The Islands of the North Atlantic During the Fourteenth-Century Plague by Karin Murray Bergquist

The sea’s role in both the spread and the prevention of medieval plagues was pivotal: in fourteenth-century Venice, ships were turned away from port because of the possibility that they carried the disease, while in England, the Plague snuck in through several ports and swiftly reached London overland. If infection arrived on an island, it could easily spread – but by good fortune, as in Iceland, or warning, as demonstrated by Venice, such access could be prevented. The islands of the North Atlantic in the mid-fourteenth-century Plague epidemic exemplify both the isolation and the seclusion of an island environment, and the sanctuary or the dangers therein.

Plague in Orkney & Shetland

At the time of the Plague, both Orkney and Shetland were still possessions of Norway, though by the end of the century they would be pawned to Scotland. According to historian Phillip Pulsiano, Norwegian ships arriving in 1350 were responsible for the arrival of the Black Death to the islands, while J.N. Hays suggests that it came from Scotland via England. The effects were severe, as the sparse references to the islands during the height of the calamity nonetheless make clear. Orkney’s agricultural situation was affected by the Plague – similarly to the rest of Europe – as the adult population was drastically reduced, leaving fields untended. The growing of grain was, and remains, a mainstay of Orkney’s economy, so this was a serious blow.

Shetland was infected at roughly the same time as Orkney, in what Norwegian historian Ole Benedictow describes as “metastatic leaps” – short-distance bounds across the water, the effect of ongoing trade and communication, none of the journeys long enough to allow any real danger to appear. Lynch notes that as the economy of Shetland was less dependent on agriculture, it could recover more quickly, as the trade in fish increased by the end of the century. In terms of Shetland’s social fabric, it has been suggested that some matters that had been governed by Norway became more local as a result of Norway’s own devastation. As well as this, it appears that more islanders sought positions of authority within the church, as Norway’s clerical ranks were all but depleted.

Yet the details of Orkney’s and Shetland’s history during the Plague have been addressed fairly peripherally, in many sources that were written outside of the islands themselves. A section in the Icelandic Lögmanns-annáll (Lawman’s Annal, trans. Ole Benedictow) relates that the populations of Orkney, Shetland, and the Hebrides were ravaged by a disease that caused people to vomit blood and die within a few days – with little more detail than that. The same documents recount the spread of the disease from Bergen throughout Norway, via a ship from England, and a chilling list of the dead among the ranks of Norwegian bishops.

Iceland Unscathed

Iceland, on the other hand, escaped the worst of its ravages. Shipping between Iceland and Norway was drastically reduced during the height of the Plague that broke out in 1348, and this ensured that the island was not exposed. The incubation period of the Bubonic, Pneumonic, or Septicemic Plague is one to six days, making it easy to spread to islands close to the mainland, but making a longer journey unlikely. Benedictow mentions another reference in the Lawman’s Annal, explaining that during the height of the Plague, many ships sank, suggesting that their crews were destroyed by the disease. A ship meant to be bound for Iceland in 1349 was a near miss – before it could depart from Bergen, the outbreak of Plague meant that the voyage had to be abandoned. However, approximately half a century later, Iceland also fell. Approximately 33% of the population was lost to the disease, which arrived in 1402 on the ship of one Einarr Herjólfsson in Hvalfjörður – often cited as “the plague without rats,” as its spread was due to human factors.

The Black Death … or something else?

There is still some question as to whether the disease that hit Iceland was the Black Death, and scholar Kirsten Seaver suggests that that disease never reached Greenland, again due to the length of the journey and the conditions necessary to allow it to travel. Again, the incubation period would mean that it would be unlikely for a ship to carry the Plague, especially the most dangerous pneumonic form, to Greenland unwittingly. This, along with details of the Plague’s effect on the Faroe Islands, Orkney, and Shetland, is an area worthy of further study – the devastation briefly mentioned in certain sources, as well as attempts to cure it, could provide interesting results.

No doubt attempts to find a cure were significant, and these have endured in the local historical and folklore record. Allen and Hatfield cite an Orkney saying: “He who eats the dulse [of a local rocky creek] … will escape all maladies except Black Death” (p. 45). Though the age of this saying is not recorded, it is an interesting survival of a local custom, whether contemporary or not. Other botanical treatments for the plague included angelica – an herb valued in Iceland for its medicinal properties and mentioned in its legal texts – which, in other places in Europe, was thought to be effective against the Black Death. It would be interesting to further investigate local cures and treatments, particularly those involving species not easily found elsewhere.

The role of plague on island populations is an interesting double-edged sword, as they serve at once as sanctuary – as in Iceland’s temporary escape from the Black Death – and secluded enclosure, in which contact with the infected is unavoidable. The way in which Orkney, Shetland, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland endured (or escaped) the Plague epidemics of the Middle Ages and beyond has been echoed through the centuries by other experiences of infectious disease in isolation. More recently, the island of Eynhallow in Orkney was abandoned in the nineteenth century following an outbreak of infectious disease and the mortality that followed.

As has been seen elsewhere, at the same time as the treatment and prevention of diseases change, the diseases themselves effect a different kind of change on the natural and human landscape. The land and sea shape the spread of an illness, but the illness also shapes the way people inhabit the land – and on islands such as Eynhallow, this becomes starkly visible.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY FEATURED IN ISSUE 129, PLAGUE.

IF YOU LIKE THIS AND WANT MORE, SUBSCRIBE BELOW!

About the author

Karin Murray-Bergquist is a graduate student at the University of Iceland, Viking and Medieval Norse Studies.