Marciano, perhaps you havent heard but historians tend to refer to the myth of the dark ages.
Because thats what it is.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages
The Dark Ages is a term referring to the perceived period of cultural decline that took place in Western Europe between the Decline of the Roman Empire and the 15th century. Once in near-universal usage, the term is now used in sources that do not have a rigid adherence to the academic study of history, such as dictionaries[1][2] and literature where the reference is given from a layman's perspective.[3] Increased understanding of the accomplishments of the Middle Ages in the 19th century challenged the characterization of the period as one of darkness, and knowledgeable modern scholars who study this era avoid the term as misleading and inaccurate
However, the early 20th century saw a radical re-evaluation of the Middle Ages, and with it a calling into question of the terminology of darkness,[5] or at least of its pejorative use. Historiographer Denys Hay exemplified this when he spoke ironically of "the lively centuries which we call dark".
When the term "Dark Ages" is used by historians today, therefore, it is intended to be neutral, namely, to express the idea that the events of the period often seem "dark" to us because of the paucity of historical records compared with both earlier and later times.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Middle_Ages
The last 1/3 of this era is where the gametime is set, a time of almost literally explosive population growth.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography
You´re greatly overstating it in preference of the mythical part.
The discussing and sharing of information never stopped, even if the amount of new books created dropped. And books were "fashionable" all the time. Also make a difference between "cant read" and "cant read WELL". The latter was far more common than the former.
There wasnt a sudden increase in interest of books, it was always there, there was an extreme increase in population, like how England quintupled in population in a few hundred years.
And suddenly the demand had grown enough that copying books became more economical.
Books were also not always a luxury, but they were expensive anyway so buyers liked to have them made luxurious, as the added cost wasnt so terrible compared to the total.
Relatively recent finds here in Sweden and in Russia have shown that simple runes on bark and wood plates were very probably extremely common ( because those found have included a diversity that you might be hard pressed to find today in single locations, from shopping lists via love letters and simple notes to business correspondence and complex calculations ), at least as early as the viking era.
However, because these kind of materials very rarely survives over time, only a small handful of finds have been made, also more recently a find of a similar sort but from the Roman empire was made, so it seems to have been a way of writing with a long and well used history, that we simply have been unable to find out much of, because the materials perish to easily.
Might be added also that there have been a rare few finds of such wood plates with writing from much later as well, IIRC from here in Sweden the most recent one was from the 19th(!!!) century, with a few more from there and back to 14th century. And i VERY much doubt that this kind of everyday usage style was restricted to Scandinavia and Russia.
While latin became the language of learning later on at least, it is clear that it wasnt the only writing system used. And that despite the official dominance of latin, the old writing system still coexisted for almost a millenia after latin became "big" here.
The real question is of course, how much written material of more serious sorts existed in this manner?
Oh well, lecture over, promise... Maybe... :mrgreen: