Food Preservation and Storage in Viking Times

Recently, the Ribe Viking Center in Denmark published a YouTube video that serves as an excellent explanation of how, and with what kinds of foods, the Vikings likely stocked their larders. (The story is in Danish, but with English subtitles.) 

The video is in the form of a little story about how a couple of children try to raid the family larder but are foiled by their grandfather.  Grandpa's subsequent explanation of what is stored and why it is stored is educational for all of us, and the information is consistent with what I know of Viking food ways, including information I learned from An Early Meal.  

All kinds of foods were preserved to keep them as long as possible.  Meats were preserved, such as by drying, smoking or salting them.  Vegetables would be dried, fermented, or left in the ground as long as possible, fruits dried, nuts collected and stored.  Breads were stored in different ways depending upon their properties.  Milk was stored in many forms, as butter, cheeses, yogurt, buttermilk.  Herbs were dried and stored.

The video features a fascinating reconstruction of how salt could be produced by processing seaweed in labor-intensive ways.  The salt, it tells us, was mostly used for preserving meat; white salt for seasoning already prepared foods was typically obtained in trade and was expensive.

This video is the first episode in a planned series about the Viking larder.  I intend to follow the series, though I won't post the other videos.  Based on this first one, watching them is a worthwhile investment of time for what is learned.  If you're looking for videos to watch, try this one.

A "Viking" Restaurant

Readers who were amused by my Christmas posting discussing the fact that the "Viking" diet is apparently becoming the new "healthy" diet fad may also be amused by this article from The Daily Mail, interviewing a chef who has opened a restaurant devoted to serving "Viking" food.

The chef, Jesper Lynge, has opened his restaurant in Aalborg, Denmark.  He has clearly done some reading about Viking cuisine, as one of his dishes is a risotto-like side dish, made from barley.  That idea for a dish reminds me of the rye-based "ryesotto" recipe that appears in A Culinary Journey Through Time, which I reviewed for this blog when the English language edition was published back in 2012.  However, it does not appear that Mr. Lynge has read An Early Meal a more recently published book attempting to reconstruct Viking cuisine, since venison and other game meats appear to be a mainstay of his menu. Game may not be inappropriate for a "Viking" restaurant, though. Restaurants are often places to get a celebratory meal that is more elaborate and substantial than one's daily fare, and Serra and Tunberg's comments that game seems to have rarely been eaten by the Vikings might indicate that a meal with game as the main course would have been rare and celebratory meal for them.

Interestingly, Mr. Lynge is quoted as saying that pork "one of the most festive animals that were present in the Viking time" though archaeological finds suggest that beef was more commonly eaten. Mr. Lynge asserts that he does not use ingredients that were not available to the Vikings, and from my reading of the article that seems to be quite true (though one could argue about whether the proportions in which he uses period ingredients were characteristic of the Vikings' actual diet). The dishes discussed in the article (which included a few of Mr. Lynge's recipes) sound very tasty, though, and if I ever manage to visit Denmark, I will definitely visit his restaurant.

Diet of the Month?

As I was doing some last minute holiday food shopping at my local Wegmans supermarket, I glanced at the latest issue of Vogue and saw this headline:  "Eat Like a Viking: The Next It Diet".  (It's the U.S. issue for December 2014 with Sienna Miller on the cover, in case you're wondering.)

I wasn't quite curious enough to buy the magazine, but I did flip through a copy and apparently there's a growing movement toward what is also called the "Nordic" diet:  fish, berries, nuts and game (according to the Vogue article).  

Although the latest scholarly account of what real Vikings ate suggests that game wasn't on the menu, and that yogurt, butter and cheese were, Vogue's description of the "Viking" diet is at least roughly accurate. Only time will tell whether it replaces the Paleo diet and the Mediterranean diet in the popular media as the new-old healthy-eating food trend.