Famine in Medieval Europe

Famine wiped out as many as a third of the population of London in the year 1258. People very literally starved to death in the streets. A century later, the Black Death had a similar impact and we know about that catastrophe in great detail. But the 1258 famine is a neglected tragedy by comparison. Why has an incidence of mass hunger failed to register to the same extent? Is famine somehow less compelling than plague?

And this wasn’t the only famine to sweep medieval Europe. A year after the last Templar grand master, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake in Paris, mass starvation struck the continent. For three years – 1315, 1316, and 1317 – harvests failed with terrifying results. The Great Famine made its presence from Scotland to Italy, Spain to Russia. It’s estimated that between 5% and 12% of the population of northern Europe died for want of food.

What did ordinary people do during these outbreaks of medieval famine? It seems they reverted to a hunter gatherer life, constantly on the quest for nutrition in any form. They dug for roots, ate rodents, killed their pets, and boiled anything into a broth from weeds to pieces of leather. It can be taken as a given that on occasion, our hungry medieval ancestors resorted to cannibalism.

While hunger was an ever-present reality for most people in the Middle Ages, we can see pronounced themes around famine and even cannibalism in traditional fairy stories. Hansel and Gretel is an obvious example where the witch plans to eat the children until she gets cooked in the oven. Jack the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and Snow White, in older versions, have very explicit cannibal references. The Juniper Tree is a less well known tale where a stepmother murders her stepson, cooks him, and serves the victim to his own father.

It’s believed Hansel and Gretel originated during the Great Famine of 1315-1317, which was provoked by a mini Ice Age. Temperatures cooled and there was severe rainfall, which rotted crops. Old people went without meals so that their children could eat. But maybe some old people – like the witch in the story – wondered why they couldn’t cook some children to survive.

In the federal capital of Switzerland, there is a grotesque 16th century statue of an ugly adult figure eating several children. This is the Kindlifresser – or Child Eater, translated from the German. There are different theories about what it represents but as a representation of extreme hunger, it can’t be beat.

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