[LexBaird]

You give Victorians entirely too much credit.

Maybe so. Wiki attributes the term to Plutarch. But he still used it as a pejorative comparison to the glory of Classical Rome. The article goes on to restate my position: that "Most modern historians dismiss the notion that the era was a "Dark Age" by pointing out that this idea was based on ignorance of the period combined with popular stereotypes: many previous authors would simply assume that the era was a dismal time of violence and stagnation and use this assumption to prove itself."

It has nothing to do with the weather or population.

[muawiyah]

Alas, it has everything to do with the weather (a Fimbul Winter for several years is one heck of a winter ~ kill you every single time). Contemporary accounts ~ of which there are doggone few ~ reveal that it was getting colder ~ MUCH colder ~ and darker.

Were you aware that the Welsh annals of the kings (of the Britons) which contain all that marvelous stuff about King Arthur also have an accounting of the initial stages of the Dark Ages ~ right there about 538-540 AD too ~ crops failed, it got cold, trees lost their leaves, people starved, the whole land was laid waste.

And that's the good part.

Bet you thought those guys were telling fairy tales.

[muawiyah]

BTW, dendrochronologists tell us what the tree rings say, and in this case the trees say it got really cold and nasty, and it stayed nasty for a long, long time.

Modern historians are, at best, a tertiary source, particularly when it comes to comparing their "opinions" against primary facts, to wit, tree rings.

So, clear your mind of all those "modern historians say" cobwebs and accept the fact that modern science tells us how it happened even if it cannot yet differentiate between the breakup of a comet and an explosion of Krakatoa.