August was the month when flies started to become a problem, buzzing round the dung heaps in the corner of every farmyard and hovering over the open cesspits of human refuse that were located outside every house. If the late twentieth century is scented with gasolene vapour and exhaust fumes, the year 1000 was perfumed with shit. Cow dung, horse manure, pig and sheep droppings, chicken shit – each variety of excrement had its own characteristic bouquet, from the sweet smell of the vegetable eater to the acrid edge of gut-processed meat, requiring the human nose of the year 1000 to function as a considerably less prissy organ than ours today.

There are modern archaeological experts who study excreta intensively, rummaging through the latrine pits of ancient settlements to discover such fundamental details as the fact that the toilet paper of the year 1000 was moss.

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The modern remedy for fleas and grubbiness – a good scrub of the body crevices – did not accord with the medieval mentality. The regulations of one tenth-century European monastery prescribed five baths for every month per year, but that was fanaticism by Anglo-Saxon standards of personal hygiene. One later commentator derided the Danish practice of bathing and combing the hair every Saturday, but did admit that this seemed to improve Danish chances with the womenfolk.

The Year 1000 – What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium (An Englishman’s World), de Robert Lacey & Danny Danziger