Actually, not that many people outside the clergy would be speaking Latin either, so they’d have no idea whether you were educated or not. Think of it this way: if I came up to you and started speaking “ecclesiastical Latin,” then asked you what I’d said and what language it was, you’d probably say, “Dunno…maybe Italian (depending on how it was accented)?”
If someone appeared in England in 1008 unable to speak Old English, most residents would probably just assume he was from somewhere else…maybe just from somewhere else in England. Many English dialects were unintelligible elsewhere in the realm.
Assuming one didn’t know Latin…well, I suppose one could hope your time machine was all wonky and you ended up post-1066. Then you could speak badly-accented French, and, voila, you’re in good with the Normans.
You think medieval villagers automatically stoned any visitors that didn’t speak their language? And the fear you’d be burned as a witch is nonsensical as well, the witchhunts only started after the protestant reformation got everyone antsy about religion. People who take their religion as a fact of life don’t worry to much about correct beliefs, only those who feel their religion is under threat spend a lot of time worrying that other people don’t believe the right way.
And in 1000 AD much of Northern Europe was only recently christianized, or still being christianized. Cross the sea from England to Norway and you’d find plenty of people still worshipping Thor and Freya.
I’ve been doing a series of short essays in Latin on modern politics, and my skill has widened immensely. Once you get the hang of it, it’s not too difficult to think in Latin.
These two statements don’t match up. In AD 1000 most Christians in the newly-christianized areas did feel their religion was under threat to outsiders. Not that they did spend a lot of time concerned about how others celebrated Christianity, as Christians in Iceland and Norway borrowed from native religions anyway. But in Iceland at least there was some concern for a while that Christianity wasn’t going to make it there. Eventually it survived because it was a way to peacefully end all of the blood feuds. Even the most rabid vikings had to settle down some time.
Incidentally, my ex-wife has written extensively on the christianization of Iceland and is somewhat of an authority on the subject. What I write above is my distant memory of what she told me.
Well, except that, even though it’s not as different from modern French as Old English is from modern English, I’m personally not able to understand Old French. I can recognize some words, guess the meaning of others, and it could be easier in spoken form because some words suddenly make sense when you pronounce them, but for instance I can’t figure out the general meaning of this completely random sample of the “Song of Roland”, written roughly at this time :
All I can tell is that it involves a horse, a dead guy on the grass, a pagan, a king of Cappadocia and a flying bird. Good luck if French is your second language and you speak it in a “badly accented” way.
I think a lot of posters are overestimating the power of the church in 1000. Though conversions were almost entirely complete by then, most people weren’t religious lunatics. Provided you didn’t act too strangely, most people would be willing to put it down to “weird foreigner” behaviour.
Lesse here. I speak a passable sort of childish Icelandic which is the most similar to old Norse, which was spoken at that time. I could probably pull off the lost traveler routine, using that language as a sort of trader’s pidgin. The immediate concern would be to find food, and I have some skills that are useful. I’m a sculptor and can work in wood, clay, stone, and other materials; I also have basic blacksmithing knowledge. That along with my ability to read, write, (Rune and english, baby Icelandic again), mathematics, and good health, tall height(for the time), and muscular physique ought to prevent any sort of immediate accosting for frauds, black magick, etc. I could disprove the religious claims, if any by walking to the nearest church and going through some sort of pseudo-catholic routine. Under my guise as a weird foreigner, that ought to be enough to appease the local authorities. The hardest part would be finding someone to bother with me long enough for us to work out some basic communications. I imagine that someone of my skill level and oddity would find myself before the authorities fairly quickly. I would have to rely on their goodwill, but I doubt they would be hostile. Simply not speaking the language wouldn’t be enough to get you branded an idiot. It would be obvious that I spoke another one and was passable in a known trade language.
Assuming I made it, I could manufacture all sorts of inventions and teach modern building techniques, tools etc that would be plausible to them.
Wow I did not realize the Spinning Wheel was introduced to Europe so late. That mean the pedal powered band saws and drills I could build would be great innovations. Maybe even the Schnitzelbankwould be something new and handy and those are really easy to make.
I could clearly make a lot of innovations in carpentry and some in other areas. My hobbies would be very useful to me once I somehow got past the diet and language issues.
But the missionaries who were converting Scandinavia to Christianity at this time weren’t denouncing people as witches and burning heretics at the stake. The notion that early medieval villagers were terrified of witches and heretics is just a fantasy. The witchcraft scares and the inquisition were much much later during the 1500s.
Anglo-Norman French isn’t completely like that, though I was being a bit facetious about the “badly-accented French” part. I did have to struggle through one section of Anglo-Norman French (the Holkham Picture Bible Book, for those who are interested) for my dissertation, and even the “expert” I had helping me couldn’t figure out some of it. The only part I’ve got in my dissertation was from this sentence in it:
Now that’s from the 1200’s. I’m not sure how much more difficult the rest of it was, but that brief example is fairly understandable.
I’m also heavily tattooed on the left shoulder and arm. While they may cause me some issues later, the intricacy of the knotwork and designs, as well as the obvious skill it took to execute them would prevent anyone from thinking I was a peasant. They also send a message that I was willing to put up considerable pain to attain them, (methods being very labor intensive and crude at that time) and I was Nobody To Fuck With. If anything they might cause me to be branded a norseman gotten lost while viking. Not necessarily a bad thing depending on where I ended up.
There weren’t burnings in Iceland but there were some killings. My ex-wife believed that despite what the conversion sagas claimed, the conversion of Iceland to Christianity didn’t go down completely non-violently on either side. And the Icelanders of the 11th century did believe in “hostile magic,” or witchcraft as we’d call it now, but whether practitioners were specifically sought out for retribution I don’t know. (And with that, I’m not looking any more…when I went searching for information on this subject, on the first search the damn first two hits were on articles by my ex-wife.)
Well, I could actually get dropped into many places and sort of blend in, I am actually wearing a caftan right now that would have been seen as ‘smallclothes’ for about 500 or so years bracketing 1000 AD in western europe. I could be dropped anywhere a brown haired blue eyed woman would not be unusual and fare rather well being a medieval recreationist.
I can take a sheep, and turn it into dinner, leather and with the use of the fat from the tail, and ash from the cooking fire make soap to scour the wool, with the onion peels and use of a piece of old iron from a smithy dye it a nice antique yellow gold, and a few minutes with a knife borrowed from someone and a lump of clay make a drop spindle to make yarn with. With that same knife, and a borrowed axe, I can make a backstrap loom to weave the yarn upon with a shoulderblade from yon sheepie to make a beating comb with, and a section of wood for a beating bar if I wanted to do a different style of weaving. A few shards of bone turned into needles, I can sew the fabric into clothing … I can also tablet weave, and do sprang network, and use a lucet loom to make cording with.
I know how to extract essential oils from diverse plants ranging from water extraction, alcohol extraction and fat extraction. I know basic midwyfery and wound management and a lot about the value of cleanliness.
I can make oak gall ink, and understand mordant dying. I know how to use lords salt to preserve meat, can make a good coffyn pie crust, and can do many forms of food preservation including smoking, drying and pickling. I can cook over fire on a grill and can use a beehive oven for baking.
I also have made gunpowder, and know how to dig out the sodium nitrite from manure piles=)
Does anyone else read these threads and think, “Holy shit! I don’t know what I’d do!” I mean, I don’t have a plan for what to do if my house floods or I lose my job, but I suddenly feel very concerned that I might be unprepared for sudden, unexpected time travel!
It never hurts to be prepared. Remember, the hardest part about making gunpowder isn’t remembering the 75:15:10 ratio of saltpeter to charcoal to sulfur, it’s being able to figure out what saltpeter is. The natives probably know what it is, but you won’t know their name for it. Hint: you find crystals of it under dungheaps. Sulfur might be easier since at least you know it stinks and was called “brimstone”. It might be worthwhile to quickly read the wikipedia article on saltpeter (Potassium nitrate - Wikipedia) before ducking into any mysterious portals.
According to all resources I can find, that isn’t true, or at least would not have been true in Europe in 1008. Plagues and serious food shortages were not the norm in pre-Norman England. The people would likely have been reasonably tall and healthy.
I would definitely stick with teaching/playing music. You could learn to play what ever instruments they had at that time. Even if you couldn’t make anything clever or catchy up yourself, you could just cheat and play all the rhythms of songs today. Maybe you could get hired by someone really wealthy to play for them.
