In the early 8th century CE, the kingdoms of Spain were invaded by Muslims from North Africa. For centuries, parts of the Spanish peninsula were under Muslim control. The Muslim influence on Spain is clear in buildings like this one, the Mezquita, located in the city of Córdoba. The turmoil of the Middle Ages is clear in the history of the place where this mosque now stands: It originally held a pagan temple, then a Christian church built by Visigoths, which was remade as a mosque before it was torn down and the Mezquita was built.

The Vikings of Scandinavia in extreme northern Europe arose long after the pagan warriors in central and southern Europe had settled into Christianity and feudalism. The pagan Vikings launched invasions of Europe that reached as far south as Gibraltar, as far east as modern-day Kazakhstan, and as far west as North America. Viking ships like the ones shown here were a fearful site for 400 years, from the 700s to the 1100s CE. The Vikings, nomadic and interested in war, expansion, and plunder, were a throwback to the chaotic period just after the fall of Rome that highlighted how far Europe had come in developing a new civilization since that time.

Viking groups settled in many of the lands they conquered, marrying into the local people and creating new kingdoms. The Vikings who settled in northern France, known as the Normans (Old French for “Norse men,” or men from the North) put down roots in their new location, but they were still interested in conquest and expansion. Normans led by William the Conqueror invaded today’s England in 1066 and captured that kingdom. The battle is illustrated in the Bayeux Tapestry, shown here, a 230-foot-long cloth made in France just after the conquest.

When Pope Urban II called for the Christian knights of Europe to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims in 1095, it was the start of centuries of battles in the Middle East. While the Crusades were generally unsuccessful for Europe, contact with Muslim civilization brought new ideas in science, math, and philosophy to the continent. Ironically, many of those “new” ideas were ancient Roman ones lost in Europe but preserved in the East. Here we see Richard of Wallingford, the abbot, or head, of a monastery in England, measuring angles with a compass in the early 1300s.

The High Middles Ages saw a flowering of European culture. Trade flourished, universities produced scholars, and large Christian churches, called cathedrals, rose as the new monumental architecture of Europe. This is the cathedral in Cologne, Germany, begun in the 1200s. Its grandeur was evident both inside and out.

In 1348, bubonic plague reached Europe from the east, having traveled from China on the Silk Road. The “Black Death,” as it became known, killed up to one half of the total population of Europe, and in some places closer to 75 percent. Here a priest blesses plague victims. The Black Death was a blow that Europe struggled to recover from.