The Eurasian brown bear, Ursus arctos, ranged over every part of Europe in the early Middle Ages. Its diet was mainly mean, since small animals were also plentiful. Two different bear populations met in Europe, one coming from the Pyrenees Mountains, and the other coming out of Siberia’s Ural Mountains.
Wild bears probably became extinct in the British Isles first, well before the medieval period. Archeologists have found a limited bear population in Yorkshire that died out around 500 AD, but these bears may themselves have been imported by Romans for games. By contrast, in Scandinavia, they withdrew to mountains as the human population grew, but wild bears are still found in Sweden and Norway. Of course, it would be the same story everywhere in Europe: pulling back with the forest, retreating into the mountains. They still live in mountainous areas of Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Albania, Ukraine, and even Greece.
Bears have mythological significance to Northern Europe. The fact that we descendants of German tribes don’t call them either Ursus or Arctos (“bear” in Latin and Greek) seems to come from a taboo against speaking their name. “Bear” and “bruin” seem to be versions of “brown,” so that the bear was the Brown One. The bear might also be called the Honey-Eater, as in the Slavic languages it is Medved. “Beowulf” might have indicated a bear, the Bee-Wolf, that is, the hunter of honey. “Arctos,” the Greek name for the bear, came into modern use to mean the North, the land of the bear.
Unlike wolves, bears can be tamed. A really tame bear can learn to walk and dance, and a semi-tame bear can be handled for animal fights. Rome’s favorite public sport involved animals and men dying in combat, and the bear was a favorite competitor. Those bears in Yorkshire may have arrived in cages on Roman ships for use in amphitheaters. Following Rome’s example, medieval Europe continued to make sport not of all animals, but specifically of the bear. Bear-baiting was a gambling sport in which dogs attacked a chained bear; they placed bets on how many dogs would be killed before the bear died. (picture) The bear-baiting took place in a large pit, so that the spectators were safe. That’s where we get the name for pitbulls.
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