The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe - Michael Pye

Published in 2015 by Pegasus Books, New York, NY

394 pages

ISBN: 978-1-68177-206-6

All too often, the Mediterranean Sea is the center of our retellings of the history of Western Europe. This is, of course, not without good reason. The legacies of the ancient Greek city-states, the expansive Roman Empire, and the Italian Renaissance are all seminal developments in the history that has shaped the Western world. For many historians, the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea have spawned the most important developments in Western history, giving birth to what we now consider the modern world. Yet, when we look at European history through this Southern-Continental centric lens, what do we miss in the process? 

In his 2015 book, The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe, historian and journalist Michael Pye attempts to give a gentle corrective to this perspective by recounting a medieval history of the Mediterranean’s northern twin: the North Sea. Sitting at the periphery of empire, the lands surrounding the North Sea and the islands dotting its watery surface were a locus of trade, communication, and innovation during the Middle Ages. Far from the “Dark Ages” being a time of stagnation and ignorance, Pye hopes to show that this era of history, situated along the frigid waters of Northern Europe, in fact “made the modern world possible” (9). 

Overview:

In the span of just over 300 pages, Pye takes the reader on a whirlwind tour through nearly 1000 years of the history of the land and people that surrounded the North Sea. Pye divides the chapters thematically, covering topics such as “the invention of money” (ch.1), “fashion” (ch.5), “writing the law” (ch.6), “science and money” (ch.8), and “the plague laws” (ch.11). Along the way, Pye describes the lives of the Frisians along the salt-marsh coast of the Netherlands and Western Germany, the production of knowledge and bookmaking via the life of the English Benedictine monk named Bede, the sailing, trading, and pillaging exploits of the Vikings, the development of legal codes and the emergence of secular courts, the fishing industry along the Rhine, periods of plague and the spread of disease in England and Scandinavia, the contentious confederation of merchant towns known as the Hanseatic League, and much more. 

Through these varying chapters, Pye focuses on a handful of groups and individuals, recounting historical anecdotes and personal stories that help bring their history and humanity to life. Whether he’s discussing the social importance of fashion, the invention of the lawyerly profession and the middle class, the gradual formation of nation-states, the human engineering of nature through the construction of dams, or the extensive travels and trading of the Vikings (evidenced by the discovery of a Buddha-figure found in a Swedish field from the eighth century (325)), Pye brings these disparate sources and groups together to make the argument that these developments on “the edge of the world” occupy a central place in retelling the history of the modern world. According to Pye, “around the cold, grey waters of the North Sea, the old, the marginal, the unfashionable made us possible: for much better, and for much, much worse” (328). 

Commendations:

First of all, I must commend Pye for attempting to shed light on the impressive developments that accompanied the Middle Ages. This era of time, often denigrated as the “Dark Ages,” is often painted in a negative light, as historians have traditionally followed the Enlightenment narrative, which cast this era as one of ignorance, war, and backwardness. Pye does much to show us that, far from a time of stagnation and darkness, the Middle Ages held their fair share of technological, political, and intellectual developments. 

Pye readily recognizes that, in comparison to Southern Europe, the documents and sources concerning Northern Europe are much more scant and difficult to piece together. That being said, this is an incredibly well-researched book, and Pye brings together a wide and diverse array of sources to support the narrative he’s constructing. While many of these are secondary sources, rather than primary, Pye does generally acknowledge when a source is biased, and therefore must be viewed through an extra dose of skepticism. When he does utilize primary sources, he generally provides an immensely readable and accessible account by placing it within its context and bringing out the human dimensions of these figures that can seem so distant from ourselves. 

Additionally, from the outset, Pye is careful to distance his work of recapturing the importance of Northern Europe from its darker political implications in our world today. Unfortunately, in our contemporary political sphere, the history and aesthetics of Northern European cultures (particularly medieval Nordic legends) are too often romanticized and co-opted by white supremacists. This is by no means a new development, considering that German nationalists (Wagner, Vilmar, and Hitler, just to name a few) have always been fascinated by Scandinavian legends, utilizing and adapting them to argue for the superiority of the Aryan “race.” Pye is careful to take note of this, writing, “history helps kill, if you’re not careful, so let me make one thing clear. I am celebrating the North’s contribution to the culture of Europe, but that does not mean forgetting the glories of the South; this is a story of connections. I want to isolate one part of the whole story only in order to get it clear, because it is the part that is so often missed” (22). Accordingly, Pye acknowledges that he is not attempting to show that this time and place was more important than the Mediterranean; rather, his work is “an attempt to paint a fuller, more colorful and precise picture of where we come from” (13). 

Furthermore, I deeply appreciated Pye’s continuous emphasis on the importance of trade and communication through this era. For the Frisians, Vikings, Dutch, and Irish, the North Sea was not a barrier, but rather an avenue for connection and interaction. While I studied medieval Northern European history extensively in graduate school, there were many sources and anecdotes here that were new and interesting to read, and it helped to fill certain gaps within my knowledge (particularly when it came to Dutch history). 

Critique: 

On the other hand, while The Edge of the World was mildly engaging, it ultimately reads more like a collection of interesting stories and historical anecdotes that never quite adds up to the grand scale of the argument he’s trying to make. Pye has big ambitions, and his thesis highlights one of my least favorite trends in popular history books: the tendency to make “X subject” into the foundation of the modern world. More often than not, claims like this are unfathomably overstated, utilized to increase the marketability of a book by connecting it to contemporary interests. Pye is consequently faced with a gargantuan task of his own making: to synthesize over 1000 years of history spanning more than 100 kingdoms into a cohesive and popularly accessible account of how the region contributed to the development of European civilization. Yet, more often than not, Pye is not successful in this monumental undertaking. 

The problem is twofold: 1) the scope of the book, both geographically and chronologically, is far too wide, and 2) the structure of the book and presentation of information is poorly organized. Pye presents his narrative through a constant series of vignettes, recounting story after story that never neatly and concisely tie together. The reader only receives small bits and pieces of interesting information that are loosely connected while Pye constantly jumps back and forth from one region/century to another, which makes for an incredibly disjointed and, at times, frustrating read. This is not helped by the bizarre endpaper maps that, while offering a nominally helpful guide in familiarizing oneself to the barrage of towns and cities mentioned, are oddly oriented and poorly labeled. While it is rich in well-researched detail, the book reads like a series of interesting historical anecdotes largely disconnected from the author’s central argument.

Pye essentially provides a brief, if disjointed, account of the gradual urbanization of Northern Europe, but this does little to support his thesis that these developments (which were already well established in Southern Europe) “made us who we are.” Especially since Pye consistently emphasizes the importance of communication and trade throughout these anecdotes, it remains unclear just what makes Northern Europe unique in these historical developments, or how they differ from what was going on in Italy and Southern France. Even when it comes to the regions surrounding the North Sea, Pye focuses heavily on Britain and the coast of Netherlands/Germany/France, leaving very little on the Vikings and Greater Scandinavia. This sidelining of Scandinavian kingdoms was rather surprising for a book that is supposed to be about the cultural transformation arising out of the North Sea. Furthermore, his analysis of religion -- especially the unique forms of syncretism and conflict that arose from Christian/pagan contact -- remained remarkably underdeveloped, especially in an era in which religion was a central organizing force in politics and society. Even in Pye’s chosen themes (fashion, money, marriage, law, politics, science, etc), no clear connection is made to how exactly Northern Europe uniquely contributed to the modern world. 

This is doubly frustrating since not only is this a subject that I care deeply about (indeed, enough to dedicate a significant portion of my graduate studies to studying), but I also share Pye’s belief that medieval Northern Europe is a deeply understudied and misunderstood time and place, and one that is worthy of academic attention. Instead, I found Pye’s account to be rather tedious and dull in many places, and he stretches the available evidence to support his points. Most of all, I find his methodology rather troubling: rather than looking to the primary sources and reading them on their terms, Pye more often comes to the texts with a preconceived idea of what “modernity” means, and then utilizes secondary sources to find evidence of these “modern” ideas. This is problematic for many reasons, not least of which is because this approach attaches teleological importance to the Middle Ages, redeeming this era solely due to its contribution to its role in progressing society to its modern form. It is much more interesting to approach the Middle Ages on their terms. What do these eras have to teach us about humanity? What ideas, values, and discoveries during this time are worth examining and analyzing, regardless of their importance to the modern world? While most simply completely ignore the Middle Ages, those of us who continue to pillage these thousand years of history, searching for small glimmers of ourselves and the seeds of our modern sensibilities, miss a much more vibrant and interesting history that deserves to be heard on its terms. 

Conclusion: 

Overall, while The Edge of the World gives us a large collection of interesting historical anecdotes about the lives and developments of medieval Northern Europe, it disappointingly fails to connect these stories to its larger argument. While the thesis of the book -- which is most strongly presented in the introduction and conclusion-- is incredibly compelling and well-worth analyzing, Pye struggles to connect the dots as he finds himself lost and engulfed in a torrent of unevenly entertaining facts, biographies, and histories. 

These are often the most difficult reviews to write. I so desperately wanted to like this book, since it covers an era and region about which I am deeply fascinated. I know that Pye is an intelligent individual, a great writer, and he poured so much time and energy into researching and writing this book. Yet, by the time I reached ⅔ of the way through the book, I was quite ready to be done with it and was grateful to finish it. There was so much potential in this book, yet its constitutive parts never really connected in a strong or meaningful way, which left it rather forgettable in the long run. 

Ultimately, it is difficult to know who to recommend this book to. Are you interested in medieval European history? You’ll likely find several stories that will capture your interest and make you genuinely appreciate this era. Yet, you’ll also most likely find yourself confounded by the whiplash structure of the narrative and lost by the constant changing of geographic locations. Experts in the era might find a new source among the wide array of books cited, yet will find most of the analysis to be rather shallow. If you have a solid familiarity with the region of the North Sea, but don’t know much about its history and are fine with reading a loose collection of stories, then The Edge of the World might be just right for you.