Today, another video is uploaded to YouTube by a youtuber whom I subscribed to -- Nikolas "Lindybeige" Lloyd.
In his video "Forest in the Olden Days" (URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVPUFMwm73Y) he talks about how medieval woodlands were not what we understand them as today. That woods in those days were man-made and managed by communities (villages, etc.) for their resources (e.g.: timber & herbs).
Now Lloyde is, what I'd say, a somewhat eccentric and controversial personality. Now, I believe in skepticism, and Lloyde had elected not to included any supporting materials to his claims. This made it difficult for me to make judgement on his claims.
I'm not against the idea of man-made woodlands in the middle-age Europe, but I'm not ready to accept it until I can be convinced. So I tried to look up online materials, as they are most easily available to me. But alas, the Oxford forestry article on Google search result is locked behind a login page...
So my question is: are there any materials supporting his claims? And, if any, against it?
On a personal note: Lloyde's video intrigued me because someone on the internet, I don't know who or where he was - it was the internet, claimed that the mongols would have had a hard time conquering western Europe due to its dense forests. Now this is clearly beyond the purview of this topic -- although I do think the Mongrols must have had dealt with similar terrain issues invading elsewhere; however it did make me wonder about the geographical makeup of Medieval Europe.
Edit: also, in his video, Lloyde had chose to focus on medieval England forests. Now I've found a wealth of articles online about Norman and early medieval England forest laws since posting this question. So I'd like to ask a further question: were there similar laws in other kingdoms of medieval Europe? What about France? The Holy Roman Empire? etc.?
Sorry about the wall of text, and I'd appreciate any helps from r/AskHistorians!
He seems to be talking mostly about England, not Europe as a whole. England is a bit of an anomaly in terms of forests, chiefly because it has very little forest cover. They have been chopping down forests to create farmland for a long time. Forests have started to grow recently, since the 1950's because of active reforestation policies, but in much of the medieval period, forest cover in England was even lower than today. And most of it was in hilly areas where not many people lived.
I believe he's right about most of the forests across Europe being "man-made" though perhaps not as literally as the term might indicate. It would be more realistic to say that they are not "natural" forests, they have the mark of human activity. It takes many forms, such as:
burning down forests to create farmland, then abandoning it a few years later since most forests aren't on rich soil, so the land is exhausted after a few years of farming. Vegetation grows back when the farms are abandoned, but it may be different species.
effect of domesticated animals. Plenty of forests were used for grazing sheep or goats, which can be very destructive and will change the forest significantly over time
harvesting resources, mainly firewood, though other forest resources were also gathered
forest management, where you specifically choose which trees will grow, you shape the trees while growing to produce straight limbs and branches for lumber, prune them, clear ground cover for easy access, etc.
All of these things have been done repeatedly to European forests pretty much since the beginning of agriculture, around 7,000 years ago in some parts. By the bronze age, "natural" untouched forests were rare in most parts of Europe, except the far north and in mountainous areas.
As for the extent of forests, it was much higher in continental Europe than in England. Roman records are full of descriptions of Germania being full of horrible forests and loathsome bogs. The huge "cap" of forests spreading across the width of Europe over Italy has long been a barrier to the movements of armies, and especially in the early medieval period, much of western and northern Europe was dominated by forests. Again, England/Ireland are exceptions.
