The Landscape of Disease in a War-struck Rural Parish

The Second Pandemic of plague in Europe during the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries was one of the most devastating pandemics in history, and questions surrounding its cause and spread remain a heated topic of debate in historical scholarship. To a certain extent, the sparsity of source material from the era of European plague (1348-1720) has limited discussions about the nature of the disease to often be purely hypothetical. There is a particularly great need for micro-level studies of disease patterns in small communities. This poster aims to fill this gap with the case of the parish of Øster Løgum in southern Denmark, where a unique combination of sources can provide an incredibly detailed look into an early modern rural community throughout waves of devastating epidemics. In Øster Løgum, which consisted of seven separate villages, the parish register starts as early as 1620 and reports in detail about the burials of those who died during epidemics of dysentery and plague that struck the parish in 1627-8 and 1629, respectively. Further, a head count from 1650 lists the members of each household, and a map series from 1647, when linked to the head count, potentially enables us to geographically study the impact of the epidemics at the level of each house.