During the early Middle Ages, new areas were cultivated in the wooded districts of the Nordic countries. New land was cleared, new farms were built. This expansion, known as the Reclamation, continued until the terrible years of 1349 and 1350, when the Nordic countries were affected by the greatest catastrophe of the Middle Ages, the Black Death, a plague epidemic that claimed many victims. Thousands of people died. Read about this horrible disease, about bubonic plague and pneumonic plague, but also about how society and people slowly recovered.