SC - Horsemeat, was Re: "cruel food"-

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

>Is there a particular breed that you prefer?  Have recipes?  I don't
>suppose eating horse is period, wouldn't they have been too expensive
>to raise for eating?


We only have one breed here, the Icelandic Horse - or pony, really.
According to the sagas and other sources, horseflesh was eaten by the
Vikings; they slaughtered horses as an offering to their gods, then feasted
on the meat. When the Icelanders decided to let themselves be converted to
Christianity at the Althing in the year 1000 (well, recent evidence shows
that it probably was in 999 but we are celebrating 1000 years of
Christianity next year anyway), they passed a law that the eating of
horsemeat should be a non-punishable offense, if done in secret. But that
probably only went on for a few decades. Later, the eating of horsemeat
meant excommunication and virtual exclusion from human society. There are
occasional accounts of horsemeat being eaten during famine years (no lack of
them here) but usually people would die of hunger rather than eat it. Which
was tragic, because horses were definitely not too expensive to raise for
eating, not here at least, as they were grazing in the wilderness all year
round, and cost nothing to raise. One of my ancestors (early 18th century)
had a flock of around 200 horses, and only a handful of them were actually
ever put to any use.

Despite all the taboos people seem to have believed in some special
qualities of horsemeat. Several very old buried treasure legends around the
country specify that no one can find the treasure, unless he was brought up
solely on horsemeat and mare´s milk until the age of 12 (which pretty much
guaranteed that no one would be able to seek it). In other legends,
horsemeat is the food of giants, or outlaws, and makes them very big and
strong.

People began to eat horsemeat again in the early 19th century. The first
"horseflesh-eaters" were very poor and they were derided, even shunned, by
their neighbors, but this gradually changed. By the turn of the century,
most people would eat horsemeat, regardless of their social status. During
most of this century, it has been far more common than beef (I suppose I ate
about six times as much horsemeat as beef in my childhood) but this has
changed during the last 3 decades or so; now we eat far more beef. You don´t
see many horsemeat recipes in Icelandic cookbooks, though, because we use
the meat in exactly the same way as beef. (Beef tenderloin costs about $40
per kilo here; steak is maybe $12-$15 per kilo.)

Nanna

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

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".

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