I'm currently writing, well, a reincarnation fiction. My fellow is reincarnated into a poor mountain village. Somewhat in the mountains, with the climate being like Scandivania, with pine trees and a cold climate. The summers themselves are short, and the soil is bare and rocky. The village he's in is poor, isolated, and basically not much to say about it. The protag is the son of the village local doctor/ midwife, so he's better off than others. He's also a sorcerer (in this setting, magic is rare and often evil). His powers include infrastructure, conjuring food, summoning animals, and speeding up plant growth. So here's the thing. I'm aware of the trope of 'hollywood poverty'. Where, well, they're just terrible at depicting poor people or any form of destitution. So the village is isolated, in a place with a cold climate, with poor soil and a kilometer away from the river, gaining water from wells. They have to supplement their food by hunting. Here's how I'm going to depict poverty: Constant threat of starvation Dirt floors Cold Rough clothing Threat of raids Few iron or steel implements No baths Terrible smell But what else is there?
As concerns baths: in my country's dirt-poor past, every farm certainly had a sauna and in fact poorer people lived in saunas. Our language even has a word which translates something like "sauna-dweller". It's a villager too poor to afford his own house and living with his family in someone else's sauna (which, of course, was also used as a sauna). I believe even the name for Saturday in Scandinavian languages (laugardagur, lördag) comes from "washing" – Saturday was the day for your weekly bath. However, it may have been different in Western Europe. Generally, poor farmers' life consisted of monotonous work, monotonous food, children running around barefoot, occasional simple (but still merry) festivities, young lads sneaking to young maidens' bedrooms at night, fathers trying to keep boys off their daughters. Even when a farm was relatively well-off and they could eat well, they still had extremely little money because they consumed most of what they produced. It was different from urban settlements where people exchanged their workforce for money and used it to buy goods, so everyone had some money in their hands.
Wait a minute. You're in..... Yep. Most definitely Scandivanian. poor, monotonous work... I got this: https://www.historyonthenet.com/medieval-farming-the-farming-year How about a lack of proper farming tools, leading to peope often having to share out or pool their stuff? In the end, someone's fields are not getting plouged. Which leads to conflicts...
There was a custom that when something big needed to be done fast, the whole village got together and did it. The hosts fed them and possibly even threw them a party afterwards. I've never heard about conflicts in connection with communal work, but I guess pretty much everything has potential for conflict. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_work#Finland_&_the_Baltics
Hmm.... I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most things were made of wood and they didn't have the tech or effort to make multiple story houses, right?
So let me think for a moment... Their clothes. I know everyone wears the best clothes they can. But would it be safe to say they're hard to get, usually made from animal hide, and usually brown?
Linen, wool (if they kept sheep), maybe hemp, leather. https://www.medievalchronicles.com/medieval-clothing/medieval-peoples-clothing/peasants-clothing/ https://www.thoughtco.com/european-peasant-dress-1788614
Oh hey. What about this? https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/medieval-england/the-lifestyle-of-medieval-peasants/
Yeah, I've read many reports like these. I also read in an article that one of the reasons why West Europeans looked down upon East Europeans as savages was their habit to bathe (relatively) frequently while in Western Europe everyone "knew" that bathing was harmful. According to James Clavell's novel "Tai-Pan", the British shunned washing themselves as late as in early 19th century. I'm still half expecting to find out one day that it's kind of a hoax. I can't imagine how human beings could live like that.
Don't forget all the bugs - larder beetles, bedbugs, lice....etc. And, gross, but remember no sewers. Lots of urine and feces all over. Disease as well. Lots of alcohol drinking because the process of making alcohol sterilized the liquid. Safer than drinking the lake or stream water that people threw the contents of their chamberpots into. How many people are you thinking are in this community? It's a bit troublesome...the more people, the safer from other people and the more labour available. However more opportunity for conflict, more disease, more waste..... I guess you'd need between 20 and 50 at a minimum with more children than adults?
Over a hundred. Less than two hundred. Any more, and starvation will begin. Marriage and romance usually requires going outside, due to, you know.... avoiding the gene pool.
People are not necessarily going to be dirty. That's a myth. If they have access to clean water, people tend to bathe. Usually the smell and the filth is associated with Urban areas because of the higher population density and the fact that water is contaminated much quicker then in rural areas. Consider how Harper Lee showed it in "To Kill a Mockingbird." There was Mr Cunningham who was paying for some legal work with some hickory nuts. There was a flour company that printed their flour bags with patters like plaid or flowers because they learned that women were using the sacks to make dresses. I would suggest looking at rare photos from the rural areas during the Depression.
Things in disrepair due to the farmers a) not having the means to "pay" (by barter or whatever) experts and craftsmen to repair them, and b) not having the time to repair them by themselves. Leaking roofs (Margaret Thatcher's distant ancestors were most likely thatchers: experts in the installation and maintenance of thatched grass roofs), if you society has glass, windows that have broken and been patched with skins, broken pots sitting outside (traveling tinkers repaired metalware), a farmer having to use his wife for power on the plow because he doesn't have a horse/ox or the means to rent one. Using "night soil" to fertilize the fields due to the same lack of livestock (human shit isn't as good for growing plants as that of farm animals, and we produce less of it daily. Rampant alcoholism/addiction as poverty brings despair and despair can lead to addiction. Malnourished children, people who only own one or two sets of clothes, high infant mortality, religious customs that lead to babies not being named for a few years to see if they'll survive or not.
When is your farming community set? What century, decade? What foods does this community grow - is it a single crop which if it fails can have serious consequences for the community; or is it multiple crops which can reduce the risk somewhat? What alternative food sources are available? Hunting game, fishing? Trading labour or furs with other communities for food? Do they keep livestock like goats, cows, chickens? Bee-hives? Do they have the ability to store food today for tomorrow? Can they put away fodder for the animals so that the chickens keep laying eggs and the goats/cows keep producing milk? What do they do for heat in the winter? Burn coal, wood? Are they near a reliable supply? Is the community on a trade route (access to news, labour, trade goods, bandits) or is it isolated from the wider world (less access to everything but possibly safer from raiders and bandits)? With regards to the danger of inbreeding, I am not sure how much of a danger this would be with 100 to 200 people. I assumed somewhere that this was set in viking times and the vikings would raid occasionally - if this is true, there would be regular contact with the wider world and probably a lot of potential violent rapes of the fertile females by the conquerors. Or marauding bandits. Or invading armies. I remembered the bugs but I forgot about vermin like rats and mice. Snakes. Oh, and 100-200 people produce a lot of garbage. There needs to be a disposal of this garbage or there will be disease. Education. I assume that some time periods, the only educated person (able to read & write) would be the village priest. If there is something like a school, the kids will only be able to attend when they are not required to work in the fields or do chores. The teacher will probably be someone who has a basic, elementary level of education - no Ph.Ds in education....unless the teacher is on the run and in hiding.... Medical care - I'd assume a herbalist. Maybe traveling snake oil salesmen - "Step up and try 'Pep Up!', Doc Warner's magical tonic! It's good for what ails you!!" Wow....I didn't exactly mean to write that much! It's something I've been playing around with myself. Anyways, I hope it helps.
If the river is only a kilometer away, WHY is the village a Kilometer away from the river? That makes no sense, if they are as poor as you say, they would not give up the survival benefits a river offers. Fishing, freshwater, the possibility for trade and travelers. EDIT: Generally, the medical people settle within the trading town of the area, since that is the place everyone comes to eventually. I doubt that the trading center while possibly poor will be as poor as you are describing, and if it is, I doubt simple survival would allow the medical people to stay there. I think you are going to need to provide a reason for the protagonist's family to live in such a town. I'm fairly certain that a trading town would not be far from the river. (certainly not far enough away to be a nuisance to walk to and transport trade goods to/from but close enough to not ignore.) People don't build towns to fail, they build them thinking that where they build them is the perfect spot for success. Overall, I don't think the logic of your environment matches the motivations of your characters
I immediately think of the Grapes of Wrath, (my people) and the fight for existence. There were no chamber pots or showers. A bathtub served the whole family, starting with the father. Being last on that list, had to be pretty dirty. I have been in a lot of homes in the old days, that had dirt floors and they were surprisingly clean. Most had a wood-fired cooking stove that served as the heat for the house. They gleaned fields for vegetables and sometimes farmers would give them a Holstein bull calf as they had no commercial value. There was usually an outhouse for the bathroom and a well for water. That’s the way our place in Rush Springs Oklahoma was, and I would have to walk my younger siblings to the outhouse as we had a rooster that would jump in their face scaring the hell out of them. The rooster finally became dinner.
When my grandma's family was starving in northern Sweden, the parents sold her as a "Piga" to a strawberry farm. Kind of like a legal form of slavery because she wasn't an adult and had no saying about her relocation. The owners were the richest people in the village and disliked how much the children stole berries while working. They tried weighing the children before and after work in the field, to see if they suddenly gained weight. In spite of the harsh discipline, she has good memories from working there and enjoy setting up traps for children trying to steal her strawberries.
Personally I would think that not having one's own land would make you out as poor. If you have to work for others, pay rents to grow on thier land, or both, because you are effectively landless then I think that would mark him from the families with their own lands in their possession.
That is true. Maybe it was flooding, and so they had to move? Or maybe because a suddden earthquake or avalanche occurred, forcing the river to take a different course. The town is left there, stuck, because yes, the fish are gone (there was never trade. Too isolated). But there are wells. Leaving would force leaving behind homes, houses, and other things that can't be brought on your back. No barons or landowners here. The place is just cold and infertile. I'm just thinking why they are here. Maybe because no one wants it and its isolated, they fled here as war refugees after being chased out of better, warmer lands?
Our farm in Oklahoma was rented, and the funny thing I never knew we were poor until I got to high-school where the kids that had enough money to buy school-clothes chided me for my rags.
I think you need to firm up the answers to these sorts of questions I raised. Those answers are part of the character's motivations because their location is a major part of their environment and a part of the story. If you don't buttress those motivations with facts that support those motivations, you run the risk making the character's actions look random and illogical.
