SC - Viking and early Irish foods

[Par Leijonhuvud]

On Tue, 17 Mar 1998, Anne-Marie Rousseau wrote:

> I know of no extant cookbooks from the Viking age or early Irish. BUT....

Neither do I, and I don't think they existed in the case of the Viking
era: not that kind of literacy. Also: no books!

> we have a 13th century European cookbook that was found in Scandinavia. The
> recipeis for the most part are very similar to the rest of the French and
> English corpus of the time, with a few differences. There's nothing to say
> that this is the food that the Vikings ate, though. You can get this in
> Cariadoc's collection.  Yum! Chicken Pastellum!

Someone once upon a time claimed that that one was actually most likely
a local copy of some Continental work. Dunno myself, but makes sense if
you consider the similarity (we are talking about the "Icelandic"
collection?). Someone mentioned a Swedish medieval collection, but I
have so far not seen more than a few samples form it.

> There's a great pair of books called Anglo Saxon Food and Drink by Anne
> Hagen. No recipeis, but she very carefully compiles archeological and
> literary data to get an idea of what foodstuffs were consumed and even some
> idea as to how they were prepared, ie boiled, baked, etc. Her citations
> include early stuff that might work for you.

Ditto on the praise for Anne Hagens books. Probably the best source
available. 

I do know of a couple of single item redactions based on archaeological
materials (one barley and pea porridge with sheeps milk, and one
unleavened pan-bread). If you want data on the composition of
breads/porridges (according to an archaeologist friend these are hard to
tell apart 1000 years later) the Birka reports (e.g.) should give you
some input on grain types, etc.

There should be some archeological literature on the different
prevalences for oven-baked bread vs pan baked bread vs porridge, as well
as preferred grain types. These data are, most likely local in nature,
based both on what grew locally and cultural preferences.

There is some food mentioned in period literary sources (e.g. Edda
Saemundar), but not enough to go on. A couple of years ago I thought I
had been able to document pit-cooking based on a line in (IIRC) 
Thrymskvida, but it proved to be translational figment (it turned out
Thor just tossed an oxen on the fire, not into a cooking-pit). Darn.

One potential source that I haven't seen anything on is what was
recorded regarding the customs of the Scandinavians while traveling and
living in the east. Anyone know if this has been explored at all? It
should be easier nowadays, when the "slavs and only slavs" doctrine is
less prevalent over there.

/UlfR

- -- 
Par Leijonhufvud                  par.leijonhufvud at labtek.ki.se
Running Windows on a Pentium is like having a brand new Porsche but only
be able to drive backwards with the handbrake on.

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