When scythes were invented, they were a very hot, new, efficient tool. Previously they only had some curved had knifes and had to harvest every few bits of wheat individually, but with a scythe you could take those wide swings and get lots of wheat at once.
Think of it as going from a handgun revolver to a machine gun, except in a way that a medieval peasant would understand.
To add to this, the image of the grim reaper carrying a scythe first started showing up during the bubonic plague in Europe, where people were dying en masse.
When scythes were invented, they were a very hot, new, efficient tool. Previously they only had some curved had knifes and had to harvest every few bits of wheat individually, but with a scythe you could take those wide swings and get lots of wheat at once.
Think of it as going from a handgun revolver to a machine gun, except in a way that a medieval peasant would understand.
To add to this, the image of the grim reaper carrying a scythe first started showing up during the bubonic plague in Europe, where people were dying en masse.
Also scythes are stupidly sharp, could have been a lot of lethal accidents at the time giving them an association with death?