SC - Re: period Norse

[david friedman]

At 6:51 PM -0600 3/5/00, Branwen wrote:

>And if Norweigians had potatoes in period, it's *probably* period. Lefse
>doesn't seem to be a new thing!

Potatoes come from the New World, so while it is not impossible that 
someone in Norway grew them sometime in the 16th century, it is not 
very likely that they were the basis of anything widely eaten.

I think the general argument implied by your "doesn't seem to be a 
new thing" is wrong--simply because four hundred years is such a lot 
of time. Consider potatoes in Ireland, or tomatoes in italian 
cooking, or paprika in Hungarian cooking. All of those are New World 
ingredients which could not have been used before the 1490's, and are 
unlikely to have been common until after our period. Yet all are 
central elements of the cuisine, which most people simply assume have 
been there forever. Similarly with coffee in the Islamic world--not 
from the New World, but a new introduction near the end of our 
period, and again something that most people who know a little about 
the Islamic world in recent centuries assume has been there forever.

Hence, even if lefse were not made out of potatoes, I think your 
"probably" should be no more than a "might be."

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/