Fascinating true stories and legends from Europe’s history — including tales from the Age of Discovery and the ancient, medieval, and Renaissance periods. Boundaries are always changing, especially when you’re dealing with history. Here we look at stories that are generally from modern Western, Central, Eastern, and Northern Europe.
Much like the Language of Flowers and other courtship rituals of the past, there was an entire conversation hidden in your love spoon. For example, an anchor might symbolize settled love, while interlocking chains were pretty self-explanatory. A wheel could signify a willingness to work for your partner; a shield would offer protection. Balls in a cage could refer to love held safe or show a number of children. Arwyn, you dog!
Summer, 1495. You’re Hans, King of Denmark and Norway, freshly anchored off the southern coast of Sweden for a little tête-à-tête with Sten Sture the Elder.
This isn’t a shake-hands-and-kiss-babies kind of diplomatic trip. You’re there because Sture, the “protector of the realm,” is trying to keep Sweden out of the Nordic union you’re supposed to be ruling over.
One neat and tidy idea is that instead of banning Lupercalia — which Romans celebrated for a remarkably long time — Christians adopted and renamed it. This stems from a strongly-worded letter by Pope Gelasius circa 494 B.C.E., where he criticized fellow Christians for participating in something that used to showcase naked people whipping each other.
“It was a sight never to be forgotten, and was considered at the time to be the greatest aurora recorded. The rationalist and pantheist saw nature in her most exquisite robes, recognising, the divine immanence, immutable law, cause, and effect. The superstitious and the fanatical had dire forebodings, and thought it a foreshadowing of Armageddon and final dissolution.”
Rule number one for surviving the viking ‘Great Army’ invasion of 865 — don’t give the enemy a reason to shoot arrows at you. Somehow, King Edmund of East Anglia missed the memo, both in real life and in the Netflix series The Last Kingdom.
Tipu’s possessions, as well as anything associated with him, frequently had tiger stripes and tigers worked into the decoration. His throne? Jeweled gold tiger head finials. His coinage? Stamped with stripes. Swords and guns? Covered with tiger heads and stripes. Army mortars? Small bronze crouching tigers. Even the men who fired Tipu’s lethal rockets wore tunics woven with stripes.
And if you love hops, you can thank St. Hildegard of Bingen, who documented their first use as an additive. Although Hildegard wasn’t a fan – declaring hops weigh down your innards and make you sad – they prevailed in the end.
When the English stripped Richard of the family lands he was set to inherit, Gráinne could have either A) started a rebellion or B) negotiated with the Crown. Surprisingly, Gráinne chose plan B. She parlayed with English representative Lord Deputy Henry Sidney in 1576, going so far as to offer him three galleys and two hundred fighting men. He didn’t take her up on the offer, but he did sail with her to inspect her coastal defenses of Galway. Gráinne made sure to bill him for her troubles. Sidney walked away with the impression that “This was a notorious woman in all the coasts of Ireland.”
Reims cathedral as we know it today (and French people) can thank Clovis I for its inception. Also known as Chlodovech, Clovis is the guy responsible for uniting the Frankish tribes of yesteryear and founding the Merovingian Dynasty and, by extension, France.
No matter who you were in the ancient world, the seasons were of vital importance. You marked the ebb and flow of time by your harvests, which ensured your survival or demise. While the typical ancient person went through life believing gladiator blood cured epilepsy or that tiny demons lived in cabbage, they were at least on top of seasonal changes. And it didn’t escape their attention that after the longest night, daylight began to creep back into their lives.
