Week 10: Tuesday

Videos:

Plowing a field with oxen — Old Sturbridge Village, Massachusetts, 2009 (1:24 min.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuytRXRfyeI

How to make hay with a scythe (9:45 min.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs8qiucZZx0&feature=related

How to mow with a scythe (Wilson, Wisconsin, 2009; 3:36 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzdjOkLQw1s

Reaping wheat with a sickle (2011; 6:16 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXey-x3eCxc

Threshing with flails (0:21 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAmyKYPE3vo

Terms:

Village (Click for a photo of Midlem, a village in the Scottish Borders)

Manor (and another image)

Parish

Field (click for a photo of the fields of the deserted medieval village of Southdean, in the Scottish Borders)

Fallow

Meadow

Pasture

Demesne

2-field and 3-field crop rotation

• Cereals (“corn” in British English = “grain” in American English): wheat, rye, oats, barley
• Legumes: peas, beans, lentils

• Winter: wheat, rye
• Spring: oats, barley, peas, beans, lentils

Pastoral farming: cattle, sheep, goats

• Plow
• Harrow
• Scythe
• Sickle
• Flail
• Shears

• Plow
• Harrow
• Sow
• Prune (from Fécamp psalter, c. 1180)
• Mow
• Reap
• Thresh and winnow
• Mill (watermill, English, c. 1220-30)

Market

Fair

Money:

£1 (libra, livre, lira, pound) = 20 s. (solidus, sou or sol, soldo, shilling) = 240 d. (denarius, denier, denaro, penny)
12d. = 1s.
20s. = £1
240d. = 20s. = £1

(For film addicts, click here to see Fordham University’s list of Medieval History in the Movies.)

Place: Viking Iceland

Read the plot synopsis

Main characters:

Gisli
Aud his wife (former lover of Thorgrim)

Vestein, Aud’s brother (former lover of Asgerd; murdered by Thorgrim?)

Thorkell, Gisli’s brother
Asgerd, his wife (former lover of Vestein)
Geirmund, Thorkell’s bondman (bondi)

Thordís, Gisli’s sister
Thorgrim, her husband (former lover of Aud; killed by Gisli)

Bork, Thorgrim’s brother

Eyjolf

Spy Helgi

A sorcerer, two bondmen, etc.