ABSTRACT
Scotland constitutes a gap in our information about the Early Middle Ages warm epoch (circa 1000–1300 a.d.). Evidence has been sought from vegetational history as well as documentary records.
A sample tree found lying in a peat bog at an exposed part of the north-west coast where trees no longer grow was discussed in the Quarterly Journal, 1945, when it was thought to have grown there in the Middle Ages or later. The result of a radiocarbon dating test on this tree contradicts all the opinions then expressed about its age. The tree and other remains from the same bog are now shown to have belonged to the latter part of the post-glacial climatic optimum before 2000 B.C., and there is no tangible evidence that trees have grown at the point in question at any time since 1000 B.C. This compels a re-assessment of the other evidence, of what we may hope to learn from it and how much we know so far about the climatic history of Scotland in medieval and post-medieval times.
Documents of the times concerned, already used but not so far quoted in this connexion by various historians, have yielded the most promising indications to date. The isolated facts and impressions gained from these sources seem most simply explained by assuming that Scotland shared the general experience in northern lands of a warm epoch, accompanying the period of high culture, from 1070 a.d. or earlier, to around 1300 and that the subsequent deterioration had serious effects upon the economy. The evidence from Scotland, as opposed to that from neighbouring countries, of frequent bad seasons and deteriorating condition of the land, is so far, however, almost entirely indirect and in itself inconclusive. Only after 1550 are enough facts known to make the latter stages of the decline culminating in the dire years of the 1690's reasonably clear and unmistakable.
