Good Eats in the Viking Age

Introduction to Norse Cuisine

As with many things about the Viking Age, we have few records of the day-to-day life. In the case of food, many of the records we do have actually date from a long time after the end of this era, which makes our written sources a little questionable as to what the Norse actually ate. However, we can cross-reference the written record with archeological finds such as garbage pits and middenheaps, which can give us a solid basis that we can use to confirm the written record as much as we can.

Cooking is a big part of the SCA, so trying to figure out what might have been used in period is often a large area of study for some SCAdians. I know of more than one Laurel who earned their title due to their acumen in the kitchen, which included both the research of period methods and the meticulous redacting of recipes. My wife and I were able to use some of the information already gathered by these titans of the kitchen and the information we have on Norse Cuisine and plan a feast for Tourney of the Three Ships (Southkeep’s Local event, here is my rundown of one a few years ago!https://ulfhedinnjourney.blogspot.com/2014/02/tourney-of-three-ships.html). She did all the cooking along with her incredibly helpful kitchen staff, and I did the research. Our feast will be included at the end of this post.

Before we get into the what the Vikings ate, I think it's important to get an idea of how they ate. As near as I can tell from my readings, the ancient Norse ate two meals: dagmál (day meal) and náttmál (night meal). These were likely only the large meals of the day, one to break their fast in the morning and one at night after the work is done. As someone who has done physical labour, I find it difficult to believe they wouldn't have some sort of snack while out in the fields, but there is no record of that. These two meals would’ve had to have been very high in calories to keep them full and ready to work throughout the day. Dr. Short and Dr. Short at Hurstwic did a really great dietary analysis based on their findings for what would have been eaten, and  calculated that on the lower end, the Norse would’ve consumed around 3000 calories to maintain their energy levels, which (given the foods that were available) would have been immense quantities! It's no wonder they were famous for their feasting!

Now onto the tasty parts!

Meats- Viking-age Grilling

Sadly, it doesn’t seem like grilling or even roasting was the main way to prepare meats during the Viking Age. It appears the meats were boiled, which makes sense given that they wanted to stretch what meat they had, and stews with root vegetables are a great way to do that. Boiling would also be a good idea for game meats and tougher meats like goat, all of which made up a large portion of the diet for the Norse. Aside from the preparation of fresh meats, the Norse ancient and modern, are known for pickling and fermenting meat so that it keeps longer. Surstromming and Hakarl are uniquely Nordic treats that are made from fermented herring and shark respectively. These continue to be eaten even today!

The meats that would be eaten fell into three major groups: seafood, livestock, and hunted game. The majority of the protein most likely came from seafood based on our research, with livestock being

Reenactors with a Viking Age Kitchen set up

second, and hunting being the least. This is because of the environment and the fact that the Norse were such a seafaring culture.

The fish that were eaten in ancient times continue to be a major part of the modern Nordic diet, and a rich source of trade for those countries. The main fish that you could expect to see as far as saltwater would be haddock, cod, smelt, and mackerel. Freshwater would also give them access to plenty of salmon. We also know from historical record that some shellfish and mollusks were eaten. As we said earlier, most meats would have been boiled, and Beatrice made an awesome fish stew as one of the courses in our meal out of haddock.

In addition to fishing, we also know from the histories that the Norse were whalers. While we don’t believe that going out and harpooning was the most common way of doing so except in the island nations, we do know that hunting whales was a major source of food and other resources. It’s very likely that whales were either driven to ground, or hunted by being driven into inlets where they could be more easily killed. Whales would provide meat, blubber, and bone to early hunters.

We also know that the Norse kept animals, and even in the Eddas there are stories that discuss the keeping of goats, chickens, cows, and pigs. These animals would have been the second largest portion of the protein eaten by the people of the North. Based on studying and what I know from farm life, beef would have been eaten the least due to the amount of land it takes to raise a herd and that a cow is worth more for its milk than its meat. Goats and pigs, on the other hand, are exactly the types of animals that are easy to raise on a small amount of land, and also reach eating size rather quickly allowing them to be raised and eaten within a year.

Were the Norse great hunters? We don’t have a ton of evidence to say that they ate hunted meat often, but we do know that they hunted elk, deer, and fowl. I would imagine that these would have been supplemental meat for the average Viking-age person, unless they lived far from the beaten path and were hunters by trade. Unlike many cultures, the fowl that the Norse would have interacted with often would have been seabird like puffins, who are still hunted in Iceland today, and the Great Auk, which is now extinct. These birds would have been sources for additional meats, as well as wild eggs.

Fruits and Vegetables- Did Vikings eat their greens?

From historical records, we have seen that the ancient Norse had a decently varied diet, including many different proteins and plants. Like the meats, we aren’t totally sure how these would have been prepared, but we do know that the most common method of preserving vegetables and herbs would have been drying.

Stones that would have been used in a handmill

When it comes to leafy greens, they weren’t doing bad at all. No kale or lettuce, but they did have spinach, cabbage, and endive, all of which go great in stews or eaten as a salad. We do know that the Romans and Greeks, and by extension the Eastern Romans ate mixed green salads. This means it's not too much of a stretch to say the Norse could have as well, given their interaction with those cultures. They also have a love of vinegar and oils that would make sense with salads, at least in a modern idea.

The majority of the other vegetables that were eaten would have been roots or bulbs like carrots, beets, onions, etc. These all lend themselves to that stew-pot cooking that we know was common in the time period. Grab a haunch of meat, throw in whatever vegetables you like, add spices and herbs as you go, and eat at dinner time. It's the ancient version of set it and forget it! Sadly for my Cuban heart, none of the foods eaten were really tubers, which means no puré de malanga or mashed potatoes. I guess those come later.

Fruits were slightly less varied because of the climate, with the majority of what was eaten being berries. Bilberry is one of the more interesting ones, as it is unique to Iceland and almost always mistranslated as blueberry. This would lead to some confusion in recipes, I’m sure. Other common fruits would have been apples, and plums. Again as with the vegetables, drying would have been the best way to make sure the fruits stayed edible for prolonged periods of time. We aren’t sure what other preservation methods were used, but we know in later period, preserving in honey had become common.

Breads- Great Norse Bake-Off!

Grain production in the North was a difficult task, and it wasn't until the middle ages that we saw these areas really start to produce rye. Barley was the most common grain, although there was some wheat. This lead to mixed grain breads, barley and whatever other grain they were cultivating. As rye gained popularity, rye bread became more common. The breads that we have discovered seem to be small, flat, biscuit-type breads. The flour could be mixed with nuts or honey to make other flavours of bread and improve consistency. The grains could also be used to make porridge.

The Hurstwic Insitute making bread

The Big Cheese- Dairy in the Viking Age

Our historical record and the sagas show that the Norse were really big on dairy. Whether it was milk, cheese, or the Norse yogurt called Skyr, dairy products made up a decent portion of the ancient Norse diet, and this makes sense. We know that they needed to eat a huge amount of calories to keep up their energy levels, and meat and vegetables alone can’t make it up. However, throw some butter in there, or have a portion of skyr with honey and you really start stacking those calories on! Skyr and goat cheese are both very high in protein, which add to muscle growth. I have seen some historians theorize that skyr and the leftover whey, called mysa, which was also drunk, might have something to do with the large size the people of the North grew to.

Skyr is actually seeing a huge resurgence in popularity even outside the Nordic countries, and it’s now possible to buy some at many grocery stores. It's also pretty straightforward to make, if a little time consuming. Here is a pretty good recipe that brings you through the process. https://icelandmag.is/article/make-your-own-skyr

Preparation- How did the Norse cook their foods?

We actually have discovered a wide array of cooking tools from the Viking Age. We have spits for roasting, soapstone pots for boiling, cheese tablets, and so many more. It’s from these that we can get a rough idea of how the food was prepared at the time, and how we have come to our conclusions about how things were cooked. One of the most interesting points to me was the lack of pottery, and it turns out it's because the type of clay used for pottery just wasn't common in the North. This is why we have found so many soapstone vessels. Soapstone also had the benefit of being easy to repair, but it is much heavier.

When it came to indoor cooking, we know that there was a separate fire for light/warmth and cooking. The cooking fire was called the Maledr and was sometimes even in a separate room to keep those activities from the main hall. I can only speculate on the whys of this, but as someone who grills often I can imagine you don't want the main fireplace full of animal fats and other things that could cause the entire home to smell.

There is some evidence to show that sometimes meat was roasted on an open fire in a pit, and it’s actually what inspired us in how we did our slow-roasted pork for the feast at Three Ships.

An SCA Viking Feast

Normal SCA feasts are divided into removes and we weren’t any different in the set up for our Norse inspired feast.

Spinach Salad with walnuts and goat cheese
Haddock Stew with rye bread (Plokfisk)
Roast Pig with a honey mustard crust and root vegetables
Apple and lingonberry tarts (lingonbrauð and epilbrauð)

We wanted our menu to be both historical and palatable to a modern taste. This gave us a couple of small concessions such as roasting the meat rather than boiling it, and a nice risen rye bread.

Our first course was the greens! A nice spinach salad with berries and goat cheese. For the dressing, we used a mustard based vinaigrette, since we know mustard was a common spice in period. The salad actually went over very well, and people thoroughly enjoy the crisp and light flavours. In the future, it might be better to start with the fish stew and then do the salad to get a light course between the stew and the roast.

After the salads, we went on to our seafood course, something that is missing way too often in feasts. For this stew, Bea prepared a smoky broth made with milk and haddock, which gave it a very nice

Hurstwic Kitchen

salty flavour with a creamy texture. It was paired with a rye bread baked in cast iron pans, to dip while eating the stew. This was actually the most successful course, surprisingly enough… we ran out and people were still asking for more.

Next came the star of the show! Roast pork shoulders covered in a coarse mustard and honey crust! These shoulders were slow-roasted the entire day, and when it came time to serve, they just fell apart and were served shredded! They tasted amazing, and again we tried to focus on flavour groupings that would be somewhere between the historically accurate and the modernly tasty. The pork was served with an heirloom carrot medley coated in honey and sea salt. It could have really done with some potatoes, but alas those are way out of period for us.

Finally, we had some amazing individual tartlets. These were crusts filled with lingonberry or apple compote. In period, these would have more likely been frittered or some similar presentation, but for the sake of getting them to the table in a timely manner, we went with baked tarts.

Overall, this was one of the feasts I have seen with the least leftovers. We had some salad and a few tartlets, but for everything else the cupboards were bare. I had a blast helping my wife with the research, and the whole feast crew knocked it out of the park with preparation and timing!

Conclusion

All in all, the diet of the ancient Norse doesn’t seem that off-putting to my modern mindset, and the flavours are pretty good. I prefer grilled meat to boiled, but that's just nitpicking. Are there any Norse recipes you know? Share them in the comments! Did I miss an important piece of information? Share that too! I love getting comments about other points of research.



Sources
Viking Answer Lady-http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/food.shtml
Hurstwic(Be sure to check out the dietary analysis)- http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/daily_living/text/food_and_diet.htmThe National Museum of Denmark- https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-viking-age/food/