Meet the Middle Ages

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Meet the Middle Ages in Aspeland
Find your own Middle Ages
Places to visit in Aspeland
A medieval experience
Most people were peasants
How do we know so much about the Middle Ages?

Meet the Middle Ages in Aspeland
What would the life of one of Birgitta Birgersdotter ´s tenant farmers have been like in 1350? What was life like on the farm? The buildings, the farmland, the cattle? How did one keep in touch with Birgitta and her bailiff? What tales did one hear of Birgitta? What did she look like? Did men from this region join Sir Israel to go on the crusade to Novgorod in 1350? How did one keep in touch with the town?

How did the tenant farmers of Karl Knutsson Bonde or Ivar Axelsson Tott lead their lives around 1450? How did the fierce Union battles affect life in the region?

Compare the lives of a tenant farmer and a free-holder. How did merchants and craftsmen live in Vimmerby? Compare with life in the large town of Kalmar.

Imagine your own life in the Middle Ages. Choose an event, gather all facts you can find and write your own story of the Middle Ages! Re-create a medieval day at a historical site near your school or home.

 

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Find your own Middle Ages
There are many historical sites in Aspeland, but they are not always easy to find. In many places, there are visible remnants from the Middle Ages. Make a trip to times gone by – perhaps your relatives once lived here! In Aspeland, there is medieval farmland in many places, but it can be difficult to spot. The farmers who lived in the woods of Aspeland made plenty of iron. In the forests of Madesjö-Bäckebo, there still are traces of this production, the so-called "slag-heaps".

Visit your parish church to find out if parts of it are medieval.

 

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Places to visit in Aspeland

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A Medieval experience
Re-create medieval life at a farm, manor or castle. There are medieval sites in many places.Try old crafts and prepare a medieval meal. Kalmar County Museum can offer you suggestions and give you practical advice on how to prepare and arrange a medieval experience. The museum has many years ´ experience of historical-educational events.

 

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Most people were peasants
In the Middle Ages, almost everybody was a farmer. However, none of the many medieval farms in Aspeland remain. The land has been farmed and new houses have been built where these farms once lay. Medieval farmland, however, is still to be found in many places. Even though the farm-houses are gone, perhaps you can imagine what it would be like to be a farmer ´s son or daughter in the 14th century.

"You open the wooden door and step outside. You are carrying a wooden bowl which is filled with turnip and carrot scraps. It is in the evening, the sun is setting. It is early autumn and you are wearing a dress and a pinafore made of linen. You are bare-foot. You feed the pigs and gather some eggs which the farm ´s hens have laid. On the road, you see somebody coming nearer and nearer. Who can that be? Is it a friar? When he comes closer, you see that it is a man dressed in dirty, ragged hose, jerkin and cloak. He looks quite ill. You make your way to the farm-house and there the man catches up with you. He asks for some water. When he collapses in the grass, you see that he has large boils on his throat. What can this be? Is this the terrible plague, which you have heard so much about? What will you do now?"

 

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How do we know so much about the Middle Ages?
To learn about what it was like in other times one has to read old books and manuscripts. One must also do archaeological excavations or digs.

This means that one digs the earth in places where people have lived or been. One might find foundations of houses or churches, pieces of pottery, parts of a boat or the remains of a meal. The objects will be carefully cleaned and a drawing will be made of them and of the place where they were found.

If, for example, one is digging a site where once a fortified manor lay, one might find combs, a leather shoe, cups and a die. Then one knows that the people who lived there combed their hair, wore shoes, drank and played games.

Most medieval houses were wooden, so by now most of them have disappeared. Not many houses were built of brick and stone, but some of these still remain.

Objects and buildings keep for different lengths of time, depending on where they are left. If a wooden bowl is left in a place where air or perhaps animals come into contact with it, it may be destroyed rather quickly. If, however, this bowl has fallen into a well or lake, it might keep for hundreds and hundreds of years The preservation of an object also depends on what kind of material the it is made of. A woollen dress will disappear much faster than a nail made of iron.

The things we find from the Middle Ages are just a tiny part of all the things that existed at the time. The objects that we do find are those which are not so easily destroyed. The archaeologist who is digging must be thinking: Why do I find this object here? What other things might have been here before they disappeared? The work of an archaeologist is a bit like that of a detective. There are many ways to find out how old something is.

From the Middle Ages we have manuscripts – for example law-books, letters, annuals (like the "Tänkebok") and the Revelations of St. Birgitta. When one reads medieval manuscripts one can learn something about how people thought about different matters. There are even history books written in the Middle Ages!

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