The onset of the Little Ice Age around 1300 CE brought cooler temperatures, harsher winters, and erratic weather to Europe, leading to crop failures, the Great Famine of 1315–1317, and land abandonment. Glacial advances and altered growing seasons forced changes in farming practices and settlement patterns across the continent.

The climatic stress inspired somber tones in medieval literature and ballads, influencing Chaucer's depictions of hardship and later Romantic reflections on nature's harshness. It shaped pastoral poetry's evolution toward acknowledging environmental limits, echoed in contemporary ecopoets exploring historical climate variability and human adaptation.