Complaints about butchers are found in older written sources from England.ĭolly Jørgensen has rereferred to them in her articles. Blood and water with fur or hair had to rinsed away. Intestines and heads had to be thrown somewhere. Tanneries and textile production were messy businesses. The waste products of various trades were equally pervasive. Butchery by-productsĭung or excrement was not the only filth that piled up in medieval cities. Hygiene was an important aspect of society. "The goal is to study how health evolves from being a private affair, as it was, to becoming a public responsibility," says the researcher.ĭolly Jørgensen is among those who have discovered that medieval townspeople took steps in this direction. But research, partly in England, shows this to be wrong," says Christophersen. "It was thought that they had no knowledge of how to deal with them. In their research project, Christophersen and colleagues investigate how citizens in medieval cities related to dreadful diseases. The worst of such diseases was of course the Black Death, which began ravaging Norway in 1349, and struck again in later outbreaks up until the 1600s. They could also be poisoned by the ergot fungus Claviceps purpurea, which grew on cereals such as rye and triggered hallucinations - or made you «downright crazy», according to Christophersen. Our medieval ancestors were plagued with diphtheria, measles, tuberculosis, leprosy, typhus, anthrax, smallpox, salmonella and other maladies. He is a professor in historical archaeology. This is when the first Norwegian cities that exist today were founded.Īt the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Axel Christophersen leads a research project on health and hygiene in Trondheim in the Middle Ages. The medieval period in Norway began in the late Viking Age, lasting from around the year 1050 until the 1500s. Is this a true depiction of medieval cities? Frequent epidemics People dumped their own buckets of faeces and urine into the street or simply sloshed it out the window. They were ankle-deep in a putrid mix of wet mud, rotten fish, garbage, entrails, and animal dung.
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