SC - Sweets to the sweet, have some fruitcake...

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

ÚlfR wrote:

>But make sure you get the right species. Mistakes can be fatal.

Not a problem here - there are only two species, Angelica archangelica and
Angelica sylvestris, and both were used.

>BTW, are those uses period or later?


Certainly some uses were period - the sagas mention digging for angelica
roots, and the oldest Icelandic law texts mention them too. Many farms had
angelica gardens and it was the only plant used as a vegetable that was
grown here throughout the Middle Ages. They are not much used these days but
I have recipes for, amongst other things, pickled angelica, candied angelica
and dried angelica leaves. And rhubarb and angelica jam.

And if anyone has read Fóstbræðra saga (sorry, can´t remember the English
name), there´s a wonderful story of the two ribalds, Þorgeir Hávarsson and
Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld, who went to pick hvönn (angelica) in Látrabjarg, a
seacliff in Northwestern Iceland, and climbed somewhat down the cliff.
Þormóður went up with some of their harvest but when he came down again he
didn´t see Þorgeir anywhere. He thought he was so absorbed in his
angelica-havesting that he had forgotten himself and called out: "Don´t you
think you have enough by now?" Then Þorgeir answered: "I think I shall have
enough when I have the one I hold now." And when his foster brother went to
look for him, he saw that Þorgeir was clinging to an angelica stalk for dear
life, with a sheer drop of hundreds of meters into the ocean below. But he
was too much of a man to yell for help ... (sorry, I´m quoting from memory
only, I´m sure there is a translation online somewhere, but this is a
passage most Icelanders know very well).

Nanna


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