Viking are cookery (was: SC - Irish period recipes??)

[Par Leijonhufvud]

On Sat, 8 Nov 1997 Tyrca at aol.com wrote:

>  There should have been seed (etc) analyses made at the digs in Dublin and 
>  other places. 

> So, as you are there, and I am not, are there sources for Viking cookery?

>  Any cookbooks?

To the best of my knowledge there are no cookbooks from the Viking period
Scandinavia.

Apart from that there is only three ways we (AFAIK) have any knowledge of
that they ate: (1) pollen, seed and midden analysis, (2) actual finds of
foods (graves, postholes, etc), and (3) chemical analysis of food residues
on cooking and storage containers. 

The first is the classical one, and I know there are data from many finds
on this subject. It will tell you what was available (though it can in
some cases be questionable of it was a weed or a cultivated crop), but not
how it was used. Animal fodder? Luxury export? Boiled, fried or baked?

The second category has given us some data, but mainly on things whose
context is rather uncertain in many cases (e.g. was the barley porrige
found in the grave a ritul item, or regular fare? Was the breads found in
Birka graves ritual? Was this lump once a piece of unleavened bread or
porrige?). That apart there are some food items that we do know about, and
that has been reconstructed from archaelogical data. 

The third one is interesting, but it still will only indicate that a
certain item was eaten, we are excedingly unlikely to ever be able to
reconstruct a recipie from fatty acid residues in a earthen-ware cookpot. 

In addition there are mentions of food in the sagas and the Edda (e.g. 
Rigsthula, Lokesenna, Thrymskvida), but as these were written down much
later than the Viking era their value is questionable in many cases.

There is also the excavation of cookery implements that give us some idea
of what they had to play with. 

/UlfR

- --
Par Leijonhufvud                  par.leijonhufvud at labtek.ki.se
Tum pultus sicissentem ur ne lus sem ittibus profugnatreius.

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