Medieval Europe did have news, though, so it really depends about where you lived. Europe may be smaller than North America but it’s certainly not small if all your means of travel revolves around horses or sails.
Merchants visited ports all over Europe, bringing stories and news with them. Those merchants would talk to traders, and traders would talk to people. Countries near seas would also have fishermen who would travel far out and visit various coastal towns. In the 1500s, printing presses were already in use for more than just large cities (Wikipedia has a nice map) so news could spread even faster, even if there were only a limited amount of people who could read in the first place.
It’s not like Europeans were completely isolated from whatever was happening outside of their little towns. It took a couple of decades longer for stories to spread, but news spread among the people long before the modern newspaper existed.
Medieval Europe did have news, though, so it really depends about where you lived. Europe may be smaller than North America but it’s certainly not small if all your means of travel revolves around horses or sails.
Merchants visited ports all over Europe, bringing stories and news with them. Those merchants would talk to traders, and traders would talk to people. Countries near seas would also have fishermen who would travel far out and visit various coastal towns. In the 1500s, printing presses were already in use for more than just large cities (Wikipedia has a nice map) so news could spread even faster, even if there were only a limited amount of people who could read in the first place.
It’s not like Europeans were completely isolated from whatever was happening outside of their little towns. It took a couple of decades longer for stories to spread, but news spread among the people long before the modern newspaper existed.