In October 1347, one or more galleys carrying refugees from the conquered Genoese colonies in the Crimea brought the plague to Western Europe. In the course of the next few years, a truly appalling number of people died, and an indelible mark was left on European history.

Although sources are incomplete, historians have estimated that the Black Death, in the course of less than four years, killed off approximately 30 to 40 percent of Europe's population. The psychological and social consequences were overwhelming, and the death toll involved staggers the mind.

These pages are an attempt to reveal the unfolding of this monumental tragedy over the course of a series of maps. The intent of the project is to make the progress of the Black Death across Western Europe tangibly and intuitively understandable - to provide a new and more useful way of looking at the great plague pandemic.

I have chosen to do so by creating a month-by-month mapping of the plague's outbreaks. To the extent that data is available, or may be reasonably inferred, I have plotted in the locations where the plague was active in each month of the period from October 1347 to December 1350, providing a "frame-by-frame" view of the pestilence's passage across Europe. The result is an illustrative "stop-motion animation" of the pandemic.

This project was prepared for submission as a BA final project (didactic), at the University of Copenhagen, in winter 2000/2001. Should you have any comments or corrections, feel free to contact me at the address contact@scholiast.org.

- Peter Ravn Rasmussen