Sudden climate shift triggers the Great Famine across Northern Europe
Years of relentless rain end a two-century run of population growth
Quick facts
- Region
- England, France, Low Countries, Germany, and beyond
- Trigger
- Sustained heavy rains, 1315-1316 growing seasons
- Wheat price
- Rose from 5 to 20 shillings a quarter
- Full recovery
- Not until c. 1322
What happened
Beginning in spring 1315, unusually heavy and sustained rains across Northern Europe prevented grain from ripening properly for two consecutive growing seasons. An English chronicler recorded that a quarter of wheat that had sold for five shillings in 1313 rose to twenty shillings, meat and animal feed grew scarce as livestock died of disease, and bread made from poorly ripened grain lost its nourishing power so that people 'were hungry again after a little while' even eating large quantities. The chronicler recorded carts of the dead in city streets and described the suffering as fulfilling the biblical prophecy of a people consumed by both sword and famine. The famine eased briefly in late 1315 before returning by Christmas and did not fully resolve across the affected regions until 1317, with full recovery not coming until around 1322.
Why it matters
The Great Famine killed a substantial share of the population across a broad swath of Northern Europe and marked a clear end to the agricultural expansion and population growth that had defined the eleventh through thirteenth centuries, leaving populations already weakened when the Black Death arrived roughly three decades later.
How we know
A contemporary English chronicler's eyewitness account of the famine's effects on prices, food quality, and mortality survives and is preserved in translation through a medieval sourcebook; modern climate science, including hydroclimatic reconstructions published in Communications Earth & Environment, has independently confirmed the severity of the 1314-1316 rainfall anomaly behind it.
Sources
- Medieval chronicler, via University of North Carolina at Greensboro Western Civilization readings. Medieval Sourcebook: Famine of 1315 · Primary source (author-declared)home.uncg.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Communications Earth & Environment (Nature). A quantitative hydroclimatic context for the European Great Famine of 1315-1317 · Peer-reviewed (author-declared)nature.com · Cited as a "journal" source (no stronger domain match).
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