Middle Ages

In European history, the Middle Ages or Medieval period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: Antiquity, Medieval period, and Modern period. The Medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, the High, and the Late Middle Ages.

Depopulation, deurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, which had begun in Late Antiquity, continued in the Early Middle Ages. The barbarian invaders, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Eastern Roman Empire—came under the rule of the Caliphate, an Islamic empire, after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with Antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power. The empire's law code, the Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions. Monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th and early 9th century. It covered much of Western Europe, but later succumbed to the pressures of internal civil wars combined with external invasions—Vikings from the north, Magyars from the east, and Saracens from the south.

A. R. Gurney

A. R. Gurney (born November 1, 1930) born as Albert Ramsdell Gurney Jr, sometimes credited as Pete Gurney is an American playwright, novelist and academic. He is known for works including Love Letters, The Cocktail Hour, The Dining Room His and Sweet Sue. Gurney currently lives in New York and Connecticut. His series of plays about upper-class White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) life in contemporary America have been called "penetratingly witty studies of the WASP ascendancy in retreat." In "The Cocktail Hour" (1988), for example, a lead character tells her playwright son that theater critics "don't like us.... They resent us. They think we're all Republicans, all superficial and all alcoholics. Only the latter is true."

Biography

Born in Buffalo, New York, Gurney, a graduate of St. Paul's School (Concord, New Hampshire), attended Williams College and the Yale School of Drama, after which he began teaching Humanities at MIT. He began writing plays such as Children and The Middle Ages while at MIT, but it was his great success with The Dining Room that allowed him to write full-time. Since The Dining Room, Gurney has written a number of plays, most of them concerning WASPs of the American northeast. While at Yale, Gurney also wrote the musical: Love in Buffalo; this was the first musical ever produced at the Yale School of Drama.

Middle Ages (disambiguation)

The Middle Ages was a period in Western history spanning the time from the 5th to the 16th century (approximately: 400–1500)

Middle Ages or middle age may also refer to:

Medieval or Mediaeval (the adjectival form of "Middle Ages") may refer to:

Vik

Vik is a municipality in Sogn og Fjordane county, Norway. It is located on the southern shore of the Sognefjorden in the traditional district of Sogn. The administrative center of Vik is the village of Vikøyri. Other villages in the municipality include Feios, Fresvik, Nese, and Vangsnes.

General information

Vik was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt). The original municipality was identical to the Vik parish (prestegjeld) with the sub-parishes (sokn) of Hopperstad, Hove, and Arnafjord (on the south side of the fjord) and Kvamsøy (on the north side of the fjord).

On 1 January 1964 the sub-parish of Kvamsøy (population: 363) was transferred from Vik to Balestrand Municipality and the sub-parish of Vangsnes (population: 189) was transferred from Balestrand to Vik. Also on this date, the Nybø and Nygjerdet farms were transferred from Vik to Høyanger Municipality. All these changes gave Vik a total population of 2,623.

On 1 January 1992, the sub-parishes of Feios and Fresvik were transferred from Leikanger Municipality to Vik Municipality. This added 572 residents to the population of Vik.

Åvik

Åvik is a small seaport village in the municipality of Lindesnes, Norway. Across the sound to the south lies Svinør.

External links

Coordinates: 58°2′5″N 7°13′13″E / 58.03472°N 7.22028°E / 58.03472; 7.22028

Vik, Iran

Vik (Persian: ويك‎‎, also Romanized as Vīk; also known as Wik) is a village in Sonbolabad Rural District, Soltaniyeh District, Abhar County, Zanjan Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 559, in 126 families.

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