What was life like during the dark ages

Every country on earth has been through a number of different time periods that changed the nation in major ways, but none of them were as uncomfortable to live in as the dark ages. In Britain, the exact date of the dark ages is debated as other names have been given to the time period, most commonly the Middle Ages, but it depends on how you like to break down your timelines. We don’t know a huge amount about this time period due to the circumstances in the country during the age, but a few of the main questions about it have been answered below:

When were the Dark ages

388 AD until 793 AD would be my answer, but some estimates put it as late as the year 1000. It started when the Romans began their retreat from Britain in 388 AD which was completed by 400 AD, which was caused by numerous political issues throughout the empire. The Romans had conquered all of England and Wales and due to their strength, had both countries completely locked down. After they had all left, a huge power struggle occurred which took hundreds of years to stabilise, and in the year 793 AD the first Viking landing in England occurred which changed everything, and brought in the next time period of the Middle Ages.

Why was it called the Dark ages?

The term Dark age was given to the time period by an Italian scholar named Petrarch in the 1330s. He used the name to describe the dark period of post-Roman centuries, compared to the enlightened period various countries experienced when under their occupation. There is another reason that this term is so widely used, and that’s due to the lack of knowledge about the time period. There were entire decades where people didn’t create any surviving information, leaving historians to guess at the countless rulers that would have established their own kingdoms before being wiped out.

What was life like for a peasant during the dark ages?

Really tough and a constant struggle for survival would be the short answer. The vast majority of the population would be classed as peasants, and because the person in charge of the land you lived on could do whatever they liked with no consequences, they could impose requirements that would be today considered as slavery. All land across Britain was claimed by someone, and this meant that to live on it, you had to follow their rules. A peasant would be required to pay their taxes in labour instead of money, mostly because they never really had any.

(Homes would have been made from timber and were very basic, usually only having a single room the whole family had to share)

The lords would create laws which were designed to basically force the peasants to work their entire lives for next to nothing. Such laws included things like making it a crime to move away from the lords land, and they would be required to work all the hours they could with only a short window for them to work on their own vegetable gardens. You couldn’t earn any money to move away, and it would have been a crime to try and leave, but if you didn’t pay your taxes in labour then you’d be punished horribly, and people during the early ages didn’t waste time putting people in prison as punishment.

What religions were there during the dark ages?

The Romans established their own religion across the country and an early form of Christianity was already in-place by the time they left. This was the dominant religion for most of the British Isles, but there were still some locally based Celtic type religions still being practised, mostly on the Cornish peninsula.

What did people do for fun during the Dark ages?

If you managed to get some time for yourself in the evening or a weekend when you didn’t have to work on growing your own food, it would time to unwind and have some fun. A weak form of beer was made by fermenting grain without additional sugar, and they would have had games they made up, but unfortunately dark age peasants weren’t great at writing down their leisure activities, so we don’t really have any details. Fishing, Hunting and socializing would most likely be at the top of the list, but without written proof we can only guess.

What did people eat during the dark ages?

The most common type of grain farmed in the country at the time was Rye. They would have made this into a dark brown bread they would have had to make themselves from scratch using a hand powered stone grinding wheel, leaving in most of the husk and bits that today would be filtered out. With only basic crops available to them, food would have mostly consisted of a small variety of basic vegetables and a single type of grain. Peas, onions and root vegetables like carrots and parsnips would be on the menu, along with cabbage and leeks which were particularly popular in Wales. Unfortunately for them, the discovery of the potato was still a long way off and there wouldn’t be a single exotic spice available to the peasant class, making their usual meal nothing more than plain boiled vegetables and grain.

(There is no set recipe for pottage, but it generally consists of taking any available vegetables and boiling them for a long time with some grain, leading to a very unattractive looking slop)

How dangerous was it during the Dark ages?

There was the very realistic chance that every single day could be your last. If you didn’t work for your lord he might kill you, and if you tried to run away he might send someone after you to kill you. Living in a small independent kingdom would also mean that a more powerful neighbour could attack at any given moment and there wouldn’t be a thing you could do about it. Wars often had no consequences at all, and it would be very easy for a group of raiders to attack a village and disappear to the other side of the country without a trace. Apart from the constant danger of someone killing you, there was also the complete lack of any form of medicine, which meant diseases like measles and other things that are easily treatable today would be a death sentence back then. If you managed not to get killed by someone, poisoned by eating the wrong wild food, get an infected wound or catch a disease, then you could expect to live until you can’t work on your lords land any more, probably around the early 50s.

How did the Dark ages end?

Time periods in history are usually signified by something causing a significant change across the nation, and in this case it was the arrival of the Vikings. In the year 793 AD, several longships landed on the small island of Lindisfarne and raided the monastery there, capturing a large amount of wealth and killing all those they found inside. At the time, the British Isles were divided into numerous independent kingdoms, with England having Wessex, Mercier and Northumbria as the major ruling kingdoms, with many smaller kingdoms covering Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and the Cornish peninsula having a separate Brittonic nation.

Viking raids started to happen at a rapid pace, and they landed mostly across England and southern Ireland, eventually establishing settlements. This new nation changing invasion force from Scandinavia put an end to the dark ages and the country of England was eventually forced to unite or fade into history.