Living Through 536 AD - Worst. Year. Ever.

The medieval era had some rough times. And the year 536 AD was the worst one of them all.

Like they had since the dawn of agriculture, most of the population at the time lived by subsistence farming. The landlord might drop by to collect what little the peasants had as “taxes.”

There was always plague off and on, including the big one, The Black Death. Wars could happen at any time, both civil conflict and marauding invaders. Times were tough.

But the strongest contender for the most wretched year in history happened long before the Vikings or Mongols burst onto the scene. The year 536 was the Worst. Year. Ever.

For 18 months, the sun seemed to disappear. From the toe of the boot of Italy, Cassiodorus wrote,

“We see no shadows of our bodies at noon. ”

The sun had a blue color. He reported it was,

“A winter without storms, a spring without warming, and a summer without heat.”

The sky was ominous. Crops didn’t grow. Famine ensued. To the people of the time, it appeared that they had angered God (or the gods), and maybe they had been abandoned.

There was social unrest. People left wherever they were in search of a better chance of survival somewhere else. Archeology indicates that more than half of settlements in Scandinavia just up and left. To where they skedaddled, no one knows.

Today, most historians agree that there were a series of volcanic eruptions that spewed massive amounts of ash and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere in 536.

Scientists aren’t sure if it was one volcano or many, if it was in Iceland or Indonesia (or both), but they believe it led to a volcanic winter with a decrease in sunlight and a huge cooling of the Earth's temperature. Snow fell in August in China. No, there were no beach parties that year.

And maybe the worst part is, people who lived centuries later just didn’t believe what people wrote about that time. It was widely thought for almost 1500 years that they were just exaggerating, or maybe even making it up.

Only in the 1990s, when modern science started poking around at tree rings preserved in bogs in Ireland and digging up ice cores in glaciers in the Swiss Alps did the facts emerge. Adding insult to injury, it’s just the cherry on top to make 536 truly the worst year to be a human on planet Earth.

You’ve had a bad year in your career, sure, but you ain’t never had nothin’ like 536 AD.

Maybe you lost your biggest customer. Maybe the new boss is a nightmare. Maybe the problem is at home and you can’t focus at work. Maybe worst of all, they’ve canceled discretionary travel and are now scrutinizing every $7.52 entry on your expense reports. Whatever’s happening, it ain’t pretty.

What can you do in troubled times? First, remember that it’s not 536 AD. You’re gonna be okay. Yeah, this year isn’t likely to be on your personal highlight reel, but you never know.

Just put your shoulder to the grindstone and muscle through. The sun will come up tomorrow. And if the sun comes up blue, just tough it out for the next 18 months and see if it turns around. It probably will. Just keep your chin up and keep at it.