![]() These fruits were ideal for drying, storing, and use in winter. They also foraged for apples, berries (cloudberries, lingonberries, and raspberries), plums, nuts, and seeds. The Viking diet was certainly not bland as their wide use of spices like horseradish, coriander, cumin (a European variety, not the usual one we find in curries), and mustard showed. They also gathered seaweed, and wild greens, like nettles. Onions, cabbage, leeks, beans, turnips, celery, carrots, and peas were grown in cultivated plots. Vegetables were frequent additions to the Viking diet. This bread would harden as it cooled, so skause was ideal for softening it enough to eat comfortably. The bread was made using a skillet placed beneath the skause cauldron while it was heated. Vikings would make sourdough and flatbread. Their bread also contained beans, honey, nuts, and ground tree bark. They made this bread from a mixture of cereal crops, like wheat, oats, barley, and rye. Vikings liked to eat skause with multi-grain bread, another dietary staple. The Vikings also used sour milk, which they added to bread. The remaining liquid whey was used as a drink to pickle vegetables and fish or preserve meat. Once the milk curdled, they strained it through a cloth, scraping off the yogurt that remained. Vikings made skyr by heating skimmed milk and leaving it to curdle and develop cultures. Viking stored and ate skyr in the winter when fresh milk was unavailable. Skyr was curds, a soft cheese with a consistency like yogurt. One of the most popular dairy foods was “skyr.” Due to the difficulties of keeping milk fresh, Vikings used many fermented dairy products – butter, cheese, buttermilk, and yogurt. DairyĬows, sheep, and goats satisfied their dairy requirements. “Stockfish” was a dried cod dish they traded throughout Europe Tørrfisk is unsalted, air-dried cod. Herring and cod were the most popular fish in the Viking age. Preservation was essential when they went on sea voyages or to see them through the long winters. They also ate other varieties of oily fish, such as mackerel. Pickling was also popular for keeping fish, particularly herring (sursild). They smoked, salted, and dried fish like their meat to preserve it. Vikings took advantage of the abundant fish in their freshwater and saltwater sources. Medieval Viking dining hall interior with a pig roasting over an open fire Fish They would track sea birds to their nesting grounds, lower themselves down the cliff face using ropes, and steal their eggs. The now-extinct auk was a standard part of the Viking diet, and domesticated fowl were used to provide fresh eggs and meat. Other sources of protein were birds and their eggs. Game was plentiful in Scandinavia, and Vikings hunted rabbits, hares, elk, boar, deer, bear, and even seals. Vikings had one of the most balanced and nutritious diets compared to other races in the middle ages. They consisted of a stew with boiled meat as a key ingredient. The evening meal or “nattmal” (“night meal”) was more substantial than the “dagmal” and took place after the day’s chores were over. Stale bread and fruit would accompany the stew.Ĭhildren would have eaten porridge of buckwheat, oats, and millet with added fruit. The first meal was called “dagmal” or “day meal” and was eaten about an hour after the Vikings woke up in the morning.ĭagmal usually consisted of the previous night’s leftover stew, which would often be “skause,” a stew made from chunks of beef or lamb with potatoes, carrots, and onion. Vikings based their day around two regular meals a day, which they would eat from wooden bowls while sitting around a communal table. Were The Vikings Good Farmers and Hunters?.The arrival of Christianity and the forbidden dishes.
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