SC - food and hospitality

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

- -----Original Message-----
From: Mary Morman <memorman at oldcolo.com>
To: SCA-Cooks <sca-cooks at Ansteorra.ORG>
Date: 11. janúar 1999 17:50
Subject: SC - food and hospitality


>This talk of eating well and being heavy started me on another related
>theme.  I've been reading Egil's Saga looking for food references and have
>noted the typical Norse hospitality theme.
>
>Boat sails into harbor.  Men get off the boat and go meet the local
>householder.  Either (a) they all try to kill each other, or (b)
>householder and boat captain talk, and householder invites captain to
>bring as many men as he "thinks good" up to the house and they all eat and
>drink for a week.
>
Yes. Well, Icelandic hospitality was still rather much like that in the
rural North when I was growing up, except that no one usually got killed,
and the liquid refreshment were either large quantities of coffee or even
larger quantities of some strong liquour, frequently homebrewed.

>Alternate scenario has the householder inviting the captain and "as many
>men as he thinks good" to spend the winter with him.
>
>The "thinks good" part seems to be literally meant - the captain ussually
>takes some but not all of his men, leaving some to guard the boat, sleep
>on the boat, or winter with other households.  The captain is being
>invited to share hospitality, but not to take undue advantage of it.

The old Norse poem Hávamál, which I was made to learn by heart at a very
tender age, largely deals with the theme of hospitality - what hospitality
to offer a guest, and how to accept it.

>
>The hospitality seems mainly to involve lots of eating and drinking.
>Sometimes no ale is offered, as sign of poverty or deliberate insult, and
>in those cases the guests are offered bowls of curds and expected to drink
>the whey.  This is fine unless the guests find out that other food is
>available but not being served to them - in which case obviously the guest
>needs to kill the householder and all his men.
>
>When I began looking for food references, I was mainly looking for "what"
>not "how" - but I found much more "how" they ate information and very
>little "what they ate" information.  Curds and whey.  Ale.  Bread.
>Porridge.  And lots of references to "good food" and "as good a feast as
>ever they had eaten".
>
>Anyone have more information, and or comments, on this?

Curds (skyr) and whey were a substantial part of the Icelandic diet for 11
centuries - still a daily item on the menu in the 1960s. The good food? My
ancestors were very fond of horsemeat - when they decided to accept the
Christian religion in the year 1000, they had a few conditions - one of them
being that they would be allowed to continue to eat horseflesh, if only they
did it surreptiously ... Other meats, especially lamb, beef and veal, not
much pork. No game to be found here in Iceland but plenty in Norway. Various
seabirds, caught in nets or snares. Whalemeat. Fish, either fresh or dried,
especially cod, haddock and halibut, and salmon, char and trout. Not much
bread and porridge, as most grain had to be imported (the only grain grown
with any success in Iceland is barley, and that was mostly used for ale). No
fresh vegetables or fruit, except berries.

All this refers of course only to Iceland and the northern parts of
Scandinavia.

Nanna (who isn´t SC, has been lurking for a while and hadn´t planned on
anything else but really couldn´t resist this one).
>
>Elaina
>
>===========================================================================
=
>
>To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
>Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".
>
>===========================================================================
=

============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================