I’m
going to post a bunch more on this particular topic over the next month or
so. I’m teaching a class on Viking cooking in late April, and I’ll
be organizing my thoughts and opinions as I write the class, which should
result in some interesting stuff. Watch this space.
As just a
quick note, though, basically my thoughts about Viking cooking run like this:
- The
Vikings didn’t use recipes
- So we
aren’t going to find any
- We know
what ingredients they ate from the archeological record
- We know
what tools they used for cooking from same
- We have
some idea about their tastes from contemporary literature (know your
sagas!)
- We know
what modern Scandinavian food is like
- Given
the above, we can recreate Viking food with a fair amount of confidence
- The
foremost barrier to recreating Viking food is that many modern people
think it sounds gross
- I
happen to like oatmeal and onions, but many don’t

More on
this topic hopefully soon.