserved Within a Millennial Length Reconstruction of Summer Cloud Cover from Northern Fennoscandia.” Climate Dynamics 39 (2012): 495-507.
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