What was it like surviving an ancient winter

Long before the invention of electric heating and synthetic materials to make clothes from, people had few options available to them when it came to how they would make it through the winter months. The way people survived the coldest time of the year is pretty much the same all over the world, just with a few variations in food and available resources.

The medieval period

At the start of this era, which began in 1066 with the arrival of William the Conquer, people were living in homes made from wooden beams and planks, and insulated with a type of plaster made from limestone. Their thatched roofs would allow the smoke to escape from a firepit, but would do little to hold the heat in very well.

Wool and leather were the warmest clothes they had available, with the only other choice being linen which did nothing to protect from the cold. Because people would often have half their homes converted into a stable for their animals, people would have to go through the winter being stuck inside all day with a load of farting cows and pigs.

There would be little work to do during the cold months as there wouldn’t be any crops to tend to and the usual jobs like construction would be done during the summer, leaving many days of complete boredom stuck in a single room home with your entire family and some farm animals.

The Iron Age

Spanning from around 800 BCE and ending with the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 AD, the people of the Iron Age had few differences to their methods when it came to winter. One advantage they did have was the design of their homes, with the classic Celtic roundhouse being one of the most recognizable designs from the Iron Age. The high roof allowed a large fire to be made in the center of the building, maximizing its heat output without the danger of setting the roof on fire.

( Nothing beats a central fire pit, making homes easy to heat but with no extra space for animals)

The population of the British Isles passed 1 million for the first time during the Iron Age, which left a huge amount of wilderness, complete with its own herds of animals that could be hunted all year round. This age also saw the first ploughs strong enough to actually do the job, and grain was mass-produced and dried to provide a primary source of preservable food.

Unlike the medieval period, animals were often kept in separate shelters because roundhouses didn’t offer any areas to wall off and keep them in, which meant a less smelly winter but it didn’t change the fact you’d be in one room for most of the day with everyone else that lived there.

Native Americans

The Native people of North America farmed several types of crops, but non were as popular as corn, which could be dried and kept for years. The number one food for Native Americans throughout the winter was called pemmican, which is widely recognized as being the ultimate survival food.

(Home-made pemmican, it isn’t the tastiest food but provides more fat and calories than anything else available)

A bison would be killed and all its meat cut into thin strips and dried in the sun, while its fat was rendered and its hide cured. When the meat was completely dry, it would be ground into a powder and mixed in a 50/50 ratio with warm rendered fat. This meat and fat mix would then be put into the cured hide of the animal and sown up to stop contact with the air, but when made and sealed properly, pemmican can be safe to eat for years and offers a high fat content, which is ideal for the colder months.

Their homes were either teepee’s lined with animal skins or sometimes cotton sheets, or huts made from sticks and lined with bark or daub walls, a type of clay mixture that’s seen on ancient buildings worldwide. Both types would allow for a fire to be made inside and with the abundance of leathers and skins they collect throughout the year, they normally didn’t suffer too much from the cold.

Inuit

There are various Inuit tribes that line the northern coasts of Canada, Alaska, Russia and parts of Scandinavia, and due to their location, they suffer the coldest winters you could possibly find on earth. There are two key ingredients of surviving a winter for these people, and they are skins and fat. Warm clothing is made from reindeer or Cariboo skins, and their diet has a very high meat and fat content, giving them the calories they need to operate in such extreme cold.

(Inuit clothing is the warmest on earth without using synthetic fabrics, and is the key to living in such a harsh climate)

One advantage they do have is the ability to freeze food where ever they are, and large hunting parties are often sent out before the worst part of winter hits to gather large amounts of meat from seals, deer and musk ox. All arctic mammals have either large amounts of fat, very warm skins or both, but nothing is more prized to catch at the start of winter than the whale.

An adult whale could provide enough meat, fat and oil to supply an entire village for months, and if one is caught at the right time of year and butchered before the cold hits, then the winter months would end up being very boring indeed. With no need to leave their huts, winter would consist of sitting in a tent without electricity for up to three months of the year.

Vikings

Scandinavia doesn’t really have the best farm land, so the last part of summer would be frantically spent trying to gather in all their grain and drying it in time before the weather turned. A winter in Viking era Scandinavia would have been spent in a very similar way to medieval England, but with one major difference.

(Stockfish would have been a common item in their winter diet, which is made of nothing but fish dried for weeks or even months to remove all the moisture. It lasts a very long time but cant be eaten without soaking to re-hydrate)

The Vikings have always been known as people of the sea, so fish and sea mammals have always been a huge part of their diet. Without the ability to grow crops as well as most other countries, they had to rely on the sea and would send out fishing parties all year round. Another advantage they would have had is the same as the Inuit, which is simply that they are used to the cold and more accustomed to a harsh climate.

1700s French mountain animal herders

If you try and sleep as much as possible, your body will get used to it, and it’ll be easier for you to fall asleep faster and for longer. In France during the 1700s, there were many remote mountain farms where people would herd sheep and goats, but during the winter it would be too cold to graze, and most of the useful plants would be hibernating. The animals would live in the same houses as the people looking after them, so as a method to save on heat and make the time go faster, people would hibernate with their animals.

They would climb into their pens and sleep amongst them, sharing body heat and sleeping for as long as possible. This method has been documented in France and Russia during the 1700s, but was probably much more popular than people realize. With people being so poor and having literally nothing to do for weeks at a time, it seems only sensible they save on having to chop wood and maintain a fire by sleeping next to a couple of wool covered goats.