Gone Medieval - How the Wind Blew Up The Middle Ages

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

From the tactical nautical decisions of the Normans and Vikings to medieval monks' meticulous wind records, medieval civilisations have always harnessed and feared the wind.Dr. Eleanor Janega and Simon Winchester explore the intimate relationship medieval people had with the wind, from it's role in agriculture and health, to its perceived divine and magical properties, providing a comprehensive look at the wind's historical significance.MORE:The Medieval MoonListen on AppleListen on SpotifyMonsters of the Medieval ApocalypseListen on AppleListen on SpotifyGone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producers are Rob Weinberg and Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianica and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were. And how we got here.

Picture this. It's the autumn of 1066, and William of Normandy's invasion fleet sits trapped in French ports, waiting, watching the skies. Harold Godwinson's scouts scan the horizon from English shores, not just counting ships, but reading the very very very. air itself. When the wind finally shifts to a perfect southerly breeze, it doesn't just fill Norman sails. It will determine the future of England forever. This is one of those moments where atmospheric pressure becomes political power, and a gust of wind can crown kings or condemn them to defeat. Because centuries before weather satellites and storm warnings arrived on the scene, medieval people lived intimately with the wind's moods and mysteries. Monks in their scriptoria recorded not just saints' feast days, but wind days.

Moments when violent Arctic gusts could destroy entire harvests. Islamic physicians in Granada created mathematical tables linking wind direction to the speed of fever during the Black Death. Scandinavian sailors traded in magical windnoughts, believing they could bottle tempests in knotted cords and release them at sea. In this episode of Gone with Evil, I'm joined by the remarkable Simon Winchester, the brilliant author of, among many others,

The Professor and the Madman, and Crackatoa. His latest book, The Breath of the Gods, sweeps across five millennia, to reveal the hidden force that has sculpted civilizations toppled empires and decided the fate of nations. Wind. In it, Simon traces how ancient Sumerians first named the winds alongside their gods, how Chinese astronomers measured monsoons with bamboo flutes,

and how medieval Europeans believed certain breezes could carry not just weather, but moral corruption itself. They didn't just fear the wind. They read it like scripture, harnessed it for trade, and wove it into their deepest magical beliefs. This is history written in the invisible ink of atmospheric pressure, where the fate of civilizations hung on the direction of the breeze, where wind isn't just weather. It's the breath of the gods themselves, shaping every aspect of medieval life from the mundane to the miraculous. Simon, welcome to Gone Medieval. Well, thank you so much.

I absolutely loved this book in the way that I always love these big thematic exercises when we are thinking about medieval history or history in general, because I think that it's really easy to get stuck in the sort of old-fashioned idea that history is a series of names and dates and places. And I think that as good a place as I need to get stuck in is with language. as you start the book out itself. So I suppose my first question for you is, when and where do we first start recording ideas about wind?

Well, obviously we don't know before the language was written down, but once it was written down, then it sort of accelerates quite rapidly. And Sumerian is the first language, and it has a word, a character, a cuneiform character. I could draw it for you, which is beyond the pixels, but the pronunciation,

as far as one can gather, is Lil, L-I-L-L-L, and what we would say L-I-L. And then it's about four horizontal lines with, of course, it's done by a reed in clay, it ends with a little triangle, and a little tick on one of those lines.

So it's, then it takes off, then it goes through, you know, Assyrian and Chaldean and all the other languages, and then becomes a rather fetching Egyptian hieroglyph, which actually is comprehensible to non-linguists in that it shows what wind does. It's a little sailing ship. It's a mast and what looks like a fluker on the Nile

with the sail slightly bowed under the pressure of the wind. And then the Chinese, similar thing, it's actually, because the Chinese connected wind to the blowing of insects, and so there are little characters which are comprehensible as small bees. And after that, then it becomes a regular insertion into the language. But Mesopotamia, first, Egypt, second, China next. I tell you, isn't that just the story of recorded history?

In short of years, just a bit. Yeah, there it is, you know. But you've already kind of hinted at the fact that wind is understood in slightly different ways. You know, in China we have this connection to the idea that, in some, are involved. Would you say that wind is understood in the same way globally or that we have a lot of different ways of thinking about it? A lot of different ways. I mean, most notably, I suppose, the Vikings who believe their wind was created by an enormous eagle floating over what is now Norway and the pharaohs and so forth and fluttering or doing what eagle, I guess they don't

flutter really, but anyway, waving their wings and causing us some. gusts and gales and all those sorts of things. So, no, it's a variety of different forces. Create winds, exhalations from the earth, of course, volcanoes, create hot winds, sand dunes, slip and fall and create their own breezes, a multiplicity of origin, myths, all myths, of course, as we all known. Now, because wind is very simply, hot air rises, that we do. know, and cooler winds or cooler gusts of air move in to fill the gap where the hot air once was,

and that is the wind, the movement of air, simple as that. Would you say that these ideas about wind are tied to emerging projects of, for example, agriculture, or, you know, even our developments of things like astronomy or politics? or, I mean, I don't think that we tend to find that often just straight evocations of what's happening in the natural world. By the time we're writing things down, they usually have something to do with something else. Or am I just being a pathetic historian and wanting to tell a story? You're being a historian, but not pathetic. I suppose all at least temperate zone inhabitants had caused.

to eat substances made from grain. And to get the good stuff from the grain, you have to both separate the grain from the stalks and so forth, and then you have to separate the good stuff from the husks. And that's done in two processes, threshing. That's why you have a threshold, so it doesn't spill out of the room in which you're doing the threshing, which is beating, and then taking advantage of the wind

by throwing it up in the air and winnowing, let wind. because if you notice certainly in New England where I live, I'd say back in old England, barns are normally with their open doors facing the prevailing winds, which in both this part of the world and the United Kingdom are mostly westerly. So barns have the open doors on the western side. You've fresh the grain, you throw it up in the air. The westerly wind, if you're lucky, blows through the barn and the grain that you're going to eat or make it a flower or whatever settles on the granary floor at the lee end. And so wind and early agriculture intimately connected.

It gets a bit more complicated when you talk about astronomy, and I go into it in some, I hope not tedious detail in this book, looking at the various planets and the various planetary bodies that the moons of those planets, most notably in Jupiter, which you can now see with sophisticated telescopes, if they have atmospheres, you've got to have an atmosphere, and you've got to have a source of heat to produce changes in the atmosphere that will stimulate wind.

Well, Titan and Triton and Saturn and Saturn itself all have winds. The only windless planet of ours is Mercury, as far as we can see. But no, astronomy gave us some indication on a much greater scale of wind. Politics, I'm not so sure. Maybe we can develop that. There are a lot of wind. gags out there. We know that. I'll tell you, well, this is just a consequence of having gone to

uni in Chicago, I'm afraid. So, you know, it's a windy city, but that's not why we call it that, is it? It's about politics. No, well, I dedicate the book writer, a friend of mine who, and I think I say in the dedication, who coming from Chicago knows a thing or two about wind. I tell you, if I want to go to a windy city, Winnipeg's the one, not Chicago at all. And I'm standing at the corner of Maine and somewhere else, people are known to have frozen to death waiting for the traffic lights to change. I know a really great Canadian phrase about the wind there, which is that there's nothing

between you and the North Pole but a barbed wire fence and even that's blown down. Quite right, too. I find that delightful. Do we ever see, you know, you've already mentioned that we have these connections to wind that are associated with the gods or wind. with great eagles. Is there any evidence that people are ever thinking about the wind in a sort of natural philosophical or rudimentary scientific way? Or is this always mythology and an association with the power of gods? Well, that means a wonderful question. It leads into a whole universe of knowledge and Aristotle encapsulated it nearly all with his book, Meteorological. And he wrote extensively about wind and had a very good scientific idea of why wind blew absent. All the gods,

I mean, yes, the gods, of course, are what gives us words like anamoy, which leads to anemometer, and the wind gods are collectively the animoy. And if you go to the tower of the winds, just on the north side of the Acropolis in Athens, still stands. It looks like an eight-sided public laboratory. It's the most extraordinarily building, but very durable. That has the main eight-wind gods written on, inscribed on the marble. But while all this was going on, and Wins ascribed to deities, Aristotle was pondering and thinking and working it all out and producing really sensible explanations similar to our own today based on physics of why winds happen. I think that one of the things you've highlighted really well here is that oftentimes when we have,

especially our more ancient ideas about the wind. One of the big things that people tend to concentrate on is the effect on trade or transport that the wind has, especially in a world without motors. So when do people begin to understand or write about what the wind can mean for them economically or in terms of transportation? And does this change the more they learn to use the wind? Well, I think it's probably fair to say it, the Portuguese are the ones who most of all, in the 14th century, began to use the wind, understanding how it could work to their advantage.

And if you plot on a map the places where the Portuguese colonised, you can see that there are all the places that they ended up having set their vessel sails to allow them to go in more or less straight lines. and so you have Angola on the West Coast of Africa, you've got now Mozambique on the East Coast, and then you've got these ports all the way to Macau in China, and all of them on a line that you can plot the winds and show that the winds with the engine that drove initially Portuguese colonisation, but then the Dutch and the Spanish, and of course, then us, shamefully.

So, and the big break as far as the Portuguese, were concerned was in the middle of the 14th century, 15th century rather, when they rounded, came down from Portugal, as they say, such a small country to live in with the whole world to die in, which I just think is such a poignant remark about Portugal, going down the west coast of Africa in their caravals, powered, of course, entirely by wind, no oarsmen, nothing like that. And then they came across this Cape called Cape Bohador, which they couldn't get round. There was foam, there were weird sounds, there were evidently rocks, there were believed to be sea monsters. But eventually they did.

I think 1451, I think it was, when a savvy sailor, dispatched by Henry the Navigator, worked out what was happening and said, instead of hugging the coast of Africa, you have to go against the winds and head out to sea and then come south and then come back towards the coast. and that having been breached, this huge wind-related navigational barrier, then it was as far as the Portuguese were concerned, it was off to the races, and they did what they did. So 1,400 to 1,500, that was the moment when wind was realized as being an enormously useful tool for colonization, and of course, initial motives of colonization

rather than subjugation were trade. It's interesting that the first thing that Henry the navigator asked Gill, Ianis, who was this savvy navigator to get for him, was flowers from the sub-Saharan desert, and he brought him back to Lisbon, a little bunch of roses from central Western Africa. I've done it. I've beaten the wind. Well, no one beats the wind. Anyway, I've used it to my advantage. I love the romance of sailors. These big tough men doing these things that are, frankly, terrifying. You know, you wouldn't catch me even today trying to navigate entirely

by the wind out into the Atlantic Ocean, and then to have the wherewithal to do things like collect roses. It's just beautiful. I love the Phoenicians from this. I mean, the Phoenicians sailed happily around within the Mediterranean, basically looking for Murex shells so they could grind them up and from them extract the color

purple, which clothed the Athenian and Roman nobilities. And they made a lot of money, did the Phoenicians, but they never went out initially of the Mediterranean, which was relatively benign, a sea, I mean, relatively can be nasty, because there were the pillars of Hercules. There was Gibraltar on the starboard side, and there were mountains of northern Morocco on the left. They dare not go into this wind-blown wilderness of sea. They thought it was terrifying, but then one day, two of them did.

And they entered into the Atlantic Ocean. And yes, they got blown about a bit, but they turned left and went to Esso era and found hundreds of thousands of these shells. And then they suddenly felt confident. They came back rich and brimming with these welks and whelk-like things, made a lot of money and went out again. And this time they turned right and went up to England and started mining tin and all the rest of it. So it's often, as with Gillianish or the West Coast of Africa, now the Phoenicians, it's the myth that kept them. import the terrifying notion of what the gods might do to them. And then once you confronted that myth, dealt with it, then they went anywhere. So the age of sail became the age of exploration,

discovery, colonization, and all these sorts of things. I'll tell you wealth is a really great reason to try to test your luck at times. But of course, you know, one of the things that the wind is carrying other than just people, just people, I say. I said that that's nothing at all. But it also carries lots of other things. So there are some really interesting things in your book very specifically about the way medieval people think about the wind as a carrier for things like pollen or locusts or disease, which I found this bit absolutely fascinating. So what examples do we have of medieval people being conscious of what the wind transports? And how do they respond to this?

Well, initially, I suppose, I think, anyway, it's a very complicated field of this, but sand. I mean, before you get to locusts and before you get to butterflies and before you get to pollen and flowers and seeds and things, they were concerned early on about destruction particularly on the south side of the Sahara, the spreading of sand by wind. The sand behaves like a liquid, but it isn't a liquid.

It's solid, and it engulfs, overruns villages and destroys them. So that was one of the early things that they were concerned about wind bringing, noxious, damaging, dangerous things. Germs they weren't really aware of until much later on. And of course, what I write about in some

detail is much more modern, which is about the spread of radiation from atom bombs and atomic testing. It's a complicated field, but in Africa particularly, there is much commentary about how the wind ruins their fields, brings, yes, locusts, of course, but as much as anything sand, very inimical to agriculture, of course, and to civilization based upon it. A few years ago here in London, there was a terrible sandstorm in the Sahara, and the sky turned orange even up here, and we had all this dust coming up from the Sahara. And I can only imagine how much more horrid it would be if you were actually living next to it. And here we are, you know, theoretically up in Northern Europe, and we're still affected by what the wind can do with the desert.

It's really incredible. Well, and of course, back in the 1930s, I know this is beyond your field of interest, but it's the huge amounts of dust from Nebraska and Kansas and Oklahoma. in New York City, having been blown by that particular year, hugely powerful winds and the jet stream up higher still. Incidentally, I just should mention something which I found terribly amusing. The jet stream was discovered in the 1930s by a Japanese scientist who put up eras on balloons and found them being at about 60,000 feet, whipped at ferocious speeds into the sea of Japan where the balloons died. He discovered a new wind and wrote about it, published a paper saying, I've discovered this new wind. No one responded, not at all.

So he wrote, I think, 14 more papers saying that he had discovered this amazing new wind, which had huge effects on the world's climate. And the reason that no one responded is that he didn't write it in English and he didn't write it in Japanese. He wrote it in Esperanto. Believing that Esperanto was the next great global language. And, of course, nobody read it. Oh, God bless him. This is just, oh, that, you know, I absolutely, I think that Esperanto, I'm with him in spirit.

I think it would have been a great idea. It's fair enough. So you've mentioned already a little bit about Aristotle's works on the wind. To what extent would you say that these ancient Greek, ideas and indeed manuscripts of ancient Greek thought or indeed Islamic tracts on meteorology had an influence on medieval people's understanding of the wind? Hugely, particularly Islamic meteorologists and particularly those who worked, because they came at his invitation in the court of Kuwait Khan in 13th century China. I mean, he was

an extraordinary fellow, yes, very violent in many ways. But because he was a very violent in many ways, But because of his enthusiasm for the Silk Road trade between, you know, Antioch and Shian, a lot of Muslims came to China. And among them were a significant number of mathematicians and astronomers, many astronomers, and meteorologists. And so they taught Kulbray Khan a good deal about weather, about rainfall, about the planets, about the stars, and about wind. That necessarily did not necessarily work to his advantage, because of a little learning being a dangerous thing. He learned a little, but it got him into a lot of trouble.

And I know that sort of sets up the next part of the story. I didn't mean to put it like that. But if you want to talk about China, wind, and disaster, then I knew that. This is one of those things, right? because you chart really well the Chinese interest in measuring wind or defining the wind, and in particular, you know, the incredible ways that the Chinese are interested in developing forms of navigation for it. And that's one end of the story, right? How do we use this to our advantage?

How do you get porcelain out of Guangzhou and into Basra, right? That's one end of the scale. The other end of the scale is this is a massively, threatening force that we still have absolutely no control over it, right? No control at all other than sheltering ourselves, building shelters. I mean, that's, of course, the Midwestern America is peppered with shelters and notices or advice what to do if the wind gets totally out of hand, and the Chinese were fully aware of it.

But it led them into, as I say, this little learning, particularly of the great Khan, led him into trouble because he thought he could master the wind and use it to his advantage, but what he was unaware of was a signal feature of wind, which is its unpredictability. And things went badly for him. Well, can you expand on that? Because I think this is such a great story. It's such a wonderful story of hubris. That's the thing. A wonderful story of hubris. There he was sitting in his you know, pleasure dome in Zanadu and thinking now I've sort of united all of the

17 or whatever it is Chinese provinces now I'll go and expand China and so he expanded it into what is now Vietnam and Indochina and Burma and said the place I really want to go to is Japan. I mean these people are so

separate from me. He already had Korea that was part of his continental empire. So he mounted these expeditions. two of them in, I think, 1774 and 1281, to conquer and annex the islands of Japan. But he thought the wind would easily, because it was predominantly from the West, take him across the Sea of Japan and land, and they'd fight the samurai, because they had enormous numbers of sailors and soldiers and Mongol warriors.

So they went, first of all, too, I always forget, but there's a little island in the Sea of Japan called Tsushima, and their fleet, which had a modest size, the first one, 1274, had about 900 boats, which is pretty large. But the problem was they were nearly all riverboats made by Korean sailors in a hurry, so not particularly well built either, but boats without keels. So when they got out into the open ocean and the winds became powerful, they would tend to have a tendency to capsize. They wouldn't capsize if the wind was relatively benign as it was when they were.

set out. So they set out and entered in, well, they first all got to Tsushima. And old enough, the restaurant in the street next to where I live in New York City is Tsushima, which Japanese are still very proud, because they may have conquered it, but only for a very short while, before disaster fell them. They went into Hakata Bay, I think it was, and most of them left their boats and rushed onto land to deal with the samurai, who were not at all courageous, not like a, you know, Kurosawa film. and they scampered off into the forests, and the Korean saw, the Kublaan fought, well, I've done it. I've got Japan.

But during the evening, the Korean sailors, who were out in the bay, saw the winds picking up and noticed some signs of an evidently big storm coming. And they tried to send signals onto the land to get the soldiers back. But they didn't, I mean, the Korean soldiers didn't come back, and they woke in the morning to see wrecked ships trying desperately to get. out into the open ocean to ride out the storm, but most of them were damaged beyond repair, which they were so badly built, and the soldiers were now slaughtered by the samurai and told not to come back. So that was the first of these advantageous for the Japanese point of view wins. The second, 1281, a little bit further west, Imamee Bay, I think, near Nagasaki.

Much the same thing happened. That's typhoon, because this was typhoon season. What had happened initially, not to get too boring about it, was that the samurai this time met the incoming fleet on the little islands that Peppity Mamie Bay and held them off, something like six months. But that six months led the incoming fleet into typhoon season, summer. And I think it was June, July. And then they noticed once as before a big storm coming.

And this time, the samurai had the advantage. They tried to push them out to sea, but the wind scattered the fleet, destroyed the fleet. And the Japanese were saved for a second time, which is why, Kaze being the word for wind and the kami are the gods, the divine wind. And so those were both divine winds that saved Japan and, of course, never been invaded since. And so the word was applied, sort of savage, cruel irony, into their suicide planes in the latter months of World War II. but to this day the gods of the winds, the holy winds are what saved Japan and are so as seen as a blessing.

Do you know when I lived in Tokyo, my friends would during the typhoons go out and surf because they were crazy people, which I was always saying to them, guys, it's just not worth it, but were they listening to me? No. Because of the show, you know, there's kamikaze and there's kamikaze, you know. You also mentioned in terms of, of talking about and thinking about wind as being connected to the gods. That Ibn Majid writes this thing that is, the sea has its own calendar marked not with saints' days, but with the breaths of God, which I found terribly evocative. I love it. That is, I didn't get it from that. Interesting.

So there you go. I thought I made it up. Well, do you know what? But this is the thing, right? It's such a universally understood idea in a lot of ways, right? that there is some sort of divine force that can be behind, and to the point that you've used the title for your book, The Breath of God. Do we see this, though, in things like Christian traditions?

So we've got Islamic people who are willing to put this down. Obviously, the Japanese are right up for it. But is this something that we would see getting thrown around in Europe? Yes, you do. I mean, there's a, I can't remember his name, Mount Ilmeren, I think, which is a Finnish statue of him, the Eternal Hammerer, he's called, significant in the long history of Finland, which I'm sure we're all intimately familiar, but very much propelled by a wind god. But the one that, I suppose, most of us know about because of television recently, was the force of God that drove St. Brendan and his monks from southwest Ireland. up to the Western Islands of Scotland, then to the Faroe Islands, and then to Iceland, and then to Greenland, and then to Newfoundland, where they eventually ended up,

indicating that a heavenly wind could drive people with sufficiently right minds, as far as God was concerned, to populate the new world. And this indicates that we should, I try, and every time I approach this subject, to try and proselytize on behalf of Scandinavian settlements or European settlements of America, other than Christopher Columbus. Because Columbus was such a shabby character, whereas Leif Erickson, who definitely landed,

once again propelled by the heavenly forces of the wind to northern Newfoundland, and then St. Brendan, southern Newfoundland. They were the ones that first settled in North America. the first European child to be born in North America was from Leif Erikson settlement in L'Anso Meadows in northern Newfoundland. And he was called Snorri Thorfinsen. So Snorri Thorfinsen, who then went on to be a teacher in Iceland and then came back to Stavanger and Norway to die, he is the first.

Not anyone related to Columbus who never landed on the European mainland anyway. So 9th October over here where they celebrate Columbus Day, I sulkily do not. I mean, I think that you're not going to find anyone on this show who's going to disagree with you in that matter. On this podcast, we celebrate the Vikings first and foremost. I've no interested in lesser gentlemen from, you know, Italy. No, thank you. I would be a bit of the Vikings to sail up. saying in to purse. That wasn't so kind of. Well, I mean, yes. Obviously, look, you know, there's

Vikings and there's Vikings. You have to take a mistake. There are real different outcomes of all of these varying things. What are the things that you do a great job of talking about, which I've really enjoyed in the book, which is how medieval monasteries think about wind, and of course, we're going to hear from our friends, the monks, because that's who we hear from in the medieval period, would you characterize the way they understand weather and how it influences, for example, the way that they harvest or plant for the year? Also good on harvesting, but certainly cooling of cathedrals and monasteries is a big thing, the siting of cathedrals in a way that employs what's called the Venturi effect.

Let us say you have a big cathedral like Sharch or something like that, if you cited with its shoulders to the wind, as it were, and make the windows at the top of the cathedral, sufficiently narrow that when the wind comes through it, it's compressed. What then happens is it speeds up and cools down at the same time, a phenomenon recognized by this scientist called Venturi. And that keeps the cathedral cool.

It's a principle that's employed in a lot of houses, oddly enough, in Hawaii. I mean, modern houses that have been built with very narrow windows on the trade wind side. the northeast side of the house, and big picture windows on the leeward side never need air conditioning. So, yes, the monks writ this knowledge of the cooling effect of winds large into big cathedrals made from the 10th century onwards. Shachar is a good example. Always cool. No icon in Shatry. You know, and it's one of these things that I think still any tourist in France,

You know, if you make the unfortunate mistake of showing up in August, you know, you can always go into a cathedral and everything is going to be fine by the time you get in there. It's everything else up until then. And, you know, trust a monk to figure that out. But it's not just them that are thinking about the wind or using the winds. Do we have other signs that more ordinary people are organizing their lives in the Middle Ages around wind? Just as I've got influence, I see. suppose on everyday activities. You know, I'm not entirely sure about that. I spent a lot of time in Marseille and then again in Trieste. Both cities deeply affected by unusual winds, the mistral in Marseille, the Bora, in Trieste. And the ordinary person is well aware of the ferocious, the dangerous aspects of wind, particularly catabatic winds like winds that pour down to the mountaintops down the slope and then explode into a city.

They, until fairly recently, you go to Trieste, which is, of course, very ancient city, it would still have ropes attached by big iron rusting stanchions to walls you could grab onto if a borer suddenly decides to blow and it'll throw you across the street. I mean, it's a very dangerous thing. So I would think this must, go back further than that, apprehension of dangerous winds rather than using more benign

wins. It's a part of the story I didn't look into in great detail, was very interested to see how these wins are dealt with today and are used for reasons that we've already talked about in trade, commerce, and colonization. Absolutely. I mean, I think it is quite interesting because this is still an ongoing story, right? You know, we have these amazing links to the past in that we are still completely dependent on the wind for any number of things, like whether that be, you know, the jet stream or now increasingly, for example, generating power. And, you know, many people are quite similar in that they're using, they're using the wind for all sorts of reasons. But do we have any links, for example, between the way that wind is considered to perhaps influence

the health? You know, you do a great turn in talking about how, you know, you know, know, fresh air and how that is sort of used in a modern context for ideas about health. Do we see anything similar from medieval people at the time thinking that the wind? Well, we do, because although yes, it blew sand, it clogged up your lungs, clogged up, I mean, horses, nostrils and things clogged by wind-burn sand was vexing and written about a very long time ago. But most frequently, people talk about the wind, nowadays anyway, the wind's blowing away germs, making increasing amount of ozone in the post-thundstorm air, a feeling of health and cleanliness. So many winds are known in their colloquial names as such and such a doctor, the Cape Doctor.

The wind that blows off the top of Table Mountain in Cape Town is known as the Cape Doctor because it cures, it seems, colds and makes people feel healthy and content. So I have no doubt that it was true in medieval times, but I didn't look into it at the depth that I should have. Oh, do you know what? I'm always trying to get people to talk about the medieval period, but you can never report to be as obsessed as I am. That's fine.

It's absolutely fine. But it is interesting, right, because when you have this idea that Wynn can simultaneously make people healthier. But, you know, we also see in the medieval period, for example, worries about contagion. You know, obviously they don't know anything about germs yet, but in particular during Black Death outbreaks, there is some concern that malodorous fumes have come out of the earth after earthquakes or indeed come out of the sky from varying conjunctions of stars and that the winds are moving these terrible pestilences through. So, it's, It is this idea about measma and how that can possibly move on the wind.

So, you know, on the one hand, you've got this idea that, oh, the refreshing breeze can come through and make you healthier, but you've also got the worry that there's going to be bad things in there, too, I suppose. I think you're absolutely right. And what blows away a London fog, what blows away a miasmic surface of a canal in Venice, for instance, is a good and robust wind, sort of God's way of cleaning house. Could you talk a little bit about the way that people decided to attempt to harness the wind for their benefit? You know, obviously, the ships is the obvious idea here, you know, but what else are people using the wind to do? You know, now we're generating power with it.

We're using it to move airplanes a little bit faster, things of this nature. But in a historical context, what kind of examples do we have for the same idea? Well, clearly wind, and in the first case in Mesopotamia, blowing from the northwest, blowing people along the rivers. Tigris and Euphrates is sort of a no-brainer, as it was with the Nile and the invention and the creation of a felucca, the single-sail, single-mast boat that could go obviously downstream northwards, the trick was to create a felucca. the single-sail, single-mast boat that could go obviously downstream northwards, but trick was to create some sail design that would allow a skilled boatman to go back, both against the current and against, if there was a wind from the south and against the wind. And that, the development of early sails, the harnessing of the wind to enable navigation in any direction.

You obviously used oarsman. That would give you the ability to change direction very quickly, which is very difficult in a big sail-driven ship, until the technology advanced and they could trim their sails and they could tack and all those other things. Different sail designs, I'm fascinated by the single mast, the single sail in Egypt, and then the development of the outrigger in Polynesia,

which meant that boats could heal, way over under the pressure of a very powerful wind and not sink or capsize, because you had these one or later on two heart triggers, and then the development of the square sail, see them in the big clippers and so forth, that crisscross the Atlantic. So that's certainly one way, but that we harness the wind and learned how to use it. The construction of windmills, not just to generate electricity, but in Northern Europe particularly to raise water. So water pump is a relatively easy thing to design, to power it with a wind-driven mill. That was a hugely important development and enabled Holland to withstand constant invasion by the sea

and the creation of places like Flavoland and entirely new polder dry as. It's the desert today, but all the water raised from it and sent somewhere else on pipes by windmills. And of course, that goes to the whole grinding of grain, creation of foodstuffs and so forth. So I develop a fairly lengthy chapter leading from early European windmills right up to the mills. You find in Texas today, still made by a company called the Air Motor Company in San Angelo, Texas. you see a windmill on a farm in Nebraska and you know they're going to have water to allow their cows to drink and the grass to grow.

So it's been, well, a long time since the first windmill was made. So it's sometimes text just good, you know. If it's not broke, you don't need to fix it. Can you talk to us a little bit about winds and their understanding as influencing human beings, behavior. So, for example, I know this of Californians. They always say that the Santa Ana wind makes people behave strangely. And this is kind of a modern thing. Do we see similar ideas about the wind historically? I guess the idea of an ill wind that controls people's actions. Is that

anybody other than modern Californians, I suppose. I mean, it should be remembered that I think What did Raymond Chandler say of the Santa Ana, when the Santa Ana, which is another catabatic wind coming down from the high desert towards the coast, when one is blowing a normally docile housewife. I know this is a phrase that will irritate you, but nonetheless, this is Raymond Chandler writing Centrigo. She takes her sharpest kitchen knife from the drawer, feels its edge and looks hungrily at the back of her husband's neck. that's the kind of mood that is settles in a place with a certain types of wind and this has been true for a very long time

in southern France, in Provence, when the Mistral Mistral is a cold north-westerly wind generated effectively by a circulation pattern in the bear bischi and another one over the Alps and when one is blowing it blows tiles off roofs and it makes the sea of Marseille very rough, but more than anything, it has and has for many, many years changed the mood of the people.

And so it is said, and it's for a thousand years nearly, which it's written about a thousand years ago, judges, police people in southern France will take a more benign attitude towards people that commits crimes of passion when a mistral is brewing and will, it said, regard that as a mitigating circumstance. You used to be able to plead until 30 or 40 years ago there were mistrust blowing, so that's why I murdered this person no longer. But 100 years ago, most certainly it was true.

Well, I'll tell you what, we definitely, in AP composition, you know, back in the dark days when I was in American high school, we had to learn the Santa Ana and the Housewives and Kitchen Knives thing as a great example of American literature. So it's nice to know that it's not just American being violent when it comes to wind. That's something. I'll take it. So you might be able to get off a crime because the wind is blowing. But is there ever this idea that the wind itself is, you know, an instrument of judgment. You know, does wind come in, you know, as a result of

God being unhappy with people? Very much said. I mean, in the same way that earthquakes, prior to the Enlightenment, were regarded as indications from God, displeasure. San Francisco, I mean, the origins of Pentecostalism had to do with the belief that natural forces were God's punishment visited on the coast of San Francisco in 1905, before the earthquake, was regarded as a den of inequity, and cleansing wind to go back to what we were talking about earlier, was sent by God to blow down their houses, drive them out of town, and scourge them, after all, one of the most potent forces that he, with the capital H, has at his disposal. So, yes, for a very long time, I know I keep using that phrase over and over, but for hundreds

of years, a punishing divine wind for ill in this case, as opposed to divinity for good reasons in Japan in 13th century, was often a feature of contemporary literature and poetry, of course. and Shakespeare made use to it. And look at King Lear, raging against the wind. I mean, quite so. And I guess we do have all these fantastic medieval ideas about this. I mean, quite fantastic in the case of the kamikaze. But also, you know, these ideas that I suppose that God can be acting through the weather.

I'm not sure that it's entirely gone either. You know, certainly whenever there's a really bad. a hurricane, you see Americans kind of say things still. You know, even in the year of our Lord 2025, I've certainly heard those things. Is there any evidence that these winds have knock-on effects, I suppose, in terms of other natural examples? So, for example, you know, in the 14th century year in Europe, we have the great famine of 13 to 15.

And is this in any way, this terrible weather that leads to everyone starving? Is this something that is connected to the wind at all, or is this just kind of a bad happenstance? I think you're right. I mean, connectivity between various natural phenomena are legion. I mean, the class in Zambl in the world that I inhabit, which is largely geology, was the eruption of Tambora, von Volcano and Philippines, or Rala, Indonesia in 1815, I think. It might be 18, or 15, that created vast atmospheric storms with huge. huge winds because of all the particulate material thrown up into the stratosphere, an uneven heating by the sudden through this disturbed atmosphere which causes these ferocious winds,

which led to crop failures in northern Europe, which lends endless rains and misery and storms. And of course, the popular thing, I'm sure you know, is that Mary Shelley, who was then in Geneva, was so miserable by this weather that she wrote Frankenstein. So ill winds give us a lot of things, including rather good literature. I'm not sure if she's tired of the wind or Lord Byron, but, you know, same old, same old, what can I say? Is there any understanding that you see, especially in, you know, the pre-modern world, that there's a possibility of God interceding to influence the winds or whether if people are praying hard enough? Or does this kind of run up against the idea that God is doing this in the first place? Well, ask Voltaire, I suppose.

I never want to ask Valterre anything. No, boo. You should have him on. Well, the parting of the Red Sea, of course, comes to mind. The wind acting on oceans on whirlpools, these things were certainly seen at the maelstrom, the whole myth of the maelstrom of the Lofoten Islands in Western Norway. that's a wind-caused event whose effects are principally seen in the sea. Much the same things happens in Iceland.

I mean, the Icelandic sagas are peppered with stories about winds that break up fights. I mean, Haldol laxness, one should read him to look at medieval Icelandic attitudes to the wind. Yes, a punishment, an intercession, and of a rebal. I mean, benign, wonderful winds sent by God as an icon of gratitude. It's a multifarious thing, the wind. And at the moment, you may know, we're said to be in the midst of what's called the Great Terrestrial Stilling, whose wind speeds in Europe, particularly, have declined over the last 15 years by something like 10%. And no one is quite sure why.

We know that tornadoes and cyclones and things are getting more extreme, but in the mainland of all the continents, Russia, most especially, the wind speeds are dropping. No one quite knows why, although you assume it's something to do with global warming. But then those people that are concerned about it, because ultimately what could be worse than a world without wind? I mean, to be, I've spent quite a few days trapped on a little sailing boat in the Indian Ocean in the doldrums. And believe you me, it is not merely dull, which is where the word comes from from the judge.

But it's lifeless. I mean, nothing happens. No rain is brought. No fresh air comes. No seeds, no birds, no nothing. I find that terrifying. It is terrifying. I'm painted shit on a painted ocean.

Now, speaking of, you've mentioned. the Icelandic sagas and the way that the wind is interpreted there. But, you know, going back a little bit in time to the Viking ancestors of the good people who have inhabited Iceland, would you say that one of the big advantages that they have is their understanding of the wind? You know, obviously they've got these incredible boats that allow them to move around in shallow water and things like that. But is their understanding of how the wind works part of what gives them the upper hand, when it comes to, I don't know, floating down the sand or finding Iceland in the first place? I would and I do, and I think, but it's a sort of dangerous idea in a way,

among those who are rightly critical of eugenics and so forth, that there are certain people that are blessed with certain unique intelligences who are in some way advantaged over those who don't have those skills. And this was all drawn out by this now completely derided by Ellsworth, Huntington in the 1920s, who said the people that live in climates that are very, very, that have storms and winds unexpectedly, are much more intelligent than those who live in places where the wind, whether the wind is much more benign. and I think it was called climate and humanity or something. And nowadays, of course, you can't say such a thing,

but a while ago you would say that people that live in Norway, Sweden, and as Trump, of course, would very much agree with this, somehow because they have to deal with a variety of wild, unexpected weather, are more adept, are more curious, are less content with their lot, and consequently a striving to improve it and looking for much more curious than others who live in benign time. I suppose that that's a cultural thing there, you know,

like if, yeah, I tell you what, if the wind's coming down out of the north and you're stuck in Norway, you might be thinking about getting a boat too. Yeah, I'm going somewhere else, like Morocco. Yeah, absolutely. And certainly, I mean, the ancestors of the Vikings, you know, once they French-fai a little bit,

by the time we hit 1066, the wind is playing quite an important role, no? Oh, hugely important. It goes back to what we were talking about earlier with the colonisation of the Portuguese sailing boats. But of course, the role that the wind played most significantly in English history, we allowed ourselves to be invaded by the Normans, yes, yes. But then come 1588 and King Phillips attempts to overthrow Elismith, it was the The wind, the Protestant wind, as King James ruefully declared it when his defeated fleet limped back into harbor, the Spanish Armada, his expedition ended. It was the wind that was blamed. So the wind saved England. As we was reminded from, I was about six years old, I think. West, the five W is what was, wet, warm, westerly winds in winter. They did for the Spaniards. I'll tell you what, James is the first. He's a one for the winds and who he will blame for them. You know, if his particular issue is that, you know, he's had a bit of a rough crossing, then there's witches. And, you know, if the Spanish are blown off course, then God loves England. You know, he's always gotten answered to everything, that one.

In proscenes, yeah. Did the wind ever have any influences on European exploits further abroad? So, for example, here I'm thinking about, Richard the Lionheart's little escapade against the Mamlux. Does the wind come into play in these later crusades at all? Yeah, I certainly did, but specifically, I can't tell you, because maritime expedition and subsequently any land-borne expedition is bound to be affected for good or ill by the wind, particularly if they were cold winds, and you've only got to look at Napoleon's retreat from Moscow to know the effect of wind much later. So yes. So yes. The Crusades hugely affected by winds, and a number of winds are named in memorial to that episode, or those episodes. You mentioned a little bit about the development of sales over time. Do we see any sort of cross-cultural cooperation when it comes to sharing knowledge about wind? Or is this the sort of thing that is jealously guarded? Do the Vikings want people to know?

I think it is something of a surprise to me that I'm in Polynesians who developed these fragile boats without triggers and relatively slight amounts of sail achieved so much navigational skill and populated, certainly in the triangle between Easter Island and Hawaii and down New Zealand, of superb navigational skills. did they ever translate their skills were they ever to be found in the Indian Ocean by the Arab Dows, by the sea-going Portuguese merchantmen? No, they were not. So it does seem that certain ship designs, I mean, the big square rigors that would come down from carrying tea

back to Britain or ships going from Germany to Cape Horn, they were not copied by any other. other cultural. So, yes, I would say that once any culture in history developed a particular type of sail, the Portuguese, they're caravals, Spanish galleons, and the galleases, that was very little until the end of the era, age of sail in the early part of the 20th century, when ships could go anywhere because they had motor, motors, not sails. So sail design was peculiar to the countries that had particular wind patterns. I love that.

I like a little bit of nativism about, you know, how we are rigging things. You know, I think it's – and I'm incredibly partial to a Polynesian outrigger because I think it's one of these great medieval inventions. And so I think that they're a little bit unsung, which luckily the book goes a long way to redressing. As soon as to close us out, I want to talk about one of my favorite topics. I'm going to force you to talk a little bit about the wind and magic. And do you see any kinds of spirits that are associated with wind or carried in the wind over time and culture? Well, I once got an assignment from a magazine that will remain nameless to follow the making of a hurricane from Mali, where hurricanes are born, the Bight of Benin, over to the Cape Verde.

islands and then to the Caribbean and then to usually the Gulf of Mexico, which I insist on still calling it, or the east coast to the United States. The magic involved in these little whirligigs, these little dust devils, which are seen and have been seen for centuries and observed and written about poems devoted to in places like Mali and Northern Senegal. They're the origin to Fonset Origo, a robust hurricane. And I love the idea of a magical little wind turning into a devilish, mighty wind. That excites me. I like that there is something about humans in general, that we have this desire to think about this, what can be a really terrible force, but ultimately is something that we are dependent on in so many ways as having its own nature, having its own sort of animus inside it.

I think that's nice that humans have this desire to do that. We love the wind, I think. We don't know what it is. We're still not 100% certain. What causes it? I mean, science is certain. We cherish it. In a way, I want this book to be a sort of celebration.

People would say, why on earth's a writer book about the wind? You know, it's not tangible, not easily tangible. Except, of course, when there's a tornado and then you can actually see it in action. Mostly wind is known by its effects, not by its... sheer existence. I urge you maybe this is nothing to do with this broadcast, but there's a little film made by a BBC radio engineer called Tim D trying to record the sound of the wind.

The sound it makes is it going through leaves or trees or brushing against a house or window pane. He goes into the wash, deeply into where Cnut tried to beat back the sea with his microphone holding it up into the pure, strong northerly wind. His microphone, the first thing that the wind had hit since its generation, somewhere way up near the North Pole. He holds the stick right into the air and records what he hears. And he said it confirms his belief that the wind is the spirits of the

dead being wafted away into heaven. It's a lovely image. I love that, and I think that it's something that really connects us to our ancestors, medieval and otherwise. There's still this magic there for whoever wants to see it. Simon, this has been an absolute joy. Thank you so much for joining us today. It's a great pleasure. As I say, it was the first time I've spoken about the book, so I feel I've got a little spring in my steps. Thanks to you, so thank you. Thank you.

My thanks again to Simon Winchester. And if you enjoyed this episode, why not listen to our recent episode on the medieval moon, which also had a profound effect on the way people understood their lives and the forces that shaped them? Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film, How Do I Look?

The History of Body Modification. and my series Meet the Normans, as well as ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com forward slash subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions or wherever you get your podcasts, and tell all your friends and family that you've Gone Medieval. Until next time.