[Sca-cooks] Icelandic Smoked Salt??? & "Viking" restaurant...

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

Adamantius wrote:
>
> The subject of a smoked salt was raised, and it occurred to me that
> drying salt over a smoky fire (similar to the original process of
> drying malt over smoky fires, part of what makes Scotch whisky kewl),
> might be a natural extension of trying to obtain salt from the sea
> without the shallows and intense sunlight of, say, the coasts of
> India. Sources like Plat and Digby speak of processing salt for table
> use by drying it in ovens, I seem to recall, and in some cases simply
> burning out impurities, so in the cool humidity of Northern Europe,
> the idea of smoked salt makes some degree of sense. Does anybody have
> any more information on this?

It isn't called smoked salt in Icelandic but this was one of two main
methods used for salt harvesting in Iceland during the Middle Ages. To quote
myself:

"... after a few centuries, maybe after a few decades, lack of firewood had
already become a problem. Boiling seawater for salt harvesting is a
fuel-intensive process and the demand for wood for other uses was great. So
people tried to economize. In winter, barrels could be filled with seawater
and left until a thick layer of ice had formed. This was then removed and
the process was repeated a few times, until the salt in the remaining water
was so highly concentrated that it didn't freeze. Then it was boiled but the
process took much shorter time than usual and less fuel was needed.
Another frequent method was to gather seaweeds and dry them. They were then
burned and the salty ashes used to preserve food. This was called "black
salt" and was used when nothing else was available, but of course the food
was contaminated with ash and grits."

Nanna