Where the Wild Things are... Zones of Conflict with the Wilderness in Medieval Northern Europe

Medieval northern Europe was not the physical wilderness early scholars once perceived it to be. Woods and moors were extensively managed; both physically and conceptually bounded and sub-divided. Within woods individual trees were shaped through coppicing and pollarding, giving woodland a characteristic appearance and a variable human presence within its bounds. Yet the forests of neo-medieval romance in the popular modern imagination owe as much to the literature and iconography of the Middle Ages as to fairy tales collected in recent centuries.

This brief presentation with limited references suggests a number of approaches towards the physical and conceptual medieval wild.