A league inland from the steep Dalmatian coast, the town of Shibenik stands on a hill above the river Krka with mountain peaks visible to the east. The Krka and other rivers enter a lake from which water falls, then narrows, towards the sea. Land around the lake and falls was wooded except where it had been cleared for agriculture around the Krka. Upriver, where the Chikola enters the Krka, were the village of Skradin and its zhupan's stronghold. The wilderness was home to:
wolves
jackals
deer
boar
elk
aurochs
Leshy
vodianoi
a vilja
The zhupan, Ivan Subitj, was kin to Ban Pavle. Ivan's son, Mihajlo, educated at the abbey in Shibenik, had travelled to the ports of Zadar and Split and across the Aegean to Italy. In search of wealth and fame, Mihaljo joined:
"...the retinue of Pavle Subitj the kingmaker." (p. 1)
I have paraphrased the opening page of which Poul Anderson novel?
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
THE MERMAN'S CHILDREN.
Ad astra! Sean
Of course.
Note that large parts of Europe in the Middle Ages didn't have much in the way of large wildlife. Eg., wolves and elk (moose, we'd say) were extinct in England by the early medieval period. Populations tended to grow and then hit a plateau; England probably hit 1,000,000 by the time of the Roman conquest, was around 3-4 million by the end of the Roman Empire, was about 1.5 million again by 1066, got up to 3-4 million again by the early 14th century, went down to 1.5 million again after the Black Death. It didn't consistently exceed the Roman province of Britannia's peak until the 18th century, when the Industrial Revolution started.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
All of this leads me to conclude it needed both a reasonably strong State and a diverse/varied economy for population growth and prosperity.
Ad astra! Sean
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