Cold comfort A farmer and his pack animal walk in the ice and snow, as depicted in a 14th-century health handbook. The Little Ice Age fuelled problems including famines, disease and political instability
From the late summer of 1314, a hard rain began to fall across north-west Europe. It pelted down. Temperatures plummeted. Rivers burst their banks and fields flooded. For months, the weather was abysmal – not only through the winter but into the next spring, summer and beyond. In the following years, harvest after harvest failed. People starved in their hundreds of thousands. Animals died of hunger and widespread disease. “A great famine appeared,” wrote one chronicler.