A time when most people were
disease-ridden and covered with filth, unless they happened to be kings. The cleanest and most well-known king of this time was
King Arthur (I didn't vote for him), the King(-ish) of the Britons who had a round table around which sat his band of noble and chivalrous
knights guys with weapons (many of whom proved to be
not so noble and chivalrous when left to their own devices). Since most popular culture portrayals of him were written centuries after he lived (featuring fashion and architecture from those eras), many Hollywood Historians choose to lump him in with
The Middle Ages (but hey, when have
they ever been
sticklers for accuracy?).
This period heralded the decline of Rome—
After The End, in
Real Life—and the rise of Monasticism in Europe. Most Hollywood monks are pious men clad in long brown robes, with rosaries and tonsure haircuts. They frequently spend all their day dipping feathered pens into inkwells and scribbling strange script into large books by candlelight. (This, when they're not out chasing lusty, busty tavern wenches. Hollywood Monks don't tend to take that whole "celibacy" thing all that seriously, though historically Celibacy was not a standard part of the clerical life until the Middle-Middle Ages.)
This is also the time of the
Vikings, hearty sailors in
horned helmets who loved burning down monasteries and carrying off struggling beautiful makeup-wearing peasant women with shaved legs, long kinky hair and perfect teeth.
Note that the term "Dark Ages" is a term that only really makes sense if you know the technical definition of the word "history", which is, "The study of the things people wrote about themselves back in the day." As such, the Dark Ages are dark not because there were no candles but because very little was written at the time. (Other sources of information, like paintings, artifacts and skeletons, do exist, and anthropologists get to go crazy over them, but
History isn't allowed to examine them because they aren't writing. History can be stupid that way.) The Dark Ages weren't necessarily any more or less unpleasant than the eras that came before and after. In fact, depending on your perspective, in some places the lack of Roman overlords breathing down your neck could be seen as an improvement. Having said that, the collapse of Roman infrastructure
did lead to a decline in the standard of living, which is part of why people stopped blogging: getting enough food for your family was an all-day prospect again, so few people had the time to learn writing, and little enough to say even if they did.
Popular tropes from this time period are:
Works set in this time period are:
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- Note that in the DVD commentary, the Pythons admit that Anachronism Stew is at work: It is said to be set in Dark Ages Britain, but the costumes are based on fashions from the 1300s.
- For that matter, nearly all movie and literary versions of King Arthur including...
- Hagar The Horrible
- Roar
- The Vikings (1958)
- The 13th Warrior
- Beowulf and Grendel (2005)
- Beowulf (2007)
- The Song of Roland
- The Nibelungenlied and its derivatives (such as Richard Wagner's Ring and Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen (Siegfried and Kriemhilds Rache))
- Vinland Saga, set right towards the end of the dark ages.
