The Great Famine devastates northern Europe
- Date
- 1315–1317 CE
- Category
- Environment & climate
- Region
- Northern Europe
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
Beginning in the spring of 1315, relentless rains and unusually cold weather ruined harvests across northern Europe from Ireland and England through France, the Low Countries, Germany, Scandinavia and Poland.
Crops rotted in waterlogged fields, grain prices soared, and a parallel cattle and sheep pestilence destroyed up to four-fifths of livestock in some regions, deepening the catastrophe. The dearth lasted through 1317, with recovery delayed until about 1322, and contemporary chronicles record starvation, abandoned children, soaring crime and even reports of cannibalism. Mortality in many towns reached roughly 10 to 15 percent, with urban estimates ranging higher, claiming millions of lives across the continent. The famine struck a population that had expanded to the limits of medieval agriculture during three centuries of growth, exposing the fragility of an over-extended rural economy. It ended the long medieval demographic boom, undermined faith in established authorities, and weakened the resilience of communities that, a generation later, would face the Black Death. Historians treat the Great Famine as the opening blow of the broader fourteenth-century crisis that reshaped European society.
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Empires active in 1315–1317 CE
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE – 1900 CE
- Mongol Empire1206 CE – 1368 CE
- Ottoman Empire1299 CE – 1922 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
- Yuan Dynasty1271 CE – 1368 CE
Related environment & climate events
- The 1257 Samalas Eruption (Mount Rinjani, Lombok)1257 CE
- Kuwae Eruption (Vanuatu)c. 1452 CE
- The Medieval Warm Period (Medieval Climate Anomaly)c. 950–1250 CE
- Eldgjá Eruption in Iceland939-940 CE
- Volcanic Winter of 536 and Onset of the Late Antique Little Ice Age536–537 CE
- 1556 Shaanxi EarthquakeJanuary 23, 1556
Further reading
The wider story
A New Green History of the World
The classic accessible account of how environment and climate have shaped human history.
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