Category: Europe

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.

middle ages christmas
Europe

Fasts, Feasts, Ale, and Meats: A Medieval Christmas

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Just like now, drinking alcohol was a favorite pastime of many a medieval person, but especially so during the Christmas period. As a rule, the average citizen quaffed large quantities of weak ale instead of water. Despite this tolerance, people somehow still managed to get rowdy. So much so that it was commonplace for wealthy lords to employ watchmen to guard their estates against rioters. Outside of warmth and some bread, watchmen could expect to a reward of, you guessed it — a gallon of ale.

Green children
Europe

Up From Below: The Mysterious Green Children of Woolpit

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In the early Middle Ages Woolpit was amid the most agriculturally and densely populated part of rural England. It wasn’t impossible that strangers might pass through, and in those days many villages were self-contained with their own customs, clothes, and dialects. You could enter a place a few miles away and have trouble understanding the locals.

The Beast of Gévaudan
Europe

The Beast of Gévaudan: A Monstrous Murder Mystery

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Gévaudan was exactly the type of place where you’d expect the supernatural to occur. Nestled in the south of France, it had a reputation for being isolated and remote. It was a region where people mainly kept to themselves, shrouded in a self-contained bubble and surrounded by forests and hillsides that may still have been enchanted.

princess olga of kiev
Europe

Wrath, Revenge, and Religion: Olga of Kiev

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This, one would think, would be enough revenge for one queen. But not Olga of Kiev. Now, with her position made clear, the real destruction could begin. A war between the two nations broke out, with Olga’s side too formidable to defeat in battle. After the initial conflict, her army drove the survivors back into their cities and marched on Iskorosten to lay siege to the city. After a year passed with no success, Olga hatched a plan that was as creative as it was devious.

breakfast
Europe Origin Stories The Americas

Breakfast: A Brief History of the Most Controversial Meal of the Day

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Pancakes stuck around, spreading through cultures across the world. People in the burgeoning United States ate thin, European-style pancakes at any time of day, but that changed around the 1780s. Cooks began to thicken them up with pearl ash, resulting in hearty rounds. Unlike bread, they were quick and easy to make first thing in the morning before a hard day of manual labor.

The Great Hulu Show
Did That Really Happen? Europe

The Great: Empress Catherine Gives Herself Smallpox

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Before the advent of modern medicine, smallpox was a devastating disease. It killed about three out of every ten people who contracted it. It also left survivors gruesomely scarred. Variolation had been practiced for quite some time in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, but 18th-century Europe was resistant to jump on the bandwagon. This was despite huge outbreaks that killed hundreds of thousands of people, including a few reigning monarchs.

The Engagement of St Ursula and Prince Etherius
Europe

They Were There: People of Color in Medieval Europe and Beyond

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She had an inventory of quite a few possessions, including cutlery, bedding, cooking utensils, a pewter candlestick, and clothing. The lack of any furniture listed suggests she may have shared her home with someone else, possibly Helen Ford, a widow. Her autonomy is a breath of fresh air in a sea of stories about people being owned, rather than owning things themselves.