Her neighbours were not particularly pleased. She made her own water closet with wooden pipes that led excrement directly into the rain ditches. Such gutters or ditches took on more than rainwater.Ī woman named Alice Wade in London was resourceful and ahead of her time. For centuries this was a place where waste and garbage ended up, eventually also from craftsmen and construction activities," says Axel Chrisophersen. He wrote that the area was called Saurlid, which means 'the muddy place'. The ditches in Trondheim did not drain into Nidelva, but rather to a swampy area in the middle of town The nasty result was said to 'poison the air'. Complaints about clogged gutters filled with trash were delivered to the King. It was obvious that the people Cambridge had enabled themselves of this quick solution in 1393. But they were also a tempting place for citizens to get rid of any kind of waste. In Trondheim they were banned from tossing waste from the tanning process into the River Nidelva.ĭumping waste directly into watercourses was one problem but there were also systems of ditches that flowed into these same rivers.ĭitches, or gutters, were dug to lead away rainwater. In 1284 King Eirik Magnusson prohibited people from throwing their garbage and dung from the quays in Bergen. Regulations were also required in Norway. The Coventry Council wrote that the River Sherbourne had been 'stopped in its course by filthe, dong, and stonys,' writes Jørgensen in one of her articles. This caused a stench, or an 'evell eyre', as he called it. In 1480 the Prior of Coventry complained that city dwellers daily through their dung, filth, and sweepings into the river. It appears that the contamination of rivers was a problem for many medieval cities. (Image: Tacuina sanitatis / Wikimedia Commons) Befouling rivers and drainage The butchering process in an illustrated medieval book about health. Bones were scattered around and attracted hungry dogs and birds. Butchers solved that by dumping animal remnants in a graveyard. The King decreed against the throwing of waste in the vicinity of the monks. The friars complained again that the people of the city and country who used to attend their church 'are withdrawing themselves because of the stench and the horrible sights.' The monks also feared that 'sickness and manifold other harm' would result from this pollution. So, the butchers started throwing intestinal and bloody waste near their walls and gates and at another spot in the River Ouse. To name one: In 1371 the city council in York forbid butchers from discarding waste products in the river near a monastery. Complaints about butchers are found in older written sources from England.ĭolly Jørgensen has rereferred to them in her articles. Blood and water with fur or hair had to rinsed away. Intestines and heads had to be thrown somewhere. Tanneries and textile production were messy businesses. The waste products of various trades were equally pervasive. Butchery by-productsĭung or excrement was not the only filth that piled up in medieval cities. Hygiene was an important aspect of society. "The goal is to study how health evolves from being a private affair, as it was, to becoming a public responsibility," says the researcher.ĭolly Jørgensen is among those who have discovered that medieval townspeople took steps in this direction. But research, partly in England, shows this to be wrong," says Christophersen. "It was thought that they had no knowledge of how to deal with them. In their research project, Christophersen and colleagues investigate how citizens in medieval cities related to dreadful diseases. The worst of such diseases was of course the Black Death, which began ravaging Norway in 1349, and struck again in later outbreaks up until the 1600s. They could also be poisoned by the ergot fungus Claviceps purpurea, which grew on cereals such as rye and triggered hallucinations - or made you «downright crazy», according to Christophersen. Our medieval ancestors were plagued with diphtheria, measles, tuberculosis, leprosy, typhus, anthrax, smallpox, salmonella and other maladies. He is a professor in historical archaeology. This is when the first Norwegian cities that exist today were founded.Īt the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Axel Christophersen leads a research project on health and hygiene in Trondheim in the Middle Ages. The medieval period in Norway began in the late Viking Age, lasting from around the year 1050 until the 1500s. Is this a true depiction of medieval cities? Frequent epidemics People dumped their own buckets of faeces and urine into the street or simply sloshed it out the window. They were ankle-deep in a putrid mix of wet mud, rotten fish, garbage, entrails, and animal dung.
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