Introduction

Summary

This book explores the cultural meanings of rivers over a broad span of time (c. 300–1100). The regional focus is on Northwestern Continental Europe (France, Germany, and Benelux), on the territories that were the core of Roman Gaul and of Merovingian and Carolingian Francia. During these centuries, several fundamental redefinitions of culture, community, and economy took place: the transformation of the Roman Empire and the rise of the earliest Germanic kingdoms; the centralizing push of the Carolingian imperial government, especially under the aegis of Charlemagne; invasion and retrenchment during the Viking Age; and the emergence of new cultural, religious, and political communities around the year 1000, with a corresponding intensification of river use.