Hello and welcome to the history of the Germans.

Episode 15, Germany in the Year 1000, Part 1.

Last week we said goodbye to Otto III. I'm one of the most complex personalities amongst German emperors.

I'm a bit sad that we did not dive deeper into the different layers of political objectives

and personal friendships and religious fervor that made up this captivating personality.

But on the other hand, I'm quite glad we can now talk about facts in the real world.

My initial plan was to move straight on to Otto the Third

successor, who is usually counted amongst the Otonians. However, I'm feeling we need

a bit of a breather, take stock on where we are and what kind of country and society we're

talking about. And I also realized that Otto the Third successor has much more in common

with the next dynasty, the Salians, than with the Eutonians.

So that would be better to deal with him in that context.

And therefore, in this episode, we'll talk about the economy, the society, the infrastructure and art at the turn of the first millennium.

We'll talk about the changes in agriculture,

the monetary system and warfare. And finally, we will look at the changes in the political set-ups

and the power of the dukes and counts the bishops and abbots. Now let's start with agriculture.

The reign of the Otonians falls into what has been called the medieval warming period,

and started around 950 in Northern Europe.

There is no consensus whether this was a global synchronized phenomena or just a set of regional

phenomena.

But as far as Northern Europe is concerned, we can see from the Greenland ice course that the temperature around the Year 1000 was 1 to 1.5 degrees higher than the preceding centuries and then the following 14th to the 19th century.

With a lot less frost, a wider variety of crops could be planted and yields in Northern Europe must have been higher.

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