HISTORY

Bright Light in the Dark Ages

Evidence that people have long been able to make light when needed

The Dark Middle Ages is a well-known phenomenon. We all know that expression, but I doubt that we all think about the same when hearing it.

Some people hear it as convoluted thinking, a dictatorship of the church, not allowing any modern science, poetry, or other joys.

Others, who like me studied the history of lighting, see it as really, genuinely dark because there was literally no light — only simple kinds of lighting devices existed, not enough for reading indoors, for instance. And the lack of reading then led to a lack of insight.

The windows

Sometime during the Middle Ages, the very wealthy began putting glass windows in their buildings. We speak about cathedrals and castles here, as glass was way too expensive for ordinary people who therefore lived in houses without windows.

Obviously, a house without windows is dark inside.

It leaves the inside for such activities that do not need light. Of course, as people did have a fire, used for heating and cooking, the light from the fire would bring some level of light there, and the occasional use of torches or even candles could assist with this.

But this doesn’t bring a lot of light, not at all like a window can do. Candles were, until the beginning of the 1800s when stearin was first refined, a simple and badly burning stick of fat from one or another animal. Alternatives existed in simple oil lamps — a bowl with crude or vegetable oil and a stick or string lying in it with a fire in the end that was sticking out of the bowl. Think the typical image of Alladin’s Lamp here, but often much more simple and giving just a little light.

Even those primitive candles and simple oil lamps were not used very much due to the scarcity and high prices of their fuels. A situation that led to the grotesque scale of whale hunting that the world would eventually run into when people needed more oil.

A window, on the other hand, can let in as much light as you need — during day time. And then you need artificial light only in the evening, which is comparably less costly to arrange.

Many materials have been used to provide a window — meaning that an opening in the wall would be covered by something to protect against the weather while still letting in some light. Most simple houses throughout the Middle Ages just didn’t have any of that.

New needs

Something happened — Gutenberg!

Not in isolation, but the possibility of printing books — making lots of them in a short time, led to people getting books. And reading them. When this became widespread, more light was needed indoors.

At the same time, it also happened that glass plates became possible — for the wealthy, as mentioned before — to buy and mount in their buildings. Even they had not done that previously, as a result of glass not being available and the need not being there. Glass did exist, though. Since the 1300s glass was produced in Venice, but further south, in Mesopotamia, it was known thousands of years ago. In the shape of plates, to use as window glass, it was known in Roman Egypt since about 2000 years ago. In the meantime, small pieces of glass were produced and used in stained glass windows, but again, only for the wealthy.

The need for light would now trigger a need for a bigger scale production.

The misconception

In modern history, we see glass windows in common houses from about the end of the 1700s. Before that time were a couple of hundreds of years with the wealthy bragging about their wealth by putting more and more windows in their palaces.

As always, what is popular for the upper class becomes a dream, then a wish, then a demand, for the lower classes — it seeps downwards through the layers of society and becomes, eventually, a common thing.

It is common to believe that there were no clear glass windows before Venezian production started in the 1300s and that even then, it was a rare feature with only the most expensive buildings for a long while to come.

But that may be wrong.

What has now been discovered

Buildings from the Viking Age were made from wood and have long gone — it is difficult to know exactly what they looked like, as, basically all we have left from them is the re-arrangement of earth where their main poles were dog into the ground.

Archeologists did, however, spend a lot of time over many years to develop an understanding of what these buildings must have looked like. And since the Viking Age ended around the year 1050, when the Danes became Christian (according to historical tradition), these houses obviously didn’t have glass windows.

But now researchers are in doubt: ancient glass pieces have been found in the ground where no later castles have been, only the remains from the Viking Age, and as the glass was examined further, it could be determined that it was indeed as old as from the Viking Age.

The conclusion so far is that then, probably, glass had been used in buildings by the Vikings — long before we thought that we had glass windows.

Read more about this discovery in the article Viking Age Windows, in the Danish Journal of Archeology.

Rounding off

It is still believed that the window glass had a very special purpose and was used only for the top of society. Also, the Vikings did get around a lot — they have evidently visited the Mediterranean area and could have brought home some glass from there.

An interesting “side conclusion” by the scientists is that it is unlikely that such a thing as window glass is achieved from plundering — it is more likely that the Vikings got it through trading, which then could require an adjustment of the general view of Vikings as brutal and unrefined people.

But I am more fascinated by the fact that one piece of glass could indicate many, even if they have not yet been found. And that could indicate a more widespread use of indoor light for a much longer span of time than we believed until now.

Making the Middle Ages less dark, and, hence, the time of Enlightenment less significant.

As an additional comment: recent years of archeological research have shown how people in Denmark had genuine trade relationships with the Romans — making them a bit more advanced and developed than the traditional view would know. This new bit about the glass just adds to that development in the understanding of history.

A light has been lit for a large part of history that used to be dark.