IMC 2015: Sessions

Session 208: Cultural and Socio-Economic Responses to Extreme Weather and Weather-Related Natural Hazards in the Middle Ages, I

Monday 6 July 2015, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:	Historisches Institut, Universität Bern
Organiser:	Christian Rohr, Abteilung für Wirtschafts-, Sozial- und Umweltgeschichte, Universität Bern
Moderator/Chair:	Chantal Camenisch, Abteilung für Wirtschafts-, Sozial- und Umweltgeschichte, Universität Bern
Paper 208-a	Managing Meteorological Hazards in the Early and High Middle Ages, 5th-11th Centuries (Language: English) Thomas Wozniak, Institut für Mittelalterliche Geschichte, Philipps-Universität, Marburg Index terms: Daily Life, Mentalities, Religious Life, Social History
Paper 208-b	Short- and Long-Term Administrative and Socio-Economic Response to Floods, and Frequent and Prolonged Flooding in 13th-15th-Century Hungary (Language: English) Andrea Kiss, Institut für Wasserbau und Ingenieurhydrologie, Technische Universität Wien / University of Szeged Index terms: Daily Life, Economics - Rural, Local History, Social History
Paper 208-c	Travellers, Miners, and Alpine Settlers: Dealing with the Risk of Avalanches in the High and Late Middle Ages (Language: English) Christian Rohr, Abteilung für Wirtschafts-, Sozial- und Umweltgeschichte, Universität Bern Index terms: Daily Life, Economics - Rural, Local History, Social History
Abstract	Research on the impact of extreme weather and weather-related natural hazards such as floods, hailstorms or avalanches has become a key issue of environmental history during the last 20 years. However, such environmental studies have hardly been presented at the International Medieval Congress. This session aims to provide an insight in medieval climate and disaster studies by including four papers covering the time from the beginning to the end of the Middle Ages. Paper -a focuses on the management of extreme weather between the 5th and the 11th century in a comparative perspective looking at reactions by clerics and political rulers, and on popular patterns of interpretation. Paper -b deals with different sources such as charters, canonisation trials, poems, narrative sources, which tell about the socio-economic impact of floods in late medieval Hungary. Paper -c examines high and late medieval 'risk cultures' in the Alps that were exposed to frequent avalanches.