Additional Information

E-Mailing Me

If you have any comments, queries or suggestions, please feel free to e-mail me at darkageweb @ blueyonder.co.uk. I'm afraid I can't put a direct link here, because otherwise I receive huge volumes of junk mail, which makes it difficult to pick out the genuine (and very welcome) e-mails.

If you copy and paste the address, you'll also have to remove the spaces either side of the @ symbol - these have been included for the same reason. I apologise for making this more complicated than it need be, but blame the spammers, not me.

Nomenclature

My use of the term 'Dark Ages' has caused some controversy - modern alternatives including 'Early Mediaeval' and 'Late Antiquity'. I have no particular axe to grind about this. In my view the term 'dark' is meant relatively rather than absolutely, and in any case refers to the fact that the 'light of history' fails to shine on this period as clearly as on others, and is not meant to be derogatory towards the civilisations of the period - if I had so low an opinion of them, I would not have dedicated time to their study. The truth is, though, that I chose the title because I thought it rather evocative... Please feel free to disagree.

The Cataclysm of 535

The subject on which I receive far and away the most e-mails is the cataclysmic event of 535. Television documentaries on the Discovery Channel in the USA and, more recently, on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, have stimulated considerable interest in this subject. The original theory was that a comet or meteor collided with the Earth in this year, but subsequent research seems to indicate that the cause of the climatic changes in the mid-Sixth Century was a massive volcanic eruption, probably in Indonesia - the likeliest suspect being Krakatoa.

There is no suggestion that this event 'caused' the Dark Ages (see above - Nomenclature), but that it was the catalyst for much of the political and economic turmoil that followed. The coincidence of the date with the traditional death of King Arthur could give rise to the speculation that some aspects of the Arthur legend are 'folk memories' of this event - most notably, the linkage between the sickness of the king and the sterility of the land.

Sources

Roy Boss, Justinian's Wars (Montvert Publications, 1993)

Norman Davies, Europe: A History (Oxford University Press, 1996)

          Norman Davies, The Isles: A History ( Oxford University Press, 1999)

Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776)

Michael Grant, The Roman Emperors (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996)

John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Early Centuries (Guild, 1988)

Sir Charles Oman, The Art of War in the Middle Ages (Greenhill, 1924)

Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman: King Arthur: The True Story (Century, 1992)

Peter Salway, Roman Britain (Oxford University Press, 1981)

Tacitus, The Germania (Tr. H. Mattingly, Penguin, 1948)

Malcolm Todd, The Early Germans (Blackwell, 1992)

John Warry, Warfare in the Classical World (Salamander, 1980)

Dorothy Whitelock, The Beginnings of English Society (Penguin, 1952)

Ian Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms (Longman, 1994)

The Times Atlas of World History (Guild, 1978)

The Times Atlas of European History (Times Books, 1994)

Links to Other Sites

Mark Furnival, 1999

This page was last updated on 03 April, 2007