<P> Geoffrey the Baker, Chronicon Angliae </P> <P> There appear to have been several introductions into Europe . The plague reached Sicily in October 1347, carried by twelve Genoese galleys, and rapidly spread all over the island . Galleys from Kaffa reached Genoa and Venice in January 1348, but it was the outbreak in Pisa a few weeks later that was the entry point to northern Italy . Towards the end of January, one of the galleys expelled from Italy arrived in Marseille . </P> <P> From Italy, the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France, Spain, Portugal and England by June 1348, then turned and spread east through Germany and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350 . It was introduced in Norway in 1349 when a ship landed at Askøy, then spread to Bjørgvin (modern Bergen) and Iceland . Finally it spread to northwestern Russia in 1351 . The plague was somewhat less common in parts of Europe that had smaller trade relations with their neighbours, including the majority of the Basque Country, isolated parts of Belgium and the Netherlands, and isolated alpine villages throughout the continent . </P> <P> Modern researchers do not think that the plague ever became endemic in Europe or its rat population . The disease repeatedly wiped out the rodent carriers so that the fleas died out until a new outbreak from Central Asia repeated the process . The outbreaks have been shown to occur roughly 15 years after a warmer and wetter period in areas where plague is endemic in other species such as gerbils . </P>

What parts of europe were least affected by the black plague