Daily Viking Meals
Split yellow peas cooked in beer in my rice pot. It was excellent!
We’ve all heard of entire boars, goats, sheep, deer, and snipe roasting on spits over a roaring fire, heaping baskets of raised round bread, overflowing bowls of fruit, and a never-ending supply of Suttung’s mead. It's an epic image! It’s so Hobbity-Dwarifity Tolkienish, you expect a wizard to wander into the frame.
That’s not necessarily what happens. On fancy feast days, probably. On a regular Thursday, whether or not you have the hang of Thursdays, it’s probably a one pot meal.
This house has vents at either end and above the door for smoke and air, but not a lot of light gets in there. https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-viking-age/the-people/viking-homes/
Where you live shapes how you prepare your food
Lijre open air museum. That’s Daniel Serra’s hand! Smaller homes like this one were smaller farmsteads with one family, animals, storage, and any farm hands they had.
Iron Age Scandinavians mostly lived in longhouses or halls with extended family and servants. These were usually made of wood, stone, or sod with wood shingles, reed thatch, sod, or stone roof tiles. There are generally two exterior doors and a smoke hole in the roof. Some houses had more than one roof hole, some had a smoke exit at the top of the roof on either end of the hall.
These homes are not brightly lit. There aren’t a lot of windows. Windows are great for light and a breeze, but not particularly defensible. There is some evidence recently found that some of the more fancy, expensive halls had very small windows with glazing. These little windows were, it seems, more about allowing coloured light into a space than for looking out of.
There’s not a lot of indoor space. It is a very open plan with benches along the sides and a center hearth for cooking and heating. Humans on one end, farm animals on the other, and work space in the middle.
During the summer months, folk are outside doing farm work or other skilled labor like fiber, wood, ceramic, stone, and metal fabrication.
These folks were BUSY! Between all of the work to be done to make sure food, clothing, and shelter are to be had in the winter, common daily meals are going to be as easy and extendable as possible. I also want you to remember how dim these homes are. Lots of chopping, mixing, fixing, baking, sauteing, roasting, steaming, boiling, or any other kind of meal prep is going to be limited.
Cooking pot from the Iron Age collection at the Danish National Museum
Enter the ceramic cooking pot. You might know it as a Crock Pot. A ceramic cooking vessel that has low and slow heat over a long period of time. Yes, I know they didn’t have electricity, but they did have fire and ceramic cooking pots. It’s pretty easy to use your central hearth to bank up a fire and set a pot of cooking liquid, grain, herbs, and a little bit of meat to cook slowly.
Open hearth in the hall at Lijre, Denmark.
Dagmal (Daymeal)
This meal is usually leftovers from the night before and/or possibly fresh porridge. See my post on Porridge Power from 31 Oct.
Remember, folk are busy. Everyone has a job to do, probably many jobs. When it’s dark, it’s hard to chop, stir, and do all the things we are used to doing with our meal prep. There is a limited amount of oil for frying or sauteing; most fats used in cooking are rendered animal fat or butter. Sometimes there is whale oil. Any fat or oil has a wide range of jobs to do; sometimes not a food related job at all.
Nattmal (Night meal)
This is the big, fresh meal. Since you can start preparing it in the light hours of the day and let it simmer all afternoon, you can do the bulk of your daily food prep in daylight. This is also the big morning meal, so lots of this is made.
Snacks!
Snacks at the airport. I didn’t get them for the plane ;)
We can’t forget the ever present snacks. These are also excellent travel foods Dried meats, hard cheeses, nuts, dried plant matter (fruits, herbs, vegetables), rendered fat, crackers or “hard tack” <click-click>.
Snacks are just as prevalent today as they were then. Sometimes you need a snack to get you through the day. While Vikings didn’t have sugar and chocolate to prevent the hangries, there were plenty of snacks to be had. Folk living a very physical and outdoor on-the-go lifestyle need far more calories to maintain energy levels and body warmth than the more sedentary, modern folk we have morphed into.
Bibliography
Lover, History. “The Viking Diet- What Did the Vikings Eat?” Museum Facts, 7 Jan. 2021, museumfacts.co.uk/the-viking-diet/.
Natmus. “Viking Homes - National Museum of Denmark.” National Museum of Denmark, 2019, en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-viking-age/the-people/viking-homes/.
Weiss, Daniel. Vikings Had Glass Windows - Archaeology Magazine. www.archaeology.org/news/11788-231010-vikings-glass-windows#:~:text=The%20researchers%20believe%20that%20the,colorful%20light%20to%20filter%20in.
