>With that, came a sharing of culture, artistic style, literature, and so on. Elements of this shared culture can be seen from the Black Sea all the way to Irel

>With that, came a sharing of culture, artistic style, literature, and so on. Elements of this shared culture can be seen from the Black Sea all the way to Ireland. Absolutely! But remember that the process was generally slow, non-uniform, and perilous. People did travel the world, but with nothing close to the ease of modern life. I really wanted to drive the contrast home. On average, the medieval world was local. >Actually, the opposite is closer to the truth: the king was not held sacred and was almost continually under attack from the lower nobles. Just one counterpoint: the King's Evil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculous_cervical_lymphadenitis#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculous_cervical_lymphaden... The status of kings... varied. >This would depend in large part on where you were. In Ireland or Scotland, this was certainly not true. In England, customs taxes didn't come about until the second half of the Middle Ages. Again, 100% correct, but it's a 2000 word post for a blog about pretending to be an elf! Some bits are going to get left out.